When a Stranger Calls (1979)

June 22, 2018

The first twenty minutes of this film are some of the greatest twenty minutes in horror movie history! In these twenty minutes the babysitter, played by Carol Kane, keeps receiving calls form a man asking her if she's "checked on the children?" and "why haven't you checked on the children?" Their is an especially scary moment when the killer states that what he wants is to be covered in the babysitter's blood. Her fear intensifies until the climax where she finds out the calls are coming from inside the house. We see the killer's shadow moving towards the stairs right as she opens the front door and a police officer is there to rescue her. Kane's performance is amazing and this scene would be the inspiration for the Drew Barrymore scene from Wes Craven's Scream. We learn that the killer had been upstairs with the children dead covered in their blood for hours .

Unlike Scream, it seems like the movie makers didn't know what exactly to do with the next hour of the film. Originally intended to be a short film, the producers decided to turn into a feature length film. Upon watching it is fairly apparent that it began as a short.

The killer, played by Tony Beckley, escapes from the mental asylum. Then we have a cat-and-mouse game between the killer and a police sheriff who is intent on killing him. This part of the film has a few great moments, the killer's almost killing of another woman, some flashbacks to his killing of the children and his time in the asylum, but largely seemed like an afterthought to the beginning and ending to the film. Beckley's gaunt look, neurotic gestures, and performance are what really sell this part of the film. The actor was actually dying of cancer or another sickness at the time of the filming. His sickness helped him create the look of a crazed killer. Unfortunately, Beckley would die six months after the film's release.

I don't want to spoil the ending of this one, but it is definitely worth watching. Six years after the initial scene, the killer and the babysitter (who now has two children of her own) have one more reunion.