When a Stranger Calls

Rating:
Summary: "stranger" will not be a stranger to my VCR!
Review: I would just like to stress the greatness of this movie. I would give it a perfect score. This movie has everything a horror movie lover would want: violence,suspense,action,humore and drama. And my favorite part is it has 0 profanity.I dont buy movies unless i'll watch them once a week but this movie was added to the few after the first time I saw it. It reminds you of a blend of HAlloween and Psycho mixed with a little Scream. Dont take my word for it! Watch it yourself!

Rating:
Summary: Why haven't you checked the children?
Review: Shocker has great opening twenty minutes, where psychopath terrorizes babysitter Carol Kane. He taunts her over the phone, and after she makes some frantic calls to the police, they trace the call to within that very house. She's rescued, but he (offscreen) murdered the two children upstairs. Seven years later, he escapes custody and comes after her again with cop Charles Durning on his trail. Film runs out of steam after opening sequence, but picks up again towards the end. No explicit violence, but some great shocks. Kane and Durning returned fourteen years later in "When a Stranger Calls Back".

Rating:
Summary: Use the bathroom before you watch this movie.
Review: This is one of the best horror movies ever made. The first ten minutes is the best. You almost scream in terror when you hear the police tell Carol Kane's character that the man who keeps calling her is actually upstairs. He was using an old phone the family forgot about. Carol Kane stars as babysitter Jill Johnson who is asked to babysit a little boy and girl while their parents go to dinner. In comes Tony Beckley who stars as the caller harrasing Kane. He scared the heck out of me. Just to look in his eyes you can tell he was made for the part,and when he keeps asking Kane "Have you checked the Children?" his voice is creepy enough that it sends a shiver down your spine. I recommend this movie to everyone. As long as they have someone to watch it with. Just be sure to use the bathroom before the movie,otherwise you might be to scared to go alone.

Rating:
Summary: SCARY...
Review: i wouldnt go as far as to say that this film was one of thegreatest horror films ever. but it definitely is SCARY(the beginningand the end, that is). the middle of this movie was justbad. watching some jerk walk around like a lost kitten was justpathetic. but the opening scene and the finale were horrifying andliterally scared the mess out of me. i dont think ive ever screamedas loud as i did when i saw the ending.

Rating:
Summary: This move gave me nightmares!
Review: Heaven only knows why, but my teacher showed this movie to my english class when I was in 7th grade. I can honestly say, I was scared half out of my mind. I had just started babysitting, and a movie that centers around a babysitter being stalked, couldn't have hit closer to home. The suspense is very high, and the story keeps you hooked throughout the movie. I'm out of college now, and I watched the movie again a couple of years ago. While it wasn't as scary as the first time I had watched it, the movie still managed to evoke fear. This is a perfect movie to show kids in jr. high, when the fright factor will really be effective. This is one of those movies that didn't need alot of special effects to be scary, all it needed was a voice in the night saying "Have you checked the children?"

Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest horror films ever made
Review: When A Stranger Calls is not only better than any of the "stalker" movies to come after it, but it is a very sophisticated film. I find the arguments about the middle being boring to be vacuous in the extreme. These critiques have missed the brilliant story writing that puts the former killer into a role so pathetic that the audience is made to feel sorry for him, and casts the former hero (Durning) in the role of the villian. By the end of the film, this plotline flips yet again when the killer resumes his former identity. This whole role-reversal theme is so refreshingly different from the "faceless killer with butcher knife" borefest we've been subjected to for the last twenty years! It's too bad this movie gets passed over in most histories of the modern horror film genre, because it's the best of them.

Rating:
Summary: SUSPENSFUL TO THE VERY END !
Review: This movie is full of suspense. From the begining when what is supose to be just another day baby sitting, turns into a nightmare. This poor girl is frightened to death, and so will you be when you watch this movie. So if you love suspenful thrillers this is diffenately the movie to see !!

Rating:
Summary: Terrific in the beginning and the end, boring in the middle.
Review: "When A Stranger Calls" is a good movie, no doubt about that. It would be a better one if it wasn't so boring in the middle. It starts out when Jill (Carol Kane) is babysitting 2 kids, but starts to get eerie phone calls with a man asking "Have you checked the children?" She gets scared, calls the police, and finds out that the calls are coming from inside the house on an upstairs phone! Seems a psycho entered the house and killed the 2 kids in her care. Fast forward 7 years, the killer (Tony Beckley) escapes the loony bin and tries to survive on the streets, harassing a lonely woman (Colleen Dewhurst) while detective John Clifford (Charles Durning), who arrested him years before tracks him down. The whole middle part of the movie is just "filler" material leading to the final confrontation with Jill, who now has kids of her own, and must try to fend him off, again. The beginning and the end are really scary, the music helps even more, but some of the performances are dry and tasteless, like Colleen Dewhurst's, her character is so bland one wishes that the killer would bump her off. The film was released in 1979 and is followed by "When A Stranger Calls Back" in 1993, with Carol Kane and Charles Durning reprising their roles.

Rating:
Summary: This film is great!
Review: I first rented this movie and watched it when I was alone, at night. BIG mistake. I was scared to death of my own shadow for weeks. They should make more films like this! Note: Due to all the "Scream" hoopla, this may seem pretty tame, but it is still pretty good.

Rating:
Summary: A rather different experience!
Review: After the initial first ten minutes, which are truly terrifying, we are taken forward seven years to see how the killer, after escaping the mental hospital survives on the streets! Only in the last five minutes does the film begin to uphold the horror of the beginning! After watching this film, I was left thinking what kind of audience did the film makers have in mind? A strange film that has to seen to be believed!!!