When a Stranger Calls

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing film!
Review: The first half-hour of this film is extremely momentous and very scary that I would give it five stars. However, the film changes after Charles Durning starts chasing the killer. It's as if the film goes from being a horror film to becoming a detective series.

Take my advice! Rent this film and watch it for the first very scary half-hour then shut it off.

Rating:
Summary: Have you checked the children?
Review: Unnerving opening scene (which inspired the scene featuring Drew Barrymore in 1996's "Scream"). The middle sags somewhat, plodding along at a snail-like rate. It picks up again when it reconnects to the opening scene, reintroducing the main character - and it has a classic cinema shock scene (as good as the one at the end of "Carrie"). Carol Kane gives Jamie Lee Curtis a run for her money as definitive scream queen of all time . ..


Rating:
Summary: Your Blood All Over Me
Review: When A Stranger Calls is a top notch suspense thriller that owes some of its success to Holloween, released a year earlier, as well as a director tipping his hat to Alfred Hitchcock, and two strong protagonists.

Young Jill Johnson (Carol Kane) agrees to babysit the children of a Dr. and his wife while they go out for an evening. After tucking the kids into their beds, she is soon tormented by a series of disturbing phone calls from a menacing stranger, (Tony Beckley) and decides to call the cops. Detective John Clifford (Charles Durning) is assigned to apprehend the caller, who turns out to be a psychopathic killer. Seven years after his capture, he is released, and returns to haunt Jill, now a wife and mother. In order to protect her family, she is determined to fight back, beating him at his own game.

The first half hour of the movie really draws you in and director Fred Walton creates enough tension to fill two films in that time. The script from Steve Feke and Walton has truly unexpected turns to it. Kane does a great job at playing someone who, is both very vulnerable and quite strong at different stages of the movie. Durning as the relentless cop who will stop at nothing is also very good. The film would not have turned out as well as it did--were it not for the two leads. Providing solid support is Beckley, who is truly creepy, the late Colleen Dewhurst as Tracy--someome who inadvertantly lets the killer into her life-and William Boyett as Sgt. Sacker, who assists Jill and delivers the first real twist of the movie. The suspense has a Hitchcockian flavor to it--created in conjunction with its camera work by Don Peterman and music by Dana Kaproff.

The extras on the DVD are a real disappointment. We don't even get to see the original trailer for the film, instead all we get are trailers for Night Of The Living Dead and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Sheesh given the film's popularity and status--I would have expected a commentary with Kane at the very least. Special edition anyone? Viewers can watch the film in both the widescreen and full frame formats.

This memorable thriller is still well worth a look and recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Still scary after all these years.....
Review: This horror tale of the babysitting night from hell still gives me chills after all these years....the classic line "The calls are coming from inside the house" is enough to make my skin prickle. This film evades the slasher label by having most of the violence occur offscreen. This one scares in the good-old-fashioned way, but putting the heroine in peril and leaving our own imaginations to work even as we watch.....Have you checked the children today????

Rating:
Summary: Really good Beginning and Ending but a Slow Body
Review: I sat down in my living room just last night and happened to see this movie getting ready to come on. In all honesty, I was expecting another slasher movie much like Friday the 13th (and its many sequels) that usually come on at night on the movie channels. There was a pleasant surprise, though, when I realized that it wasn't going to be just another movie trying to live off the success of movies like Friday the 13th and Halloween.

The beginning had me constantly putting my head under the covers while I got up at least three times to make sure the phone was working just in case I needed to call someone to come over with me. It's not often that a horror movie actually elicits such intense fear from me but the first twenty-five minutes of this movie did just that! I, at first, didn't know what was going on. I knew this lady was babysitting two children and that she was receiving calls from a man asking if she had checked the children. Every single time the man called, I wanted to scream that she should call the cops and tell them to get theirs butts over there because that's what I would have done.

However, it's only a movie and they have to build a story somehow, right? So, the calls were coming from inside the house and this psychotic individual, Duncan, had already killed the children some time ago before the sitter even knew there was someone else in the house. I have to say, again, that this first half of the movie scared the hell out of me!

The body of the movie was very slow moving. They should have cut a lot out and added more tension like the first half of the movie had but, sadly, it was dragging on and on so I have nothing to say about it.

The last ten or fifteen minutes, however, perked me back up and scared me again though not as much as the first half of the movie. It's in my belief that they should have kept the tension going throughout the movie by some means instead of breaking it off to resemble more of a cop drama or something!

All in all, it was a good movie.

Rating:
Summary: Scary Story Review By Mary Sanders
Review: Stars Carol Kane, who normally is known for ditsy, comic, roles; not here. She's a terrified babysitter. As she is harrassed by a weird telephone caller, Tony Beckley, who some might remember as the weird "plant guy" in Dr. Who-Seeds Of Doom, I think, and also stars Colleen Dewhurst, and Charles Durning, as the determined detective; who sets out to put the so and so away, permanently. Fairly suspenseful and scary, but one wonders; why didn't Kane just "disconnect" the phone. Of course, that would ruin the movie.