Blog Monster Movie Monday: When a Stranger Calls
When a Stranger Calls (1979) 
Starring: Charles Durning, Carol Kane. Colleen Dewhurst, and Tony Beckley
Directed by: Fred Walton
Written by: Steve Feke and Fred Walton
Production Company: Columbia Pictures and Melvin Simon Productions
When a Stranger Calls is rated #28 on the Bravo Channel’s Scariest Movie Moments list. I’ll agree with “moments”, but overall I found this movie to be lackluster. It’s not a waste, but when compared with other related flicks like Black Christmas (to which this was intended to be a sequel) and Halloween (another intended sequel to Black Christmas), it just doesn’t hold up.
The movie can basically be divided into three acts. The first act is where Stranger excels. Kane plays Jill Johnson, a teenager hired to baby sit for parents going out for the evening. Jill starts to receive phone calls…you know this story…first the caller just hangs up and then he starts asking, “Have you checked the children?”
Jill phones the police and eventually convinces them to monitor the line. He calls again and, having been instructed to keep him on the line, she converses with the mysterious caller and we get one of the creepiest exchanges:
Jill Johnson: You really scared me, if that's what you wanted. Is that what you wanted? Caller: No.
Starring: Charles Durning, Carol Kane. Colleen Dewhurst, and Tony Beckley
Directed by: Fred Walton
Written by: Steve Feke and Fred Walton
Production Company: Columbia Pictures and Melvin Simon Productions
When a Stranger Calls is rated #28 on the Bravo Channel’s Scariest Movie Moments list. I’ll agree with “moments”, but overall I found this movie to be lackluster. It’s not a waste, but when compared with other related flicks like Black Christmas (to which this was intended to be a sequel) and Halloween (another intended sequel to Black Christmas), it just doesn’t hold up.
The movie can basically be divided into three acts. The first act is where Stranger excels. Kane plays Jill Johnson, a teenager hired to baby sit for parents going out for the evening. Jill starts to receive phone calls…you know this story…first the caller just hangs up and then he starts asking, “Have you checked the children?”
Jill phones the police and eventually convinces them to monitor the line. He calls again and, having been instructed to keep him on the line, she converses with the mysterious caller and we get one of the creepiest exchanges:
Jill Johnson: You really scared me, if that's what you wanted. Is that what you wanted? Caller: No.
Jill Johnson: What do you want?
Caller: Your blood all over me.
When the caller hangs up she immediately gets a call from the police…Get out, the killer is in the house.
This opening act sets up what could have been a great, nerve-racking slasher flick. Kane’s whispy voice and wide eyes compliment her acting ability making her the perfect victim. Beckley’s delivery of his lines is eerie and threatening without having to use graphic references like the phone calls in Black Christmas.
The feeling of isolation and vulnerability is perfectly created. An unfamiliar house late at night, subtle statements that let Jill know that her caller is watching her. We never even see the children. They are sick and were in bed when Jill arrived. There’s only Jill and the caller. Even when she calls the police, they seem farther away than the caller even without the knowledge that he’s just upstairs.
The first act ends with the police arriving as Jill runs out. The caller upstairs killed the children.
Then we get to the second act that begins seven years later. This version of the film abandons the horror feel so expertly created in the first third. What we have for the middle portion of the film is a crime drama.
The killer, Curt Duncan, was found to be insane and so sent to a psychiatric hospital. As Dr. Mandrakis, the father of the murdered children, says, “How can someone do what he did and not be insane?” Dr. Mandrakis hires cop turned private detective John Clifford, who was present at the crime scene seven years earlier, to find Duncan…and kill him. What really hurts this second act is that we see Duncan. I think that had Duncan been nothing more than a voice, a hand, anything but a face, the killer would have remained mysterious, we would have remained tense, the movie would have remained a horror movie. But instead we learn too much about Curt Duncan. We see him too much. He stops being scary and mysterious and becomes…pathetic. Beckley does an excellent job maintaining at least some sense of creepiness about Duncan as he begins stalking Tracy, played by Colleen Dewhurst. Unfortunately, after the scene where he gets beaten up and dragged into the bathroom, it’s hard to take him as a serious threat. Dewhurst does a great job conveying fear from being stalked by a strange man, but I half thought she could whip Duncan’s tail by herself.
There is some great cinematography creating a sense of isolation around Tracy even though she’s in a large city: Distant shots of her walking down dark streets with very few cars or pedestrians, just the dim glow of street lamps. But without the mystery and seeing him as a victim in a bar fight…well, not fight because he doesn’t hit his assailant…so his bar pummeling, fails to capture the feeling Walton tried to create.
After narrowly escaping Clifford, Duncan sees an article about Jill, his intended victim from seven years earlier. Grown up, Jill is married and has two children of her own. Jill and her husband are going out to dinner and hire a babysitter. This time, however, Duncan doesn’t call the babysitter; he calls Jill again at the restaurant. She rushes home with the police to find…everything’s fine. Until we learn that Duncan is in the house and we get the climax.
We return to a feeling of horror for the closing of the film, though not as pervasive now that we know who the killer is, what he looks like, and seen him beaten up. Even in a packed restaurant, a close up of Kane’s face as she answers the phone to hear the voice that harassed her years ago creates a sense of isolation and fear surrounding Jill. The outside shots of the darkened house create a feeling of discomfort. Jill wanders the house alone in the dark, and even in bed with her husband she sits up wide-eyed with her husband hardly noticeable at all.
This opening act sets up what could have been a great, nerve-racking slasher flick. Kane’s whispy voice and wide eyes compliment her acting ability making her the perfect victim. Beckley’s delivery of his lines is eerie and threatening without having to use graphic references like the phone calls in Black Christmas.
The feeling of isolation and vulnerability is perfectly created. An unfamiliar house late at night, subtle statements that let Jill know that her caller is watching her. We never even see the children. They are sick and were in bed when Jill arrived. There’s only Jill and the caller. Even when she calls the police, they seem farther away than the caller even without the knowledge that he’s just upstairs.
The first act ends with the police arriving as Jill runs out. The caller upstairs killed the children.
Then we get to the second act that begins seven years later. This version of the film abandons the horror feel so expertly created in the first third. What we have for the middle portion of the film is a crime drama.
The killer, Curt Duncan, was found to be insane and so sent to a psychiatric hospital. As Dr. Mandrakis, the father of the murdered children, says, “How can someone do what he did and not be insane?” Dr. Mandrakis hires cop turned private detective John Clifford, who was present at the crime scene seven years earlier, to find Duncan…and kill him. What really hurts this second act is that we see Duncan. I think that had Duncan been nothing more than a voice, a hand, anything but a face, the killer would have remained mysterious, we would have remained tense, the movie would have remained a horror movie. But instead we learn too much about Curt Duncan. We see him too much. He stops being scary and mysterious and becomes…pathetic. Beckley does an excellent job maintaining at least some sense of creepiness about Duncan as he begins stalking Tracy, played by Colleen Dewhurst. Unfortunately, after the scene where he gets beaten up and dragged into the bathroom, it’s hard to take him as a serious threat. Dewhurst does a great job conveying fear from being stalked by a strange man, but I half thought she could whip Duncan’s tail by herself.
There is some great cinematography creating a sense of isolation around Tracy even though she’s in a large city: Distant shots of her walking down dark streets with very few cars or pedestrians, just the dim glow of street lamps. But without the mystery and seeing him as a victim in a bar fight…well, not fight because he doesn’t hit his assailant…so his bar pummeling, fails to capture the feeling Walton tried to create.
After narrowly escaping Clifford, Duncan sees an article about Jill, his intended victim from seven years earlier. Grown up, Jill is married and has two children of her own. Jill and her husband are going out to dinner and hire a babysitter. This time, however, Duncan doesn’t call the babysitter; he calls Jill again at the restaurant. She rushes home with the police to find…everything’s fine. Until we learn that Duncan is in the house and we get the climax.
We return to a feeling of horror for the closing of the film, though not as pervasive now that we know who the killer is, what he looks like, and seen him beaten up. Even in a packed restaurant, a close up of Kane’s face as she answers the phone to hear the voice that harassed her years ago creates a sense of isolation and fear surrounding Jill. The outside shots of the darkened house create a feeling of discomfort. Jill wanders the house alone in the dark, and even in bed with her husband she sits up wide-eyed with her husband hardly noticeable at all.
Not a bad film and pretty impressive when you consider that we never actually see any killings at all. Clifford describing for Tracy the original murders carries more impact than many poorly executed gore scenes from other movies. But as the mystique surrounding Duncan was removed, we lost any sense intimidation and fear. That's not good for a horror film.
posted by Bodog at 5:56 PM
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