Usually, when writing these reviews, I
disregard the “Moments” aspect of the list. I consider this to
be a fairly prestigious list of horror films. But oftentimes, what
scares me is not the same as what scares the people who devised the
list. For example, I find the horse suicide in The Ring far
more disturbing than the little girl coming out of the television.
However, for When a Stranger Calls, the scary “Moments”
are something that really aren’t under dispute.
I say this because the film is
remembered, pretty much universally, for its first twenty-minutes.
Most people don’t even seem to realize that the killer calling from
inside the house was resolved in the first act, and that the movie
then cut to seven years later with him escaping from an Asylum.
This is primarily because there’s
nothing else worth remembering. The movie feels like an intense
short-film with two more acts stapled on, merely because no one was
going to pay to see a 20-minute movie.
Those first twenty-minutes are the
story of a baby-sitter named Jill (Carol Kane), who begins receiving
mysterious phone calls asking if she’s checked the children. After
hours of being harassed, without having done as the caller suggested
even once, Jill calls the police and gets them to trace the call.
After her next interaction with the strange caller, she receives a
call from the police and is told that the calls are coming from
inside the house. She sees a shadow upstairs as she runs out and
finds a police officer already waiting outside. We’re then shown
the house a few hours later. We’re told that the children have
been dead for hours and the killer was covered in their blood,
waiting for Jill.
This first segment is based on a
classic urban legend, and it does an excellent job of making the
situation legitimately scary. The killer is never seen, giving him a
real aura of dread. Furthermore, the movie averts the usual horror
movie expectation of sin and punishment. Jill is, at best, a
negligent baby-sitter for her failure to check the children.
However, had she done so, the killer would have murdered her as well
So bad things happen for no reason, and good behavior is no more
likely to save you than bad.
The remainder of the movie then takes
this set-up and ruins everything in a blatant attempt to expand the
story to feature-length. The mysterious killer is now a British man
named Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley). Beckley’s performance is great!
In fact, it’s one of the few saving graces of the latter part of
the movie. Were this any other film, he might actually have been
good villain. However, this movie, having based its first act on the
idea that ‘Nothing is Scarier,’ has now gone right out and shown
us the face of the Devil, and he’s a homeless British man who we
feel sorry for. It’s clear that monster or not, he’s a very
lonely person, who lacks the ability to connect with others.
Most of the next hour of the film
consists of Duncan making friends with a Middle Aged woman named
Tracy (Colleen Dewhurst), who feels sorry for him, while being chased
by PI John Clifford (Charles Durning). Clifford was Duncan’s
arresting officer seven years previously, and intends to kill him
under the guise of having been hired by the father of Duncan’s
victims to recapture him. Eventually, Clifford recruits Tracy, but
Duncan sees through the ruse. Dewhurst is at best passable, and
Durning would probably have been better if the script didn’t feel
like a massive anti-climax.
The final act of the film feels like a
mockery of the first. I’ve heard it said that one of the rules of
film making is “never remind your audience of a better movie they
could be watching.” In this case, the movie decides to remind us
of a better part of the same movie that we could rewind and watch all
over again. Duncan, barely escaping Clifford, somehow tracks down
Jill. She’s now married with two kids and is going out for a night
on the town with her husband, until she gets a call at a restaurant
from Duncan asking if she’s checked her children.
But of course, Duncan is not actually
in the home. He was planning his attack for later that evening. His
phone call to the restaurant served no purpose other than to scare
Jill, tip off Clifford and remind us that we are indeed watching When
a Stranger Calls. We’re then treated to a period of Jill
freaking out, Duncan attacking and Clifford showing up just in time
to save the day and kill Duncan.
I’ve heard it said that cliches are
cliches because they work. In the case of the slasher film, that’s
certainly true. When this film came out, there were already a number
of films we would likely have called “Slashers,” including The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas, and Halloween.
I get the impression that this film was trying to play around with
the formula, but it doesn’t really work. The only onscreen death
is Duncan’s. The children are killed off-screen, their bodies
never shown, and Duncan does not actually succeed in committing
another murder during the entire run time of the film. We feel sorry
for him, sure, but we’re not scared of him.
As a film, this really isn’t
something I can recommend. As I said though, the first 20 minutes
are chilling to watch. I’m glad that I don’t give star-ratings,
because I think it would be impossible to rate “the movie as a
whole,” rather than judging it as two separate films.
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