Rish Outfield's reviews
This was one of those films I had often heard about, but had never seen. So, when it came out on DVD recently, I gave it a rent. Need I have bothered?
First things first: HAVE YOU CHECKED THE CHILDREN?
Carol Kane plays the babysitter who is called by a deranged killer and asked that very question. You know that story, right? If you don't, I won't spoil it here. The first twenty minutes of When A Stranger Calls retells that urban legend. Unfortunately, the movie continues after that point. Years pass, the killer escapes, and Charles Durning plays the investigator who tracks the escapee, eventually vowing to kill him. Colleen Dewhurst plays a woman followed by the escapee, but not in a scary way.
What made this film famous has to have been the lengthy prologue (the killer calls eight times, if anybody cares). There's virtually nothing left worth seeing after that. I know shouldn't use a word like "boring" to describe a horror movie, but if the screw fits . . . Virtually nothing happens for half an hour in the middle of the film, rendering things tremendously dull. You disagree? Dude, NOTHING happens!
Honestly, the most interesting thing about the middle section is how fat Charles Durning is. In fact, the highpoint of the film for me was when we were led to believe that the killer is lurking about, making a racket, and it turns out to only be the ice machine. That, at least, was unexpected. Also, the scare at 1 hour and 20 minutes worked okay, but even that was so unmemorable that I've forgotten what it was.
Besides, Carol Kane's eardrum-splitting voice does just that, and I struggled with liking her. A fatal mistake made by the filmmakers is that the killer is not scary at all, but sad. Since we didn't see the killing early on, it's hard to be frightened or not to feel sorry for the bad guy. In fact, during one scene, Charles Durning seems to be much more of the film's villain than the killer is.
All through the movie, I kept hoping it would get better, but also kept asking myself, "Does this suck?" The ending of the film tipped the scale for me by being completely and truly IMPOSSIBLE. Yep, this movie sucked.
"The Babysitter" is one of the most famous scary urban legends (not as well-known as "The Hook" but definitely up there), and it's one of my favourites. It scared the crap out of me when I was a kid, in charge of babysitting my brother and sister. Since I was half-crazy even then, all sorts of effed-up visions filled my head.
Yet in When A Stranger Calls, it is so ineptly done that the scares that worked so well in so many retellings are rendered 90% impotent. Just like that stinkfest Lost Souls managed to take a terrifying premise and vacuum out all the scares, so too did When A Stranger Calls from that great urban legend.
I'll bet "The Simpsons" could do it scarier.
I'd Recommend It To: I don't know who I'd recommend it to. As much as people talk about it, I found it WAY overrated. Surely this was an influential film, but the urban legend was around long before ‘79, and Black Christmas had the killer calling up his victims on the phone back in ‘73. In its best moments, it rips off a bit of Halloween, but mostly it's just boring, unspecial trash.