Day 13 - When a Stranger Calls & the Problem with Watching a Classic Too Late | 31 Days of Halloween

When a Stranger Calls is my slasher pick for Day 13 of The Bark Knight's 31 Days of Halloween.

This was a first-time watch for me and, unfortunately, I didn't like it. Like, at all.

Well, that's not completely true.

I liked the first 20 minutes. I liked the last 20 minutes. Unfortunately, there are about 50 minutes in between that were just not at all what I wanted from this movie.

An Opening That's Almost Too Famous

The movie begins with Jill Johnson, a babysitter played wonderfully by Carol Kane, who receives increasingly disturbing phone calls while watching two children for the night.

"Have you checked the children?"

It's a simple setup, but director Fred Walton builds an incredible amount of tension out of it. Eventually, Jill contacts the police, who begin tracing the calls, leading to the revelation that has been referenced, parodied, and reworked countless times since the movie's release in 1979:

“The calls are coming from inside the house.”

I'm not particularly worried about spoiling that moment. At this point, it's part of horror history, and even if you've somehow avoided knowing the twist, there comes a point during the sequence where it becomes the only explanation that really makes sense.

It's also fascinating watching it today because you can see its fingerprints all over the horror movies that followed.

The opening of Scream immediately comes to mind. Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson take another young woman alone with a telephone, turn an initially innocuous conversation into something terrifying, and build an entire opening sequence around the realization that the person on the other end is much closer than she thinks.

The difference is that When a Stranger Calls then has to figure out what to do for another hour.

And, that's where it lost me.

The Choice to Follow the Killer

After such an effective opening, the movie makes a choice I really wasn't expecting: it essentially abandons Jill and starts following Curt Duncan, the man responsible for the attack.

The story jumps forward seven years. Duncan escapes from the psychiatric facility where he's been held, and private detective John Clifford, played by Charles Durning, begins hunting him.

Most of the middle section follows Duncan wandering through the city, struggling to interact with people and demonstrating how completely incapable he is of functioning within society.

I can understand what the movie is trying to do. Rather than treating Duncan as a faceless slasher villain, it attempts to examine him as a deeply disturbed and isolated person. In 1979, I'm sure there was something considerably more provocative about spending this much time with the killer rather than simply waiting for him to strike again.

But, with that being said, it did absolutely nothing for me.

Charles Durning's pursuit of him comes close to keeping things interesting, but it wasn't enough. After that fantastic opening, I kept waiting for the movie to regain the tension it had established so effectively.

It takes a long time to get there.

Remember Carol Kane?

Spoilers from this point forward.

Eventually, the movie remembers that Carol Kane is in it.

Seven years after the original attack, Jill is now married with two children of her own. She has built a life and seemingly moved past what happened to her.

Duncan, meanwhile, eventually decides that terrorizing homeless people and women in bars isn't working out particularly well for him and returns to where everything began.

And suddenly, I'm interested again.

Bringing Duncan back into Jill's life gives the movie the urgency that had been missing throughout the middle section. The final act plays on the trauma established during the opening while putting Jill in an entirely different position. She's no longer a teenage babysitter responsible for someone else's children. She's an adult protecting her own family.

The final 20 minutes work.

I just wish the movie connecting those two sections worked nearly as well for me.

When You've Already Seen the Imitators

There's another problem with watching When a Stranger Calls for the first time nearly five decades after its release: I've already seen variations on its best ideas countless times.

That's obviously not the movie's fault.

The "calls are coming from inside the house" reveal has become such an ingrained part of popular culture that it's difficult to experience the sequence the way audiences would have in 1979. Horror movies have spent decades borrowing from, referencing, parodying, and building upon this setup.

And then there's Scream.

Watching When a Stranger Calls today, I couldn't escape the thought that the entire Scream franchise sometimes feels like Wes Craven asking, "Hey, what if I built an entire franchise around the most effective parts of this?"

That's obviously an oversimplification, but Scream takes many of the elements I enjoyed here such as the threatening phone calls, the psychological games, and the vulnerability of being alone in a seemingly safe home and develops them into something I find considerably more engaging.

That's the strange thing about finally watching an influential movie after you've already experienced decades of movies influenced by it. You can recognize its importance without necessarily enjoying the experience.

That's where I landed with When a Stranger Calls.

Final Thoughts

There's a part of me that still thinks horror fans should see When a Stranger Calls simply for the historical context.

The opening sequence deserves its reputation. Carol Kane is excellent. Charles Durning gives the middle section considerably more weight than it might otherwise have. And when the movie finally returns to Jill for its final act, it becomes compelling again.

But I can't recommend the movie as a whole based on roughly 40 minutes that worked for me.

If you're determined to watch it, I'd almost recommend skipping the entire middle section.

But, should you include it in your 31 Days of Halloween watchlist? I would say no.

Join me next time as the 31 Days of Halloween howl at the moon with our werewolf movie pick.

🎃

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