When a Stranger Calls (1979) - R
Common Sense Note
Parents need to know about the violence, which, though almost always kept offscreen, results in the murders of two small children at the outset. There is additional disturbing imagery of a shooting, death threats, a bar fight, and non-explicit male nudity.
Families can talk about the revenge aspect of the plot. They can also talk about the appeal of horror movies. Why do people like being scared?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
WHEN A STRANGER CALLS came to theaters with the dreaded 'slasher' movie craze that included the original Halloween, Friday the 13th, and other R-rated fare that centered generally on teens slaughtered by fiends. It doubtlessly influenced the Scream series, with the murderer who tauntingly telephones victims in advance. But this chiller, to give it its due, is pitched on a more mature, suspense-based level than just gore and titillation. It would likely receive a PG-13 today.
Still, it's one grim picture. Hitchcock's Psycho had more humor.
The script makes clever use of two urban-legend scare stories kids whisper to each other, one at the start, one at the end. Teenage babysitter Jill (Carole Kane, whose waiflike qualities allow her to play the same character as an adolescent and an adult) shows up to mind the two tots of a doctor and his wife one night. After the adults are gone Jill starts getting repeat phone calls from a stranger asking "Have you checked the children?" (Jill's actually been told not to, because they're supposed to be sleeping off colds). Jill phones the police, who at first are no help -- one officer suggests she whistle to stay brave and get over it! But finally they put a trace on the recurring calls, and phone Jill back with the nerve-shattering news that the marauder is actually inside the house, using the other line.
Police officer Clifford (Charles Durning) is right at the door, but it's too late for the never-seen children; they've already been brutally slain by a certain Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley), described as a lunatic from Britain, newly-arrived in the USA. The story leaps years ahead. Duncan has escaped a poorly-guarded mental institution, and Clifford is now a private investigator, hired to find him. Clifford's client is the murdered children's father, who wants Duncan killed as revenge, and Clifford, haunted by the case, doesn't argue with that.
Most of WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (which was expanded from a short subject that only devoted itself to the babysitter's-worst-nightmare opening segment) is a ploddingly realistic, depressingly downcast crime drama. We finally see the dreaded Curt Duncan, and he's a pathetic vagrant, getting thrown out of bars for trying to strike up a friendship with a hard-drinking woman. Early on an arrogant-sounding, English-accented psychiatric worker (what do these filmmakers have against the British?) tells Clifford that Duncan has been cured with drugs and shock treatment and is no longer a threat. What morsel of a moral the tale contains is a (very faint) implication that being hunted down for vigilante execution by Clifford is what pushes the patient over the edge again. Duncan reverts to his homicidal nature and somehow tracks down poor Jill again. Now she's a mother with two small children, and she's hired a sitter to watch them for the night...
There are none of the later slasher ingredients of slumber parties, teen sex, unsupervised campgrounds, and dumb pranks in cheerleader locker rooms, and you could say that WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, at least in its opening and closing, does a much better job in capturing the simple creepiness of a campfire maniac-with-a-hook-hand anecdote than did the later Urban Legend and I Know What You Did Last Summer series that strive to hook young viewers. Still, it's pretty disturbing stuff for tweens, and not recommended as a babysitter recruiting film -- though you could conceivably use it to open up useful conversations with your kids about what cautions to take and what to do when they have to be left home alone.
There's also the issue of revenge in the plot, and whether Clifford's deadly mission is at all justified. While history has chosen to pigeonhole WHEN A STRANGER CALLS as low-grade horror, the same question of vengeance and morality came up with more emphasis on the ethics in the upscale Jack Nicholson drama The Crossing Guard.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentVery little, surprisingly for this type of movie, though the insane Curt practically stalks a lady he meets in a bar. We later see him naked (non-explicitly), having a breakdown, alone. |
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ViolenceWhile the horrific stuff is left to the viewer's imagination, we see flashbacks of the murderer covered in blood. One shooting up close, a bar fight, and a woman nearly strangled to death. |
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Social BehaviorThe 'hero' is an ex-cop basically being paid to be a hit man (though it's pretty easy to see he's eager to kill this particular fugitive regardless of monetary reward). His old friend on the force secretly assists in the crime. Other characters are basically unpleasant. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoMuch drinking. |
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