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''When a Stranger Calls'' is a 1979 American
psychological thriller film thriller is a genre combining the thriller and psychological fiction genres. It is commonly used to describe literature or films that deal with psychological narratives in a thriller or thrilling setting. In terms of context and convention, it ...
written and directed by Fred Walton, co-written by Steve Feke, and starring
Charles Durning Charles Edward Durning (February 28, 1923 – December 24, 2012) was an American actor who appeared in over 200 movies, television shows and plays.Schudel, Matt (December 26, 2012) "''In real life and on the screen, he played countless role ...
,
Carol Kane Carolyn Laurie Kane (born June 18, 1952) is an American actress. She gained recognition for her role in '' Hester Street'' (1975), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She became known in the 1970s and 1980s in ...
,
Colleen Dewhurst Colleen Rose Dewhurst (June 3, 1924 – August 22, 1991) was a Canadian-American actress mostly known for theatre roles. She was a renowned interpreter of the works of Eugene O'Neill on the stage, and her career also encompassed film, early dra ...
and Tony Beckley (in his final film role). Its plot follows Jill Johnson, a young woman being terrorized by a psychopathic killer while babysitting, the killer's
stalking Stalking is unwanted and/or repeated surveillance or contact by an individual or group toward another person. Stalking behaviors are interrelated to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person or monitorin ...
of another woman, his returning to torment Jill years later, and a detective's trying to find him. Rachel Roberts, Ron O'Neal, Carmen Argenziano, and Rutanya Alda appear in supporting roles. The film derives its story from the folk legend of " the babysitter and the man upstairs". The film was released in the United States on September 28, 1979, by
Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Trade name, doing business as Columbia Pictures, is an American film Production company, production and Film distributor, distribution company that is the flagship unit of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group ...
. It was commercially successful, grossing $21.4 to $25 million at the box office against a $1.5 million budget, but it received a mixed-to-negative critical reception, with many praising the opening scene and performances, and others criticizing its writing and lack of scares. It was followed by the 1993 made-for-cable sequel '' When a Stranger Calls Back'' and a remake in 2006. The film has developed a large
cult following A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The latter is often called a cult classic. A film, boo ...
over time because of the first 23 minutes, consistently regarded as one of the scariest openings in film history. The first 13 minutes of
Wes Craven Wesley Earl Craven (August 2, 1939 – August 30, 2015) was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Amongst his Wes Craven filmography, prolific filmography, Craven worked primarily in the Horror film, horror genre, particularly sla ...
's '' Scream'' (1996) pay homage to the opening of ''When a Stranger Calls''.


Plot

Jill Johnson is babysitting the children of Dr. Mandrakis at his home. The children are asleep, and Jill receives a telephone call from a man who asks her if she has checked the children. Jill initially dismisses the call as a practical joke. However, he calls again and again, the calls increase in frequency and threats, and Jill becomes frightened. She calls the police, who tell her to keep the perpetrator on the line long enough for them to trace the call. Jill receives one final call from her harasser. Immediately after the conversation, the police phone to inform her that the calls are coming from a line located somewhere inside the house. Jill sees the intruder's shadow as she tries to exit the house and narrowly escapes. When the police arrive, it is revealed that the killer, an English merchant seaman named Curt Duncan, killed the children shortly after Jill arrived. He leaves Jill unharmed, and after his trial, he is sent to a psychiatric facility. Seven years later, Duncan escapes from the psychiatric facility. Dr. Mandrakis hires John Clifford, who investigated the earlier murders but who is now a private detective, to find Duncan. Not knowing Clifford is after him, the homeless Duncan is beaten after harassing a woman named Tracy in a downtown bar. Duncan follows Tracy to her apartment, and she takes pity on him. She tries to be nice to him while getting him to leave, hoping it will be the last she sees of him. Meanwhile, an increasingly obsessed Clifford confides to his friend Lieutenant Garber his intention to kill Duncan rather than have him recommitted. Garber, who was present at the Mandrakis crime scene, agrees to collaborate. Clifford tracks Duncan to Tracy's residence. He tells Tracy that Duncan literally tore the Mandrakis children apart with his bare hands, and Tracy reluctantly agrees to act as bait at the bar that evening in an effort to have Duncan caught. Duncan never appears. After Clifford leaves, however, Duncan comes out of hiding from inside Tracy's closet. Tracy screams for help, and Clifford returns, chasing Duncan from the scene but losing his trail in the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Jill is now married with two young children. One night, she and her husband Stephen go to dinner to celebrate his promotion while their children are babysat by Sharon. While at the restaurant, Jill gets a telephone call and hears Duncan's voice asking again: "Have you checked the children?" The police escort Jill back home to discover that everything there is fine. Upon hearing about the incident, Garber alerts Clifford. Clifford tries to call Jill, but finds that the line is dead in an eerie parallel to Jill's original stalking. Later that night, Jill hears Duncan's voice as the closet door appears to open. She tries to awaken her husband only to realize that the man lying next to her is the intruder. He chases Jill across the room and attempts to kill her, but Clifford arrives in time to shoot Duncan in the chest, killing him. Stephen is found in the closet, unconscious but alive; their children are safe. Clifford consoles a distraught Jill.


Cast


Production


Development

''When a Stranger Calls'' is an expanded remake of Fred Walton and Steve Feke's short film ''
The Sitter ''The Sitter'' is a 2011 American black comedy film directed by David Gordon Green and written by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka. The film follows a slacker college student (played by Jonah Hill) who, after being suspended, is forced by h ...
'' (1977), which roughly comprised the first 23 minutes of this film. Walton and Feke alleged that they based ''The Sitter'' on a newspaper article detailing the harassment of a young woman who, while babysitting in
Santa Monica, California Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...
, received phone calls from her attacker inside the residence. ''The Sitter'' was released theatrically as a pre-screening short feature on a bill with '' Looking for Mr. Goodbar'' (1977). Executive producers Barry Krost and Douglas Chapin were so impressed by ''The Sitter'' that they acquired the rights and commissioned Walton and Feke to develop the short into a full-length feature.


Filming

The film marked cinematographer Donald Peterman's feature film debut as director of photography. Principal photography began October 9, 1978, and took place over 27 1/2 days at locations in and around Los Angeles, largely including the Brentwood neighborhood. The house which served as the location for the first act of the movie was at 321 S. Chadbourne Ave., in Brentwood. The Lockhart home in the final act was at 2722 Club Drive in Los Angeles. Both houses have been torn down. In November 1978, filming occurred in downtown Los Angeles during the Skid Row stabbing murders, and, by coincidence, used some of the sites where murder victims had been discovered, including the steps of the Los Angeles Public Library. The downtown bar where Duncan and Tracy meet was Torchy's at 218 W. Fifth Street in Los Angeles. This location is the same bar that served as filming locations for the redneck bar in ''
48 Hrs. ''48 Hrs.'' (pronounced 'forty-eight hours') is a 1982 American buddy cop action comedy film directed by Walter Hill, from a screenplay co-written with Larry Gross, Steven E. de Souza and Roger Spottiswoode. It stars Nick Nolte and Eddie Murp ...
'' and for the 1985 version of ''
Brewster's Millions ''Brewster's Millions'' is a comedic novel written by George Barr McCutcheon in 1902, originally under the pseudonym of Richard Greaves. The plot concerns a young man whose grandfather leaves him $1 million in a will, but a competing will from ...
''. Filming was completed by mid-November 1978.


Release

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Trade name, doing business as Columbia Pictures, is an American film Production company, production and Film distributor, distribution company that is the flagship unit of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group ...
released ''When a Stranger Calls'' theatrically in the United States on September 28, 1979.. Retrieved January 31, 2023. Following successful box office receipts, Columbia re-released it to theaters in the fall of 1980, with screenings beginning in early October in the San Francisco Bay Area and Detroit, and on Halloween night in Miami and the Raleigh metropolitan area. Carol Kane stated in an interview that while watching the film in the theater the audience began screaming and talking back to the screen during the opening 23 minutes of the film. Tony Beckley, who played Curt Duncan, died in April 1980, six months after the film's premiere. The 1993 sequel '' When a Stranger Calls Back'' was dedicated to his memory.


Rating

The American Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) voted unanimously for a PG-rating (five years before the PG-13 rating was available for use). However, CARA chair
Richard Heffner Richard Douglas Heffner (August 5, 1925 – December 17, 2013) was the creator and host of ''The Open Mind (talk show), The Open Mind,'' a public affairs television show first broadcast in 1956. He was a University Professor of Communications a ...
then viewed the film and called the board for discussion to consider voting for an R rating. Although the theme of a film could be accommodated within a PG-rating, Heffner argued that this film's treatment of its theme was too unsettling for most parents to want it to be freely available to unaccompanied children. A majority vote was then received to assign the film its R rating.


Box office

The film had a gross of $482,969 from pre-release engagements. It expanded to 468 theaters and grossed $2,597,032 in its opening four days. It placed second on ''Variety''s weekly box office chart for the week ended October 3, 1979 and moved up to number one in its third week of release. It grossed $20,149,106 during its initial theatrical run in the United States and Canada. In its 1980 theatrical re-release, the film grossed an additional $1,262,052. The film was a financial success, given its $1.5 million budget. Some contemporary newspapers note the film grossed approximately $25 million.


Critical reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 38% based on , with an average rating of 5.21/10. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 58 out of 100, based on seven critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
described the film as "sleazy" in a 1980 episode of '' Sneak Previews''. In her review for ''The New York Times'',
Janet Maslin Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, who served as a film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1977 to 1999, serving as chief critic for the last six years, and then a literary critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000, M ...
wrote "''When a Stranger Calls'' is an energetic first film", adding that "the frightened-babysitter opening of the movie is marvelously modern, as Mr. Walton demonstrates that a haunted house with an ice-making refrigerator is intrinsically scarier than a house without one. He also makes the most of that fearsome modern weapon, the telephone." Author Travis Holt elaborates on the importance of the telephone to the film's portrayal of horror, noting that in the beginning "The phone is presented as a means of safety and comfort; it is a savior rather than a burden." Once the harassing phone calls begin, however, the view of the telephone becomes more sinister: Critic Elston Brooks of the ''Fort Worth Star-Telegram'' felt the film was superior to its contemporary ''
Halloween Halloween, or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve), is a celebration geography of Halloween, observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christianity, Western Christian f ...
'' (1978), adding that director Walton "keeps his tension-level at a nearly unbearable mark in the film's first half...  He keeps it at a high dramatic level, thank to Durning and Beckley, in the second half, which is almost a second movie as far as plot goes."


Accolades

In January 1980, the film screened at the Avoriaz International Fantastic Film Festival in France, where it won the Prix de la Critique and the Prix Special du Jury awards, marking the first time a single film had won in both categories.


Home media

The film was released on VHS by Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment in 1981, and reissued in 1986. A DVD release was distributed by
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Inc. (abbreviated as SPHE) is the home entertainment distribution division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony. Background SPHE is responsible for the distribution of the Sony Pictures libra ...
on October 9, 2001, with the only supplements being bonus trailers. A Blu-ray version of the film was released by Mill Creek Entertainment in a double feature with '' Happy Birthday to Me'' (1981) on March 26, 2013. Neither film contains any special features on the disc. The film was eventually released as a stand-alone on Blu-ray on February 11, 2020 by Mill Creek Entertainment with packaging designed to look like a VHS. In the United Kingdom, Second Sight announced a special edition Blu-ray, which was released on December 17, 2018. The Blu-ray includes a brand new scan and restoration, plus the sequel ''When a Stranger Calls Back'', a new scan and restoration of the original short film ''The Sitter'', a reversible sleeve with new artwork by Obviously Creative and original poster artwork, as well as interviews with director Fred Walton, Carol Kane, Rutanya Alda, composer Dana Kaproff, the "limited edition" original soundtrack CD, along with a 40-page perfect-bound booklet with a new essay by Kevin Lyons. A standard edition without the soundtrack and booklet was released by Second Sight on July 1, 2019.


See also

*
List of films featuring home invasions There is a body of films that feature home invasions. Paula Marantz Cohen says, "Such films reflect an increased fear of the erosion of distinctions between private and public space... These films also reflect a sense that the outside world is mo ...


Notes


References


Sources

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External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:When A Stranger Calls 1979 crime thriller films 1970s mystery thriller films 1970s psychological thriller films 1979 thriller films 1979 films 1979 directorial debut films 1979 independent films American crime thriller films American detective films American independent films American mystery thriller films American psychological thriller films Columbia Pictures films Features based on short films Fiction about child care occupations Films about murderers Films about stalking Films based on urban legends Films directed by Fred Walton (director) Films shot in Los Angeles Films about home invasion Films about telephony When a Stranger Calls (film series) 1970s English-language films 1970s American films English-language independent films English-language crime thriller films English-language mystery thriller films