Fred Walton directs Charles Durning, Carol Kane and Tony Beckley in this thriller where a babysitter begins receiving calls from a killer.

The opening 25 minutes of When A Stranger Calls are seminal. You can see their clear influence on Scream’s game changing prologue with Drew Barrymore. A lone teen keeps getting unwelcome phone calls. Each time the phone rings it disrupts the tension yet amps up the peril with perfect manipulative timing. We begin to share the hopeless fear of her situation. Kane sells the vulnerability of her character and carries the movie solo for the entire first act. She should be talked about in the same breath as Jamie Lee Curtis when ranking the best acting amongst Scream Queens. Then, after a shock, the movie tags out. We follow Durning’s retired detective as he hunts a just released psycho seven years later. What was intimate and claustrophobic becomes expansive and labyrinthine. Tony Beckley plays our monster. He’s no mastermind or relentless killing machine. He’s a bottom rung strange wimp. Too weird to socialise, homeless and just as vulnerable as any of his prey. Over this unexpected sequence we get a real sense of urban alienation. A city where nobody cares if you live or die even in a populated bar or the full mission bunkhouse. The set pieces have a grim real world grain and grit to them. And then the misanthropic movie returns full circle and starts to deliver the slasher horror we’ve been promised all along. I can see why this cult item is a bit of a Marmite experience for many. It takes the sleazy road less travelled. I kinda loved that about it. Imperfect but always fascinating.

7

Perfect Double Bill: When A Stranger Calls Back (1993)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/