When A Stranger Calls (1979)

"Have You Checked The Blu-Ray?"

One of the best opening acts in a low budget horror film gets a sparkling Blu-ray release (along with the rest of the film, naturally) and with its sequel WHEN A STRANGER CALLS BACK as a special feature as Fred Walton's WHEN A STRANGER CALLS gets its UK Blu-ray standard release (the special edition came out last October) from Second Sight.

Jill (Carol Kane) arrives at the Mandrakis house to babysit the couple's two small children, who are already in bed when she gets there. She's only been on her own a short while when the phone rings. At first it seems there's no-one on the end of the line but as the calls increase a voice starts to ask if she's checked the children. Most disturbing of all, when she reports the calls to the police and they trace them, it turns out the calls are coming from inside the house. 

While the above constituted pretty much the entirety of the 2006 remake, here it's just the opening twenty one minutes of the far superior original. After this suspense-filled opening the film calms down with a 'Seven Years Later' caption as we learn that the voice on the phone belonged to child murderer Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley). Found guilty but insane, Duncan has now escaped the institution where he was being held. Former cop John Clifford (Charles Durning), who was in charge of the case seven years ago, is determined to track him down.

With its tale of an insane murderer who has escaped an asylum being pursued by someone obsessed with his capture, one could be forgiven for thinking WHEN A STRANGER CALLS might resemble John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN, whereas it's almost the exact opposite. We see very little of Duncan's crime, and the film concerns itself far more with both the character of the killer, for whom we actually feel sympathy, and the effect his actions have had on those whose lives he has affected. If one was to remove the opening, the film wouldn't play as a piece of horror at all, but more as a downbeat, serious thriller about the effect mental illness has on both the individual and those around them as its central theme.

Second Sight's transfer looks the best this film probably ever will, and is an improvement over the previous Mill Creek Region A release (where it was double billed with J Lee Thompson's HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME). Extras include the made for TV sequel, which is nice to have as an added curio but certainly isn't essential viewing. 

Fred Walton is interviewed in a 16 minute featurette in which he talks about the development, filming, marketing and overall success of the movie. Carol Kane has an even longer piece in which she talks about working on it, and composer Dana Kaproff talks about filling his piano with nails and bells to produce some of the sound effects that help to make up his effective score. Finally, we get the original short film THE SITTER which got Walton and his team the financing for the feature. It's well worth a watch, if only to see how much it resembles the opening act of the film, albeit with a lower budget. An excellent presentation and package of a well-remembered and appreciated piece of late 1970s suspense.

Fred Walton's WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (and WHEN A STRANGER CALLS BACK) is out on Blu-ray from Second Sight now.