Sometimes a killer slips in from the darkness. There's no apparent reason but somehow it feels all too credible as in 1979's When a Stranger Calls. The film's lauded opening twenty minutes show great instincts for editing that continue throughout the rest of the film. Performances by Carol Kane and Tony Beckley make the film genuinely intriguing.
Kane plays Jill, the famous babysitter upset by sinister phone calls. She tries to study in that big dark house with gigantic windows while the phone periodically pierces the silence.
Colleeen Dewhurst also appears in the film as another woman menaced by the same killer and Dewhurst may in fact be a better actress than Kane. But Kane's peculiarity and beauty--above all her big, dark, Victorian doll eyes and her excellent horror show screams draw the viewer into her emotional state.
We don't actually see the killer until well after those twenty minutes, seven years later, when he's escaped from an asylum. Curt Duncan was played by Tony Beckley when he was terminally ill--he died six months after the film's release. I suspect his physical condition contributed a lot to his performance. You might remember Beckley from The Italian Job or from the 1976 Doctor Who serial The Seeds of Doom. He always gave a good performance but there's an extra rawness about him in When a Stranger Calls.
A scene where he contemplates his naked reflection in a shelter bathroom is pretty brilliant. You can see in his face how he struggles to process the things he's done. We learn so little about him and that works brilliantly here. The viewer compulsively fills in blanks for the undeniable reality of his emotional state.
It's also nice to see images from an era when even homeless people had sport coats.
When a Stranger Calls is available on Amazon Prime. The picture is really good but the sound is kind of muffled for some reason.
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