When A Stranger Calls Yet Again

Everyone remembers When a Stranger Calls. You remember it because it has one of the greatest setups in the history of movies. A woman is babysitting some kids. The phone rings. The "stranger" on the other end asks, "Have you checked the children?" The shaken babysitter hangs up and goes to check the children. They're fine. The caller keeps calling, each time asking, "Have you checked the children?" The babysitter becomes so upset that she calls the police. They tell her that they can put a trace on her line, so when the stranger calls back, they can find out where he is and round him up. The stranger does call back, and asks his question. The babysitter hangs up, and the phone rings again, only this time, it's not the stranger; it's the police, with this ominous message: "We've traced the calls...they're coming from inside the house!!" Pan to the door of the kids' room upstairs, and the screaming starts.

Great setup, and one that everyone remembers. You don't even need to have seen the movie, and you know that setup. What most people don't realize is that that whole setup is only the first 10 minutes of the movie. Ask anyone what When a Stranger Calls is about, and they will recount the description I gave in the first paragraph. But that's not what it's about; that's only the setup. The rest of the movie is actually about the babysitter getting on with her life (the kids die, BTW), and about the killer thinking about the babysitter. But no one remembers that. In fact, the rest of the movie is so shitty, that I think most people just suppress the rest of the movie from their memories after those first 10 minutes.

Since all movies ever made are eventually remade or sequelized, it was only a matter of time before When a Stranger Calls' number was up. (It's already been sequelized as When a Stranger Calls Back.) And, apparently, the producers of this remake only remember those first 10 minutes, as they've made a 90 minute movie out of that 10 minute setup. But, what works as a 10 minute prologue just doesn't work as a 90 minute feature.

Basically, what you've got here is a girl babysitting for two kids in an oddball house that would make Frank Lloyd Wright jealous. It has a Japanese garden inside the house, with a sprinkler system that goes off at inappropriate times, lights that go on or off when you enter or exit a room, and a refrigerator ice machine that makes more noise than an avalanche. It's also full of every cliche known to Horror Movies: the "cat in the closet", the "oh-it's-not-the-killer phonecall", the "non-starting car", and the "pop-in by a friend"; all terrible things to experience when you're expecting a killer to maybe show up.

Amongst these plentiful cliches, we have the stranger calling. He's more of a prank caller in this one. In fact, the movie is half over before he utters the famous line: "Have you checked the children?" (After he said it, The Girl said, "Wow, it only took him 50 minutes to say that.") And then he never says it again. Actually, I'm glad he did eventually say it, because there's really no mention of the children before then, or after then, until the end.

The cops are eventually called, and they put a trace on the line, but they never get to utter the other famous line, because the killer just shows up, and decides to kill everyone before the police can even trace the call. So, what we end up with is just another dumb Chase Movie, although the killer never moves faster than a walk. Not that it was an intelligent Chase Movie up to that point; it was just the babysitter running from cliche to cliche by herself.

And the biggest bullshit in this movie? The kids live (as does the killer, for that matter). That's some emotional jolt when everyone escapes unharmed from the world's wussiest killer. Whatever.

It's a sad statement on moviemaking in this day and age when 10 minutes of a shitty movie made 27 years ago are better than the entire 90 minutes of a movie made six months ago. Haven't people learned yet that all remakes suck? What's that old saying about repeating history?

Right here's a perfect example. Avoid like poison.