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Bookmark this pageWhen a Stranger Calls (1979)
Director: Fred Walton
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
An anonymous phonecaller urges the babysitter to check the children... Two competently handled sequences of protracted suspense, featuring the killer at large in a darkened house, bracket a less effectively realised murder hunt through the city streets. However, this stab at the soft underbelly of American middle class paranoia looks increasingly contrived once the film loses direction in the daylight outside, and a realism intrudes that the film-makers just don't know how to handle. Not as atmospherically eerie as Halloween nor as mechanically effective as Black Christmas, but there's one great moment when the husband in bed turns into a stranger. Kane is the babysitter (later wife and mother), Beckley the killer, and Durning the cop.Author: CPe
Cast & crew
Director: Fred Walton
Producer: Doug Chapin, Steve Feke
Cast: Charles Durning, Carol Kane, Colleen Dewhurst, Tony Beckley, Rachel Roberts, Ron O'Neal full cast
Genre(s): Thrillers
Duration: 97 mins
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