If I had to pick one horror movie set piece that did the most psychological damage to me as a child, the first twenty minutes of this flick would most likely be it. The level of suspense and dread that is bestowed upon the viewer as a mysterious caller repeatedly calls babysitter Carol Kane and asks her if she has "checked the children" is enough to make anyone paranoid alone in a large house. I think this film still affects me in one way or another today. As with many other movies from the era, much of the violence is implied as I had memories of the killer literally painting the walls with children's blood but this never actually happened in the movie. Still, the notion of a murderer tearing a child apart with his bare hands is one that is difficult to forget.

Charles Durning stars as John Clifford, a cop who was involved with the events of the opening segment. Seven years later, Clifford is off the force and is called in by the parents of the murdered children to track down the killer who has escaped from the mental facility he was serving time in. The next hour or so of the film consists of Clifford tracking the killer through the streets of the city and talking to his buddy who is still on the force (Ron "Superfly" O'Neal). Durning's plot is intertwined with that of a woman barfly who the killer has set his sights on. Eventually Clifford and the killer cross paths and this leads to an extended chase scene through the inner city streets. Finally, the maniacal villain ends up terrorizing the babysitter from the beginning who now has two children of her own.

Aside from the opening sequence, this movie plays more like a TV movie than a feature film. This is not necessarily a bad thing as TV movies in the 70's were a lot cooler than they are these days. The main problem with this movie is that the opening sequence was so awesome and memorable that the rest of the movie seemed a little bland. If the whole flick consisted of Clifford tracking an unnamed killer, I think it would have been a lot more successful but then again we wouldn't have had the nightmarish opening. This is a strange movie as it feels like a movie starring Carol Kane with a movie starring Charles Durning edited into the middle. The both would have worked well on their own but somehow together the end result fell a little flat. I love 70's cop/detective movies and TV shows and found the Durning section to work well in this respect complete with an extended foot chase as well as a few suspenseful segments when he uses the barflyette as bait for the killer. When Kane reappears in the last act to make the movie a horror movie again, the movie takes on a different tone that takes away from the detective story that the centre section established. I'm all over cheap thrills but I think my love of the crime drama genre can sometimes override my love of the slasher genre.

Director Fred Walton reunited Durning and Kane fourteen years later for the TV-movie sequel When A Stranger Calls Back. He also directed April Fool's Day in 1986. Durning is a very famous character actor and was also in Dark Night of the Scarecrow, another horror flick that made quite an impression on my young mind with some images that have stayed with me for nearly thirty years. The killer was played by Tony Beckley who died of cancer the year after this was released. Actress Rachel Roberts who played the nurse in the psych hospital committed suicide in 1980 and detailed her descent into depression in her journals which were published after her death in the book "No Bells on Sunday". When A Stranger Calls was remade in 2006 with Camilla Belle as the babysitter in distress and this version eliminates the police procedural and stretches the opening sequence of the original to an entire feature film. (Josh Pasnak, 1/13/08)

Directed By: Fred Walton.
Written By: Fred Walton.

Starring: Charles Durning, Tony Beckley, Carol Kane, Colleen Dewhurst.