THE REASONER REVIEWS SONY'S WHEN A STRANGER CALLS DVD

Is it my fault that every time I see Carol Kane I expect her to talk in that voice she used when she played Latka's wife on Taxi? But waaaaay before that her most effective scene showed her not talking, but listening on the other end of the phone, “Have you checked the children?” The Reasoner asserts that you should check out the original version of When A Stranger Calls especially since critics weren't allowed to screen the remake and you losereriffic mass audience types went out and made it the number box office hit that weekend anyway!!

1. It features a great sympathetic psycho performance by Tony Beckley that comes awfully close to deserving a spot among the greats.

2. The film itself is grossly underrated generating a lot of suspense and developing it's characters on a much deeper level than most of its 1970's kin. A high school age babysitter is traumatized by a horrific encounter with a psychopath only to find herself stalked by him again after having children of her own. This simple plot description doesn't quite do the film or it's performances justice. There's a street level feel to many of the film's middle sequences that have a lot to do with helping WASC portray it's situation in human, rather than merely exploitive, terms.

3. The first twenty minutes of When A Stranger Calls is better than the first two hours of almost any American horror film of the last two years

4. The movie owns Number 28 on Bravo Channel's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. THE BRAVO CHANNEL PEOPLE!!

5. Latka Gravas does indeed make a cameo as a taxi driver in the film.

6. Watching this movie will redefine your understanding of “roaming charges”

7. The film has interesting ties to horror movie history and has had many incarnations. It was supposedly originally planned as a sequel to Bob Clarke's very good Black Christmas but morphed into a project that involved a babysitter fending off a killer on Halloween night. When John Carpenter released his own version of that story called Halloween poor Black Christmas lost it's sequel and When A Stranger Calls became a stand-alone film. The subsequent sitcom When A Stranger Calls Out For Chinese never really took off in the light of the launch of the similarly themed Seinfeld, but the all Ebonic Broadway musical version WHEN A STRANGER BE CALLIN' is still scheduled for a fall 2006 release.

8. It was co written by Steve Feke who also wrote episodes of The Scarecrow and Mrs King.

9. There is no commentary which means you don't have to hear the sad story of how director Fred Walton was induced to make the sequel - When A Stranger Calls Back. (This not a joke).

Listen to Reason