DVD Rewind: DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE!

By any objective measure, Don't Answer the Phone is a bad movie, but that doesn't keep it from being riotously entertaining in its own awkward way.

The well-remembered, terribly misleading trailer ("Run if you can. Scream if you are able. But whatever you do, don't answer the phone!") is bound to disappoint anyone looking for a serious horror movie: answering the phone has nothing to do with the murders, and the film is structured more as a psychological drama, if anything, than a horror thriller. The performances range from competent to amateurish, the script is ill-conceived, and the direction is poorly executed. Yet the project is so obviously underfunded that it feels churlish to point out all its faults. In general, the spirit that emerges is: "Look, we know this isn't very good, but we're doing the best we can, so give us a break!"

Going with the flow, I relaxed, drank a beer, and had a good time.

Nicholas Worth turns in a sincerely off-kilter performance as Kirk Smith, a Vietnam vet who becomes a serial killer in Los Angeles. The film was released in 1980, a time when dozens of unfortunate Vietnam vets were turning up as cinematic nut cases, though Smith's problems seem only peripherally related to anything he experienced in Southeast Asia. In the very first scene, he quietly breaks into a woman's home, strangles her with a pair of woman's stockings, cuts her body, giggles quietly like a hyena with a cold, and then rapes her dead body.

The wise-cracking detectives assigned to the case, McCabe (James Westmoreland) and Hatcher (Ben Frank), don't appear very competent. Of course, I imagine any pair of investigators would be stymied by a serial killer who changes his modus operandi like he changes his socks: sometimes he breaks into a home, sometimes he talks his way inside, and sometimes he talks girls into coming back to his studio so he can take photographs of them. Whatever his method, he usually manages to rip their tops open, revealing their breasts briefly, before the strangulation.

For no apparent reason, other than it advances the plot, Smith has a running fixation on a radio therapist, Dr. Lindsay Gale (Flo Gerrish). He calls in, posing as the headache-prone "Ramon," and then breaks his pattern by hiring a prostitute to call in. (He also does some drugs, though he never appears to be affected by them.) He strangles the prostitute on the air, taunts Dr. Lindsay, and fights off her pimp. Smith is a big bear of a man, so that's not too difficult.

There's more, much more, to enjoy in the film's 94 minutes: a psychic who tries to help the detectives but is far too accurate for their liking, a halting romance between McCabe and Dr. Lindsay, a wacky "showing the victim's photo to street people all neatly assembled on one block" scene, a misdirected visit to the wrong address, a hilarious trip to a massage parlor, and a stunningly overdone final scene.

As much as anything, the film is undone by the wild variety of line readings, which are sometimes spot-on and professional, and other times sound more like auditions for a middle school production of Hamlet performed by rural kids who've never been exposed to Shakespeare. But I have to admit that I enjoyed it; the pace never flags and it's the axiom about watching a traffic accident unfold in front of you in slow motion: you hope no one gets hurt even as you wish it would never end.

On principle, I also refuse to dislike any movie that features one of my teenage crushes, Pamela Jean Bryant, no matter how fleetingly she appears.

Several versions of the film have been released on home video. The DVD version from BCI Eclipse was released in October 2006 and was the first presentation of the film in its original, uncut theatrical version. The disk features an audio commentary by director Robert Hammer with Shane M. Dallman, a full-tilt interview with Nicholas Worth (who I'll always remember fondly from his small role in Sam Raimi's Darkman), a stills gallery, trailers, and an Easter Egg that I've yet to discover but which reportedly yields more interview footage with Worth.

The picture looks a bit soft and the colors a bit mushy, but overall the video is satisfactory on a smaller screen. Likewise, the mono audio is fine as long as you're not expecting any sonic wonders.

The film has been recently re-issued on DVD in a double bill with Prime Evil as part of the BCI / Eclipse "Welcome to the Grindhouse" series. I've done a little research but have yet to discover whether all the features from the stand-alone version of Don't Answer the Phone have been ported over to the lower-priced double bill.