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The When a Stranger Calls franchise consists of American psychological-thriller installments, including the original 1979 theatrical release, its television movie sequel, and its 2006 theatrical remake, and also the 1977 short film The Sitter, which started it all.
When a Stranger Calls is a 1979 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Fred Walton, co-written by Steve Feke, and starring Charles Durning, Carol Kane, Colleen Dewhurst and Tony Beckley (in his final film role).
Find Top Rated, Most Viewed, and Editorial Picked When a Stranger Calls (Film Series) Movies on AllMovie
- Plot
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A local sheriff enters a home where multiple homicides have been committed; the victims are three children and their babysitter, all slaughtered brutally by an intruder using his bare hands. In Colorado, 125 miles away from the crime scene, sixteen-year-old Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) is on her way to babysit for the wealthy Mandrakis family, as p...
Screen Gems first announced production of When a Stranger Calls in August 2004, with Jake Wade Wall penning the script. Screen Gems had plans to release both a remake of the original film and a sequel titled When a Stranger Returns.
Score
When a Stranger Calls: The Complete Original Motion Picture Score, 15-instrumental songs composed by James Dooley, was released on February 10, 2006.
For the release of the film, AOL Instant Messenger ran ads beckoning users to IM Jill020306. When messaged, "Jill" (a Colloquis-style program) made small talk before panicking, as she received calls from a stranger asking her to check the children. She then gives the user her phone number (a toll-free 877 number) and asks them to call her. When use...
Box office
The film opened at number one with $21.6 million. It then made $9.1 million in its second weekend and $5 million in its third.The film went on to gross a total of $47.9 million domestically, and $19.2 million internationally for a total worldwide gross of $67.1 million.
Critical reception
When A Stranger Calls was critically panned. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 9% based on 93 reviews and an average rating of 3.5/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "When a Stranger Calls ranks among the more misguided remakes in horror history, offering little more than a rote, largely fright-free update to the original." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 27 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "generally unfavorabl...
Accolades
In 2006, When a Stranger Calls was nominated to the Golden Trailer Awardsin the category "Best Thriller".
Screen Gems was initially planning to make a sequel rumored to be titled When a Stranger Returns with Hayden Panettiereset to star as the babysitter, in light of the film's box office success. This sequel never materialized. Writer Jake Wade Wall discussed the possibility of a sequel in September 2020. His treatment would have the film be a remake ...
When a Killer Calls (2006), a mockbuster of this film released by The Asylum.When a Stranger Calls at IMDbWhen a Stranger Calls at Box Office MojoWhen a Stranger Calls at Rotten TomatoesWhen a Stranger Calls: Directed by Fred Walton. With Carol Kane, Rutanya Alda, Carmen Argenziano, Kirsten Larkin. A psychopathic killer terrorizes a babysitter, then returns seven years later to menace her again.
- (15K)
- Horror, Mystery, Thriller
- Fred Walton
- 1979-10-26
When a Stranger Calls (1979) has the great honor of possessing one of the most frightening twenty minutes in horror film history, kicking the daylights out of the stunned and transfixed viewer from the first frame.
A student babysitter has her evening disturbed when the phone rings. So begins a series of increasingly terrifying and threatening calls that lead to a shocking revelation.
