WHEN A STRANGER CALLS BACK (1993)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
(SPOILERS IN FULL FORCE SO BEWARE)
Forward five years later and Julia, sporting a mullet to presumably hide her identity (though still using her same name), is a college student who senses that the same predator has been in her apartment, thanks to the appearance of a child's shirt in her closet. She triple bolts the entrance to her apartment on the third floor yet the predator still sneaks into her apartment, and sometimes through her window (though there is no fire escape). This is hard to buy even for a psychological suspense film fan like myself because people do not just materialize into people's houses and apartments out of thin air, especially if you live in the third floor. If he was a supernatural being, or maybe the Devil's emissary, I might believe it but this guy is simply a ventriloquist who does his act in blackface!
Enter returnee Carol Kane as the victim from the original film, Jill, who is now a grief counselor working at a crisis center. She knows Julia's pain and believes that someone is after the poor co-ed. Charles Durning's retired detective from the original film is summoned to find the predator - how he establishes the guy is a ventriloquist is never clear. But there are more pressing questions. What happened to the children whom Julia babysitted in the opening sequence? Sure, they disappeared and were never found again but if they were murdered, why would this mental waste of a human predator do such a thing? It occurred to me that he only wants to taunt Julia, which is mostly what he does very effectively in the chilling 25-minute opener. Why take the kids, except to suggest that middle-class or well-to-do American families living in big houses are only living an illusion? That might explain his ventriloquist act, easily one of the best scenes in the film where the spotlight is on the puppet that has no face and the psycho remains in the dark (in blackface). This mentally deficient psycho has made a point, but the sequence would have been more effective had it taken place in a performance theater setting, not a titty bar.
I do not always need motives to understand deranged psychos but a psychological thriller like this one needs a tad more depth. Also, among many loose ends (thanks to my wife who brought up a few that escaped me the first couple of times I saw the film) is the rather unfair scene where Julia is practically comatose after shooting herself in the head, or did she? It is out-of-character for Julia but in one extremely emotional scene, Julia explains to the detective that she feels she has no future, no friends and, therefore, perhaps no real existence. I am all for film directors injecting surprises into the narrative, but a comatose Jill Schoelen who disappears in the last third of the film is asking for a little trouble. Naturally, the psycho now turns his taunting voice on Kane's Jill but why except to do a reprise of the original film?
Directed by Fred Walton (who also helmed the original), "When A Stranger Calls Back" is purely a thriller exercise with three terrific actors giving the film an infusion of humanity and heart (Jill Schoelen's performance alone rates the film higher than expected which is why, once again, it is shameful to make her character disappear from the story until the last shot). This is no slasher film by any means (the killer played by Gene Lythgow has a certain degree of innocence dripping with rage) - instead it is an absorbing and contemplative suspense thriller but it ends a little too abruptly. Still, there is such a bravura finish in addition to so many other aspects that do work (Durning alone could make any film work just by showing up) that I rate this as a sufficiently scary film despite the loopholes. After all is said and done, though, you come away wishing for more meat in its riveting bones.
