As the saying goes, if you don’t learn from your boners they’ll just come back and bite you in your keister (I may be paraphrasing), and so that goes doubly for horror sequels; too often we’ve been burned with simply retreading old tires in the hopes of gaining new traction. So what a delightful surprise it was then to see Showtime’s When a Stranger Calls Back (1993), a true sequel to Fred Walton’s 1979 hit that manages to fix that film’s somewhat saggy middle and come out all the stronger for it.
Perhaps Walton himself sensed that the original could have been fine tuned; he wrote and directed the sequel for cable network Showtime, which originally aired on Sunday, April 4th. And determined as he was to do a proper follow up, he even managed to snag both Carol Kane and Charles Durning to reprise their roles, ensuring continuity not always found in horror follow ups. Calls Back is simply better in almost every way. (The “almost” refers to the OG’s opening, which is evergreen.)
As we do around here, let’s open up our faux TV GUIDE and see how strange things get:
WHEN A STRANGER CALLS BACK (Sunday, Showtime)
A young woman who survives an intruder attack while babysitting, gets help from a woman who survived a similar stalker years before. Charles Durning, Carol Kane star.
Julia Jenz (Jill Schoelen – Popcorn) arrives at the Schifrin’s house to babysit their two youngsters. Julia tells them she will phone her brother for pickup when they return from their date; they leave their info on the fridge and leave. Shortly after they leave, Julia hears a knock on the door. A young man says his car has broken down, and could he come in to phone the towing company? Julia, wary, tells him to give her the info and she’ll make the call. Reluctantly he does; but when she goes to phone, the line is dead. She lies and tells him through the door that they’ll be there in an hour; he thanks her and goes away. Naturally he returns, complaining that the company never showed up and could he come in and at least phone his wife to let her know he’s okay? She still won’t let him in, but offers to call his wife; when she goes back to the phone however, the info she wrote down before is gone – as is the Schifrin’s info from the fridge. As tensions escalate with the young man outside, he tells her he knows her name and that someone is inside the house with her; sure enough she looks to her right and someone is walking out of the shadows, so Julia bolts out of the house into the arms of the returning Schifrin’s. No one is found outside or inside, but the children are missing.
Cut to five years later as Julia attends college. She heads back to her off campus, triple locked apartment and notices that one of her books has been moved; not taken, but simply in a different place. She reports this to the police, who do nothing (considering the “crime”, they’re not wrong); however, the police call the college counselor’s office, who send over…Jill Johnson (Kane), someone with intimate knowledge of not only trauma, but Julia’s in particular. When Julia comes home one day and finds a kid’s shirt in her closet, Jill calls in her old friend John Clifford (Durning), retired but willing to help out Jill. If she believes, he believes. Except Julia’s “two person” scenario sounds crazy; when Jill and John dig around on their own, they find it highly unlikely. There is another theory, however, and as John and Jill get closer to the truth, Julia’s (and Jill’s) life is thrown into peril again…
I don’t want to reveal that other theory, but holy shit it’s a corker; improbable for sure, I haven’t seen it used quite in these surroundings, and it does wonders for the creepy factor. And most importantly, it occurs in the second act; the ’79 film’s biggest hurdle was maintaining interest after that crackerjack opening, something that Walton has fixed this time around, in several ways.
First and foremost, once Jill enters the picture, she stays there; sorely missing from the middle of the original, Walton gets to deepen her story while still attending to Julia’s. Both Kane and Schoelen are terrific; the former adding gravitas and empathy to Jill while the latter showcases her trademark vulnerability to great effect. As for Durning, when has he been less than committed?
Walton also keeps the middle humming by adding mystery to the proceedings: was Julia attacked by two intruders working in cahoots, or just one sneaky one? Or perhaps the one she actually saw was a figment of her imagination?
By the time we reach the suspenseful climax, Walton has us fully invested; we were (well, some of us, anyway) in the original too, but maybe it was because Jill re-entered the film – in this one she’s there all the way, so the stakes seem to hold more weight, and the result is a powerful ending.
When a Stranger Calls Back is that rare sequel that builds on the strengths of the original while jettisoning the weaknesses; if more filmmakers took notes from Walton we may be spared a disappointing sequel or two. I mean I doubt it, but it’s a nice thought, don’t you think?