Alison “Alicat” Wise submitted the following Feminist Slasher Project Investigation and Review:
Alison’s History with this Film:
I’ve never seen this movie but I know that it is extremely influential and inspired ‘Scream’ (1996), amongst other films.
Play by Play:
The first 22 minutes of this movies are considered to the most frightening ever. It’s based on the urban myth ‘The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs’, which was also an inspiration for ‘Black Christmas’ (1974), which Susan has already reviewed.
*THERE MAY BE SOME SPOILERS BUT ONLY IF YOU’VE NEVER WATCHED A HORROR MOVIE OR HAVEN’T HEARD ANY URBAN MYTHS*
It stars Carol Kane! I love her. She’s the babysitter, Jill, our heroine.
She’s looking after the Mandrakis kids while the parents go out to dinner…and maybe a movie. Mrs. Mandrakis tells Jill the kids are upstairs in bed recovering from a ‘bad cold’ and that she shouldn’t ‘try and wake them’.
Jill’s on the phone with her ‘friend’, who tells Jill, that the guy Jill likes Bobby wants to hook up her that weekend but she didn’t do it because Jill’s her ‘really good friend’…um, what a bitch! Jill than asks her friend to give Bobby the phone number of the Mandrakis house.
Duh, duh, dum…all the pieces are falling into place.
Jill doing her homework and the phone rings…nobody’s there…she hangs up.
The phones rings again…she answers it ‘Bobby?’…a man’s voice asks…’Have you checked the children?’ Jill asks ‘What?’ and then the caller hangs up.
The phone rings again…’Have you checked the children?’. Jill asks ‘Dr. Mandrakis?’…the caller hangs up.
The tension is building and Jill is looking nervous.
She hears a noise in the house!
She goes to check on it.
She looks in the kitchen. It’s just the icemaker in the fridge…whew!
The phone rings again! ‘Have you checked the children?’
Jill still thinks it Bobby playing a joke. She decides she needs a drink from Mandrakis’s bar to steady her nerves.
The phone rings again. Jill answer it…nothing.
She gets the restaurant’s number the Mandrakis’s left for her in case of emergency. They aren’t there…they left 40 minutes ago. Jill’s looking worried.
She calls the police. They say they get that sort of thing all the time but since he’s not being obscene or threatening her, there’s not much they can do. They suggest she blow a whistle into the phone next time he calls.
The phone rings again…’Why haven’t you checked the children!?!’. Jill hangs up.
She goes and checks the locks on the front door looks out the windows. She finally goes to check on the children when the phone rings again.
The phone starts ringing and ringing but she doesn’t answer it.
She calls the police again. She thinks he watching her. She’s freaking out. The police get the phone number, so if/when he calls again they can trace it.
The music is really good, quite atmospheric.
The phone rings again. ‘It’s me.’ Jill tries to keep him on the phone longer so they can trace the call.
She says that he really scared her and is that what he wanted...’No…I want your blood… all over me’! Ahhhhhhhh! (my own screaming) She hangs up the phone.
It rings right away…’LEAVE ME ALONE!’ It’s the cops…they’ve traced the call…IT’S COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE! GEY OUT NOW!
Holy shit. Jill looks like she’s gonna throw up.
As she goes to leave out the front door, a door at the top of the stairs opens, a silhouette of a man…she can’t get out, she forgot out the chain! She gets the chain off and runs out the door.
Cut to Charles Durning, Officer John Clifford, outside the house.
The police were only a block away. The kids had been murdered hours before though…by some crazy English merchant seaman, Curt Duncan…funny, he didn’t sound English on the phone.
That was just the first 22 minutes now for the rest of the movie…
7 years later…
Officer Clifford, now retired and a detective, has a meeting at some fancy mansion…its Dr. Mandrakis’s house!
He asks Clifford to find Curt Duncan, who’s escaped from a mental institution.
Clifford is a man on a mission.
He goes to the mental hospital and talks to Duncan’s doctor. She thinks he won’t murder again. Clifford doesn’t believe her.
Cut to Curt in a bar, he tries to pick up some chick named Tracey, played by Colleen Dewhurst.
(By the way, this movie has a lot of good actors in it.)
Curt Duncan still doesn’t sound English.
He won’t leave her alone and gets into a fight. Some random old couple are in the bar…why would they be drinking there?
It’s not really a horror movie anymore…it’s more like ‘Dirty Harry’.
Duncan follows Tracey home. Tracey doesn’t seem surprised and isn’t scared of him. She feels bad for getting him into a fight.
Tracey tells him to leave. He keeps asking for a coffee. But Tracey is firm and tells him to leave. She’s quite assertive and isn’t letting him take advantage, so he finally leaves when she’s say they might have coffee the next day.
Clifford is looking for Duncan all over skid row. God this is boring.
He goes to Tracey’s to ask her about Duncan. He tells her that Duncan killed the Mandrakis children with his bare hands. But somehow, he talks her into being bait to catch Duncan.
Clifford tells his old partner that he’s gonna kill Duncan if he catches him.
Tracey’s apartment and Clifford’s there waiting for Duncan to follow her home from the dive bar. He leaves because Duncan didn’t follow her, but somehow Duncan snuck into Tracey’s apartment and hid in her close. WTF!?! When did that happen?
He just wants to be ‘friends’…Tracey screams ‘NOOOOOO!’, as you would when a killer asks to be friends. Clifford comes and saves her but not before Duncan runs off.
Duncan has some crazy naked breakdown in the bathroom of a YMCA.
Clifford finds him there and runs after him…and loses him again.
Now we’re at grown-up Jill’s house…she’s married and has two kids of her own. Her husband calls to tell he taking her out. Jill needs to get a babysitter!
At the restaurant the Lockhart’s get a phone call…Jill takes it…’HAVE YOU CHECKED THE CHILDREN?’ AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They call the house and Sharon tells them everything is fine. They rush back and it is…but the police are still stacking out their house, just n case Duncan shows up.
Which he does, of course.
Feminist Slasher Project Research:
The first 22 minutes are tension packed and would have made a great short film. The rest of the movie is not really a horror movie and definitely isn’t a slasher film. Jill does take things into her own hands in the beginning and the end but she is only actually in the same room with Kurt Duncan once.
I think I have to give it a yellow light because all the women are pretty strong characters and don’t take any crap but in the end the movie was more like a ‘cop out for revenge’ movie and not a slasher film.
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