Directed
by: Fred Walton, Starring: Carol Kane, Charles Durning, Colleen Dewhurst, Tony
Beckley. Horror, US 1979, 97mins, Cert 15.
Restaged and expanded to feature length from his original short film THE
SITTER, director Fred Walton (APRIL FOOL’S DAY) helmed arguably the definitive
retelling of the babysitter-in-peril urban legend with one of the most
suspenseful, taunt, minimalist and ruthlessly efficient opening thirds in the sub-genre.
Vulnerable wide-eyed babysitter Jill Johnson (Carol Kane), alone in a large
suburban house with her two young charges (supposedly) fast asleep upstairs
recovering from heavy colds, starts to receive increasingly disturbing phone
calls whereby the caller repeatedly enquires:
“Have you checked the children?”
It goes somewhat against my nature not to tip-toe around potentially spoilerific
territory, even though 39 years have passed since 1979’s non-iPhone mobile world.
Can first-time viewers nowadays fully appreciate the palpable frisson of fear
generated in cinemas on its initial release or on subsequent VHS home-viewings
when the origin of the landline telephone calls - the chillingly simple deus ex
machina – is revealed?
True story: back in the early 80’s, (when I was 13 years old), I somehow
persuaded my form teacher to allow me to screen the film for my classmates
under the dubious auspices of ‘media studies’. We got as far as the conclusion
of the opening act, at which point the girls screamed so loudly the screening
was terminated with immediate effect (heh heh heh...)
Unfortunately, after a gripping tight opening third, the proceeding
middle segment (set seven years later) feels loose and saggy in comparison.
It’s certainly not without interest mind you - but inevitably it’s the filler sandwiched
between the belting opening and the final third where director Walton (presumably)
felt obliged to pull a visual rabbit out of the hat and stages a
sleight-of-hand set piece which succeeds in being both audacious and
implausibly corny all at once.
Brit actor Tony Beckley, who sadly died shortly after the film premiered,
portrays the aforementioned stalker/caller, Curt Duncan, an English merchant seaman,
newly arrived in the US, who instead of embarking on the usual touristy
sightseeing decides instead to randomly murder two children in their beds with
his bare hands and scare the crap out of a college student. Captured literally
red-handed (in a very brief but disturbingly graphic flashback) Curt Duncan is incarcerated
in a state mental institution. Unfortunately, it’s one with “less than perfect
security” it so happens, perhaps it’s one with a similar level of security as the
Smith's Grove Sanitarium as featured a year earlier in a rather successful
indie horror film which also featured babysitters in-peril...
Glimpsed only in silhouette in the opening third, director Walton and
co-writer Steve Feke then present Duncan front and centre as he struggles to
cope with life on the seedy downtown streets. Attempting to chat up Colleen
Dewhurst’s barfly character only results in a beating by a fellow patron whilst
the barman, (played by future ‘Michael Myers’ Dick Warlock no less) watches
nervously on. It’s a testament to Tony Beckley’s performance that despite the previous
atrocities he has committed, the disarmingly exposed vulnerability he brings to
the character fleshes out a role that could so easily have been limited to
mindless one-dimensional bogeyman. When former cop now turned private investigator
John Clifford (the reliably superb Charles Durning) hunts for Duncan along the
rows of beds at the hostel he has sought refuge, the scene is played as a role
reversal with the stalker becoming the stalked as the terrified killer tries to
evade not capture and re-incarceration but termination.
Having built up this uneasy disquietingly picture of a man who has
undergone “rather forceful” therapy - which we are told included 38 sessions of
electric shock treatment before his escape - the final segment requires Tony Beckley’s
damaged, untethered character to once more take up the mantle of the ‘boo’
provider. This shift in tone and focus feels inconsistent and incongruous with
what has gone before it and appears to have been shoehorned into achieving a
slightly ill-fitting circular arc for Carol Kane’s now married with children
character.
Watching the film again now it’s not hard to see the influence it has
exerted on the genre, Wes Craven’s SCREAM(1996) being the obvious example with
Drew Barrymore’s deadly horror trivia phone quiz. The score by Dana Kaproff
pulls out all the stops, or rather strings to squeeze and enhance every sinew
of suspense (key beats reminded me of the THX sound effect crescendo!) The use
of optical zoom free-frame as jump scare hasn’t aged well however.
Still scary though.
**** (out
of 5*)
Paul Worts
This review was originally published by FrightFest.
