I think my issue with this film is that I was expecting a very different movie, but I also think it makes sense to expect a different one. It's called "Are You in the House Alone?" and is apparently about a babysitter being stalked by an unknown assailant, but that's really about 10 minutes of the running time. Most of this film is a high school drama about this girl's teen angst and her current boyfriend ... and she receives the odd anonymous note leading into the 10 minutes of not very effective horror. This is not for me.

A format for the 1979 film "When A Stranger Calls". This film actually goes to the way of rape instead of murder but the idea of a young babysitting getting calls from a stranger over and over is the same.A young Dennis Quaid is really good in this one - he plays the bad guy Phil Lawver. Kathleen Beller plays the young, scared babysitter Gail Osborne quite well. The rest of the cast is really good.Some of the first part is boring - a drawn out family drama. But the film does pick up once it gets past all the the character introductions and laid the basis for the rest of the film. It ends up in a question of will the guy be arrested and charged or just walk free.4.5/10

Are You in the House Alone? (1978) ** (out of 4) Made for TV drama is actually disguised as a horror movie. The film starts off as teenager Gail (Kathleen Beller) is being taken to the hospital after being beaten and raped. We then flashback and see the events leading up to the rape, which include her dating a new guy, being made fun of by her old boyfriend and having several other men set themselves up as red herrings. The first hour builds itself up as a horror movie in the same vein as BLACK Christmas but things take a turn in the final act when the rape happens and I must admit that the movie got rather disgusting to me. This was made for TV so everything is very tame but at the same time I thought the rape stuff was very poorly handled and in the end it come off more distasteful than anything else. To make matters worse is the fact that the build up really isn't anything special because it's obvious from the first five minutes who the attacker is going to be. I caught onto the bad guy right from the start so each additional red herring they threw at me had little effect. The screenplay is full of those "made for TV" holes but that's to be expected. Beller does a pretty good job in her role, although she does go over the top from time to time. Scott Colomby stole the film for me with his very strong and believable performance. Dennis Quaid has a nice supporting part and Ellen Travolta (John's sister) also has a small role. This TV movie seems to have a decent cult following but there really wasn't enough here to keep me interested.

Someone should really make an effort to find more of these old 70's TV movies and release them on DVD. I've been fortunate enough to catch "When Michael Calls", "Terror on the Beach", and this one on late-night cable showings. Others like "Bad Ronald", "This House Possessed", and "Go Ask Alice" can be obtained if you don't mind spending money in the morally ambiguous world of bootleg video sellers (or, even worse, on E-bay). Others though like the the made-for-TV slasher flick "Deadly Lessons" seem to be lost forever.The 70's TV movies were not necessarily good, but they were often pretty enjoyable in a cheesy way. They were aimed at a more general audience than TV movies today (i.e. not just dumb, bored housewives) and they did not try to tackle any "issues". This movie actually kind of does tackle an issue (stalking and acquaintance rape), but it was really before it was an issue. It also has some pretty effective suspense leading up to the rape (scary notes, creepy phone calls, "Halloween"-style POV camera shots ). And instead of turning into a predictable courtroom drama after the rape, it ends on a rather ironic and somewhat cynical note. Interestingly, the movie was based on a fairly well-known young adult novel of the same name by Richard Peck (whose other book "If You Don't Look, It won't Hurt" would later provide the inspiration for the theatrical art film "Gas, Food, Lodging). As adaptations of young adult novels go, it's a hell of a lot better than "I Know What you Did Last Summer". I wouldn't pay $20 to an unscrupulous bootlegger to see this, but it's definitely worth watching if it comes on cable TV.