'When a Stranger calls Back' takes us down the same path the original did with the psychopath harassing the babysitter initially, but takes a turn and makes this almost more chilling than the 1977 film. We meet Julia, a teenage girl who is babysitting two young kids. A man keeps knocking on the front door asking to use her phone because his car broke down. She writes his vehicle information down on a pad of paper, and puts it down and leaves the room. She is unable to call a towing company because the phones are dead! When she gets back to the pad of paper, everything she wrote down has been erased. The man outside claims to have seen someone walking around inside of the house, she looks into the living room.. someone dressed in black is headed straight for her! Sound familiar? It's a bit like the original, just without the phone calls or the man being upstairs. Julia survives and we flash forward five years. The children that night went missing and were never found, same goes for the man who was inside of the house. Julia is now living on her own near a college campus, still suffering from the effects of what happened that night. She looks in her closet and see's the shirt of the little boy (who she was babysitting) hanging up, and that's when she realizes that the psychopath is after her again. She gets in touch with Jill (Carol Kane), our heroine from the original film to help her through this. Jill gets John Clifford (the police officer from the first movie) to help her find the man as well, leading to an interesting story and a creepy ending.The psychopath in this sequel is nothing like Curt Duncan in the original. Duncan was simply deranged, this man is a master of illusion. He has the ability to be standing right next to you, but project his voice to make you believe he is outside your front door. He paints himself identical to an area of your apartment, so that you could walk right by him and not even realize he's there. That element makes 'When a Stranger Calls Back' an eerie and EXCELLENT film. It matches up well to the first one. Acting is great with Charles Dunning, Carol Kane and Jill Schoelen. I liked 'When a Stranger Calls' slightly more than this one for it's intensity, but this was really well done. Deserves a proper DVD release! 8/10

It's not often that a sequel comes along more than a decade after the original and simply gets it right. Perhaps the main reason for success in this case, is that both original and re-make were written and directed by the same guy, Fred Walton, so my guess is this guy knew what he was doing. This sequel sets up the same narrative structure as the first film: we get a very tense & well-executed opening 20 minutes (very similar to the first film, but with a different outcome), then during the middle section (5 years later) the story meanders, broadening things a bit. And near the end, we get suckered into another suspenseful climax. This time it's the lovely Jill Schoelen who gets antagonized as the babysitter unaware of what she's getting herself into. We are presented a different killer this time, one a bit more implausible perhaps, but he's cuckoo enough to make him creepy. Carol Kane (as Jill Johnson, the surviving babysitter of the first film; now a university counselor) and Charles Durning (as Detective Clifford) both return in this sequel, and that was a good choice to cast them again. Jill helps mentally scarred Julia (Schoelen) through this difficult time, while Clifford tries to track down the killer. Once again not aiming to shock with bloodshed and/or nudity, Walton focuses on telling a story injected with some suspense and having his capable cast deliver decent performances. Without a doubt, if you've enjoyed the first "When A Stranger Calls" (1979), then this sequel will be a worthwhile watch also. Not a bad accomplishment for a made-for-TV production from the nineties.

The original "When a Stranger Calls" from 1979 was a dynamite and effectively petrifying little horror sleeper. Why? Because of its very simplistic but nevertheless fascinating concept of a perverted maniac persistently stalking a defenseless babysitter through sinister phone calls. Even though the more routine middle part couldn't hold a candle to the masterful opening twenty ones, the wholesome should definitely be regarded as a modest and influential genre classic. And the last thing you can say about writer/director Fred Walton is that he exploited the success and promptly produced a series of inferior sequels. "When a Stranger Calls Back" is actually a rather belated follow-up, but unmistakably one that perfectly mirrors the original film. This second, made for television production, is even pretty much identical with the same narrative structure, atmosphere-building, lead characters and portrayal of the villain. There's the brilliantly tense and gripping opening, the tedious and somewhat annoying middle section and the short but powerful shock-climax. Cherubic and warm-hearted young babysitter Julia is babysitting one night when a supposedly stranded guy knocks on the door asking to use the telephone. Julia clearly watched enough old horror movies and is smart enough not to keep the front door shut, but the visitor refuses to go away and gradually fills Julia up with fear. The night ends tragically, when Julia suddenly stands face to face with a perpetrator in the hallway. Five years later, she's an eternally traumatized woman who seeks the help of Jill Johnson (the stalker victim of the original became a counselor) and her savior John Clifford; the former cop turned private detective. Addition spoiler warning: in the paragraph here below I will most likely reveal essential plot aspects from both the original and the sequel"When a Stranger Calls Back" is an adequate film and definitely guarantees some moments of genuine suspense. What I don't understand, however, is that many people seem to prefer the sequel over the original. I couldn't disagree more, mainly because the script of the original film is at least a dozen times more plausible in every imaginable department. First and foremost: the killer. The 1979 killer, Curt Duncan, was a 'realistic' psychopath. He stalked a girl and spent time in prison. He failed to fit into society and slowly found his way back to the girl for revenge. The psycho in this case is a ventriloquist, a master of disguise, a melodramatic philosopher and we're supposed to believe he left Julia alone during five whole years even though the police never picked up his trail? What kind of pathetic killer does that? Then there's the completely implausible return of Carol Kane's character Jill Johnson. It's already hard to accept that she became a psychological counselor after what happened to her, but now she helps another young girl who's going through pretty much the exact same ordeal as she did? Plus she's a lousy counselor, since you definitely don't encourage a manic depressed girl to buy a gun. Everybody complained how the middle section of the original nearly ruined the entire film, as it exposed the psychopath's whole persona and thus made him less menacing. Maybe so, but the middle section of the sequel definitely exaggerates in doing the complete opposite. Fred Walton attempts to make his villain so mysterious and introvert that it simply becomes ridicule. The ventriloquist act is downright pitiable and just a tad bit grotesque. There are numerous little details that don't make sense, but they're not immediately noticeable thanks to the good performances and compelling atmosphere. The more you contemplate about the story, though, the sillier it gets.

While not a typical horror sequel, When A Stranger Calls Back contains some striking moments, and deals intelligently and compassionately with two of the most fragile heroines in cinema. By not resorting to standard 'shocks' and concentrating on creeping terror, the film has a lot more to say about the realities of real fear than most genre offerings. These are traumatised people who have reconstructed a precise simulacrum of their former lives. When a pencil they placed 2.2 centimetres from their ruler is discovered moved .2 of a centimetre, they know someone has invaded their territory and moved it, it's just not something they'd forget or mistake. The fact that it's impossible to prove makes the protagonists appear paranoid - only those who have brushed up against this type of terror before, Kane, Durning, Schoelen know the truth. Viewed from a less mainstream perspective, this is a very rewarding film. True, there is some muddled plotting midway, but it's worth seeing, if only for the bleakest 'happy' ending in American cinema. Incidentally, I'm sure Kevin Williamson would gladly admit to using a conglomeration of When a Stranger Calls and the first half hour of this film as his inspiration for the opening sequence of Scream (with added blood).