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Before babysitters only had to worry if the phone rang, now they have to fear a knock on the door as well!

I'm a big fan of the first film and when I found out there was a sequel a few years ago I just had to watch it. The problem was I couldn't find it. Once I did find it I was a bit cautious about renting it. Would it just be a carbon copy of the original? Well yes it is and no it isn't. The format is the same but the writer Fred Walton has done his best to throw in many original ideas.

For those who don't know, the story follows a babysitter who is tormented by a stranger one night while babysitting. Five years later she is tormented again. The police wonder, is it the same person or is she just seeking attention? It's hard to say, but Jill (Carol Kane) who experienced the same situation years before believes her.

There are some problems with the movie. John Clifford (Charles Durning) who investigates the mystery solves it pretty quickly and hunts down the stranger just as easily. Also, the movie doesn't tie up all of it's plot threads nicely, like why the stranger does what he does, but that's okay because it leaves the viewer something to discuss with friends. What strengthens the movie is the amount of suspense in it. Not only are the first 20 minutes of the movie very suspenseful but there are a couple of good moments within the movie and the ending is superb (if not a bit unlikely).

Most times a movie will advertise itself as being so scary that you shouldn't watch it alone. But in the case of When a Stranger Calls Back (and the original When a Stranger Calls) the movie is much scarier when watched alone and not very scary at all when watched with another person.

I really liked this movie and I highly recommended it if you like movies that scare through suspense rather then gore. This movie is a nice change of pace from your typical theatrical horror release (it was made for cable). When a Stranger Calls Back gets a 7 out of 10.

Made for television sequel of Walton's 1979 thriller ,When a Stranger Calls, surprisingly lives up to the original film in almost every way.

Jill is now a PI herself, and with the help of her old friend hopes to save a young woman who believes she has been terrorized by a maniac for years.

When a Stranger Calls Back mirrors the original film very much, but it's in a good way. It packs much of the same kinds of suspense and atmosphere of the original film, all the while telling a new and interesting mystery. Of course much of this is owed to director Walton, who returns to do another bravo job of molding this film.

Charles Durning and Carol Kane reprise their original roles well.

Intriguing and well-done all the way, When a Stranger Calls Back is a good sequel that isn't hampered by its television limitations. Those who enjoyed the original film will undoubtedly find it a worthy sequel.

*** out of ****

I watched the 1993 version a long time ago but didn't finish it. Years later I tried to search but could not find but only the 2006 version I consider quite disappointing. I found this movie by accident today. I'm glad to know the ending of the movie.

This movie is suspenseful from start to finish. The 1979 and 2006 versions weren't as good as this one either.

College student Juli Jenz(Jill Schoelen)underwent a traumatic incident with a psychotic killer(who uses the phone to terrorize),five years ago and now years later at college she's been getting some suspicious calls which lead her to believe the killer is back.When she contacts the police,they inform her that her original stalker is dead therefore she must be having flashbacks and refer her to a psychiatrist,instead of checking for physical evidence.Anyway,"When a Stranger Calls Back" works as TV produced remake of Fred Walton's 1979 classic "When a Stranger Calls".It has enough twists,turns and suspense to keep horror fans on the edge of their seats.The beginning is especially tense and memorable.There is no gore or strong violence and the killer's identity is kept secret through the film until the climax.The acting is great and the characters are well-developed.So if even casually enjoyed the original "When a Stranger Calls",then this film is must-see.7 out of 10.Check it out.

"When a Stranger Calls Back" is really a sequel to "When a Stranger Calls" and not just a remix. The 2006 "When a Stranger Calls" is actually a remake of the first twenty or so minutes of the original 1979 version which was the superior part of the film. The 1979 original drifted aimlessly for the middle third of the movie before regaining much of its momentum for the final third.

The made-for-cable "When a Stranger Calls Back" has some excellent scenes that do actually scare the heebie-jeebies out of the viewer. The use of the door rather than the telephone during the first part introduced a new aspect of the crazed psycho, that he could throw his voice. For this viewer the creepiest part occurred with Charles Durning encountering the monster in the alleyway. The cinematography with the camera zooming in on the creature all in black lurking in the darkness showing his blazon eyes before closing them for a full blackout is truly amazing. The angle of the shot showing Durning attempting to discover the hidden evil with the noir-like rain silhouetting his features is a stroke of cinema genius.

That the producers were able to reunite two of the key figures in the original after fourteen years makes "When a Stranger Calls Back" even more relevant as a sequel. Carol Kane and Charles Durning reprise their roles as babysitter Jill Johnson (Jill as in kill) and John Clifford respectively to great effect. The chemistry between the two is still present.

"When a Stranger Calls Back" is also more believable than the other two Stranger films. For instance, the babysitter does check the children first thing the way a real babysitter would do. "When a Stranger Calls Back" is not as brutal as the other two. In the made-for-cable sequel the children simply disappear. In the other two, there is no weapon found, meaning the the killer ripped the bodies to shreds using his bare hands.

If you enjoyed the 1979 flick, you should enjoy this one and the 2006 remake. All three are above average for mad slasher type suspense films.

The opening scenes are enjoyably creepy and effective, creating a slow but undeniable increase in tension, where the limited dialogue feeds the babysitter's isolation and had me wondering what will happen next. Only, it doesn't explain how this stalker manages to get away when the parents return home and he is in the house. Maybe I'm missing something there but that just seems odd to me. But this is the only notable let down in the movie and it doesn't alter the creepy factor in any negative way.

Having now seen this a second time, my opinions of it have changed quite a lot. I really enjoyed the bond between Julia and Jill and the old dude is also a good extra. The build up of tension as the story progresses is a real feature, largely successful because of better than average acting, as well as clever directing and lighting. In fact I would say at times the actors commitment to their roles is quite excellent.

The word 'tight' comes to mind here, it's an efficient and effective production that I would recommend if you're looking for genuine scares without over the top violence and gore.

I really enjoyed this film. It was was really suspenseful and scary, especially when he is bothering her through the front door...you never know where he is! I recommend this movie to everyone who likes thrillers. Not a horror movie, but scary none the less. The acting is very good..and with big stars..the film is hardly a flop. When the film starts it gets right to the point..starts right off with the babysitter going into the house where she is to watch the children for the night. as soon as the door closes you know something isn't right. You know this babysitter is NOT alone. A couple words of advice for babysitters...always check every lock in the house!

Ok, the beginning of this movie was pretty good. The middle part had potential, but was greatly lacking. The end was completely absurd. If you like your horror movies to come with laughs, then this is a good movie for you. If, however, you are seeking any plausibility, avoid this movie at all costs. Rating: 8 for the beginning, 6 for the middle, and 1 for the ending. Which averages out to a 5 for the whole film. Recommended only for fans of the first one.

Julia (Jill Schoelen) is babysitting two children, when a stranger knocks at the front door, asking for using the phone to call the Automobile Club to fix his car. After some tense discussion through the door, she realizes that the children vanished and the stranger is inside the house. Five years later, odd things happen to Julia, and the psychologist Jill (Carol Kane) and the private investigator John Clifford (Charles Durning) help Julia. This movie has one of the most tense and suspenseful beginning I have ever seen. The situation through which Julia passes is amazingly real and scary. Unfortunately, the story `jumps' to five years later and become very common, predictable and full of clichés. I really feel sorry for that. The voice and accent of Carol Kane is irritating. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): `Um Estranho à Minha Porta' (`A Stranger At My Door')

A babysitter named Julia (Jill Schoelen) is home with her charges asleep upstairs...and hears a knock at the door. A man says his car has broken down and he needs to use the phone (you never see him--you only hear his voice through the door). She offers to place the call for him and finds the phone is dead. She lies and said she placed the call. He leaves but comes back later and is angry and somehow knows her name...

The opening 25 minutes of this are great--tense and frightening. Even Schoelen's bad performance can't hurt it. Then the story cuts to 5 years later with Schoelen still traumatized and Jill (Carol Kane--reprising her role from the first movie), now a college counselor tries to help. She calls in John Clifford (Charles Durning--also reprising his role) to help.

First off it is connected to the first film but Kane's character was happily married with kids at the end of the first film. Now she's single and a counselor. (????) The acting is so-so. Schoelen is terrible; Kane walks through her role and Durning tries but has no character to work with. Also, like the first, this has a great opening and ending--but a very dull middle.

The ending is great--especially when Kane goes one on one against the killer but the very ending is terrible. We're told the killer's name--but that's it. We never find out why he's doing all this and what he did with the kids--it's VERY annoying to end a movie that way. Also, we never see his face (the one time he's shown full face it's covered in black makeup).

So--this is worth seeing for the opening 25 minutes and the ending--but skip the rest of it. I'm giving this a 5.

When A Stranger Calls Back (1993) is a movie I recently rewatched on Amazon Prime. The storyline follows a woman who was attacked and traumatized while babysitting one night. As she gets older she works hard to get over the experience but when she moves into a new apartment and starts seeing some strange things taking place, she seeks the aid of the police. When the woman from the first When A Stranger Calls hears about the girls case, she decides to help her. This movie is directed by Fred Walton (When a Stranger Calls) and stars Carol Kane (Scrooged), Charles Durning (Dog Day Afternoon), Jill Schoelen (The Stepfather) and Gene Lythgow (The Usual Suspects). The movie has a great opening scene and setup. The character traits, perceptions and struggles are very well delivered. The cast delivers solid and worthwhile performances. It was great seeing Durning return for this followup picture. The ventriloquist storyline is well injected and unfolds into the plot and conclusion to perfection. The ending of this movie is pretty good. Overall this is far from a classic but a solid sequel. I'd score this a 6.5/10 and recommend seeing it once.

Just like its modest predecessor it's a moodily atmospheric on-edge thriller that's just as good, if not better than its inspiration. Basically the same-setup and story structure (it's ringing off the hook), but writer / director Fred Walton (who directed and co-penned the original) competently pulls it off again. Lucky Walton illustrates another blindingly chilling and unbearably taut opening that drips with intensity and intrigue. Simple, but unquestionably effective. Something about the tone is creepier and dark, and it never lets the viewer get comfortable because it seems to stay there. Even then it really plays more like an open-wound, slow-burn mystery, but none of that lingering dread evaporates after the terrific opening. It's much more persistent, and the killer is kept in the shadows and emit's a disturbingly unnerving awe. He's a weirdo (a perfectly eerie Gene Lythgow), but there's no real reasoning for his obsessive tormenting of the traumatised girl (a beautifully sensitive performance by Jill Schoelen). This leaves some logic holes in the plot, but there's a little more novelty to it and it doesn't feel as loose. Coming back for seconds (returning from the original) are splendid turns by Carol Kane and Charles Dunning. Walton's exceptional direction is well drilled and it's passively shot with proficient positioning. The score stays strong, by inducing a spooky and suspenseful essence. This can be appreciated with its beautifully constructed nerve-wrecking conclusion.

I don't understand how this movie has been rated a mere four-point-something (as of May, 2000) on the IMDb. I assume it's because there are people out there who detest to be frightened and are stupid enough to use this criteria to rate horror films. Blah with them.

To me, this is one the most chilling, frightening films I have ever seen and, being a horror film fan, I can safely say that I have probably seen more horror films than most people. (Note: I am also discriminating about horror films and don't think they are all equally great.)

Clearly, I am not alone in the belief that this is an excellent movie because the opening scene in "Scream" is obviously based on the opening set piece in this one, as well as on a similar scene in "When a Stranger Calls". There are differences between the "Scream" and "WASCB" scenes, though, and the main difference is that "Scream" ingeniously interlaces humor and shock while "WASCB" goes for relentless mounting tension, with its main goal to creep the bejesus out of the audience, at which it thoroughly succeeds.

"When a Stranger Calls Back" is a little gem and Fred Walton is one of the few directors who truly understand how to build and sustain tension. He proved it in the terrific "When a Stranger Calls" and, later, in excellent TV movies like "I Saw What You Did" and "Murder in Paradise". Here as in some of his other projects, Walton shows a knack for letting the fright build on the merits of the story and its twists, for letting the viewers know that something horrible is about to happen and playing with their expectations of when, how and to whom. Usually, what happens is not what he's been telling you would happen, so the horror builds inside your head and, as we know, that's the best kind. It's not graphic, it's worse, it's in your thoughts and it usually lingers there, like cobwebs...

I have shown the DVD of "WASCB" to many friends, including people who are not particularly keen on horror movies, and they all agree that it's an excellent, very scary film. Don't pay attention to those who put it down and try it. And if you can, watch it at night, when it's quiet out there and the lights are out and the kids are asleep.

****SPOILERS**** There's a really gripping and terrifying half hour or so opening of the movie "When a stranger calls back" where Julia, Jill Schoelen, is trapped inside the house that she's baby-sitting in by some unseen psycho, who's playing a sick cat and mouse game with her. The sicko then ends up kidnapping the two children that Julia was baby-sitting and disappears into the night never to be seen or heard of again until some five years later when Julia is attending collage.

The madman for some reason known only to himself resurfaces and starts again to terrify Julia, in showing her that he's still around and watching her, by leaving clues like moving thing around in her off-campus apartment and driving, the already very emotionally disturbed,Julia almost out of her mind. Carol Kane, Jill, and Charles Durning,John Clifford, who were in the original "When a Stranger Calls" repeat their roles in this sequel. The two are so unnatural and artificial as well as perplexing to those of us watching the movie, who haven't seen the original film, without knowing about their previous involvement in the story that they only hamper the plot, instead of explain it, to the already very confused audience. If you never saw the first "When a stranger calls" you would wonder just why they were so prominent here in the first place? A flash-back of Jill & John Clifford in the original film inserted into the movie would have greatly helped but for some reason it wasn't done.

John somehow finds out who the psycho is, a person who's introduced by John to us watching the movie as a Mr. Landis, who's doing a ventriloquist act in some nightclub in the city. Landis doing his act, in black-face, at the club in what has to be one of the most puzzling as well as outrages scenes ever put on film. Having a dummy without a mouth, much less a face, Landis gives this pseudo-philosophical BS monologue about the facelessness of the humanity of the people in the audience. He then goes on telling the audience how that what they want to look like is not what their really like? Ladis just keeps on trash-talking and annoying as well as instigating the people in the club that the club manager has to throw him out of the place before the people watching him storm the stage and end up beating or even killing him.

John looking for Landis in a back-alley behind the nightclub tells him what a great act he has, what was John drinking at the time, and wants to talk to him about it only to have Landis take off and run away. We've seen Landis before in the hospital room where Julia was ,after she or someone else shot her in the head, as he just materialized out of nowhere. He's then seen for some reason beating on Julia's unconscious body so hard as if he hit her one more time he would have broke her in half.

John finds out the hotel where Landis is staying and is told by one of the people there that he came to the city to tell some woman that her children are dead which makes no sense at all since it's never explained to us why he did that. John also finds a number of photos in Landis' now deserted room of Julia both dressed and undressed in her hospital room taken by him.

The movie ends with Landis hiding out in Jill's loft apartment disguised as the apartments woodwork and masonry as he tries to kill her. Landis instead only comes across looking like a jerk as he messes up and ends up getting shot and killed himself by John who comes to Jill's rescue in just the nick of time. We were never really told in the movie just what were the reasons for Landis to terrorize and try to murder both Julia and Jill? did they do something to hurt him in the past? The ending of the movie which should have explained all this, just who Landis was and why he do what he did, explained nothing about this very troubled and dangerous individual and just left you even more bewildered then you were when you were watching the film.

I realize how classic the 1979 version was, and I know how scared some people were during the infamous, "The call is coming from inside your house!" line...but let's be honest, that urban legend has been around for far longer than that film, and 1974's Black Christmas had a scene with that exact scenario. The 2006 remake was probably one of the most pitiful attempts at a remake I've seen in recent years, even securing a spot next to the Prom Night remake. 1993's sequel to the original, however, was surprisingly decent. Carol Kane returns to play the role of Jill, but this time, as a detective. It's really not all that bad for a made-for-TV movie...it certainly has its intense moments. Fred Walton directed the film - the same man responsible for the 1986 slasher April Fool's Day.

Not a bad follow-up to the original. Give it a shot!

When a Stranger Calls Back is one of my Favorite movies. I like it not only because it deals with a very Psychotic, original, and Creepy Killer, but he really expressed his feelings in the "poem" like speech he gives towards the end.

The only thing I did not like about the movie was the game the Innocent characters seem to create the whole plot into. Other than that, this movie is top of the line, and it is shocking to me the bad review this movie has picked up.

It is not just the bad reviews and comments that annoy me. It's the message or insult they all carry: This movie has nothing to do with the original! SO WHAT! A lot of Classic movies (House II, as well as the "Leprechaun" sequels) had Very little, if not nothing, to do with the original.

This is one of my Favorite movies that I watch over and over again and if you are a Horror fan, I am Almost Certain you will also.

My Score: 10 out of 10

People who liked this movie might like: Puppet Master, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Slumber Party Massacre, Sorority House Massacre, The dead hate the living, Halloween, Army of Darkness, Scream 2, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Hideous!. For more recommendations, please check the other movies I have commented on by clicking on my name above this Comment Section.

This movie is quite good, it has several unique aspects and keeps you on your toes. I enjoyed it thoroughly and would recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys scary movies.

Many plot twits, unpredictable, and the acting was good.

Nothing over the top, realistic, and well made.

7/10.

After the suspenseful babysitter scene which goes on for 30 minutes, the film screeches to a halt, takes a nosedive and crashes and burns. It's a shame because those first 30 minutes were really good and they should've kept up that momentum.