When Michael Calls

Elizabeth Ashley is receiving phone calls from her nephew Michael--he's crying, screaming and asking for help. The problem is Michael died 15 years ago.

This film scared me silly back in 1972 when it aired on ABC. Seeing it again, years later, it STILL works.

The movie is a little slow and predictable, the deaths are very tame, it's never explained why it takes Michael 15 years to call and there's a tacked-on happy ending, but this IS a TV movie so you have to give it room. Elizabeth Ashley is excellent, Ben Gazzara is OK and it's fun to see Michael Douglas so young. And those telephone calls still scare the living daylights out of me. I actually had to turn a light on during one of them!

A creepy little TV movie. Worth seeing.

When Michael Calls (1972)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mildly effective made-for-TV flick about a woman (Elizabeth Ashley) who begins receiving phone calls from her nephew Michael but the only problem is that he died fifteen years earlier. Soon her ex-husband (Ben Gazzara) and other nephew (Michael Douglas) begin to investigate is Michael could actually be alive or if someone else is just trying to do her harm. These TV flicks from the 70s always have that certain atmosphere that can only be found in movies like this, BAD RONALD and DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK. This here certainly isn't as good as those two examples but we still get that eerie atmosphere and that alone makes this worth sitting through even if in the end this isn't a classic. I think the best thing going for the film are the performances by the three leads. Gazzara plays a lawyer who doesn't mind throwing his weight around to get what he wants and I thought he was pretty good in the role. That tough rawness he brings to all his roles is always fun to watch and he certainly helps keep this thing moving along. Ashley is also very good in the film, although it's hard to believe her as the aunt to Douglas especially when in real life she was only five years older than him. With that said, she certainly displayed a certain vulnerability that made the movie a bit more effective. Douglas is billed as a "Special Guest Star" but he actually has a pretty big role here and appears throughout the movie. The screenplay tries very hard to be like something you'd expect to see from Hitchcock as it tries to keep the suspense up by having you constantly guessing what's going on. I think it's pretty simple to figure out what's up after about the forty-minute mark but I'm sure some might be kept in the dark up until the ending. While I didn't fall for all the twists and turns this still turned out to be fairly fun thanks in large part to the cast and whoever it was that voiced the kid on the phone. Another good thing about these films from the 70s that dealt with phones is that they were always able to find someone creepy for the voice work.

ABC Movie of the Week involves Elizabeth Ashley as a divorced single parent who mysteriously begins receiving a series of spooky phone calls from a child who says he's her nephew, a boy who allegedly died in a snowstorm years prior; ex-husband Ben Gazzara and brother Michael Douglas (who heads up a home for emotionally disturbed youngsters) investigate on their own after a bee-keeper and a sheriff both turn up dead. Spotty teleplay from James Bridges, adapting a novel by John Farris, inexplicably drops a thread about a young burglar caught red-handed, and also a farmhouse which the killer sets on fire. However, the phone calls here are certainly creepy (even better than the ones from Doris Day's "Midnight Lace") and the performances by Ashley and Gazzara are solid. Bridges and Michael Douglas later reunited on "The China Syndrome".

I remember being scared to death when this film first aired on TV in 1971. Of course, I was all of nine years old at the time. When Michael Calls was recently shown on Fox Movies, and I had a chance to relive my memories of terror. Surprisingly, the film holds up remarkably well, even with the tacked on and predictable happy ending that ties up all the loose ends. I even had to turn a light on while I watched!

Early 70s TV-thriller stars a young (or younger, at least) Michael Douglas, but he's not the titular Michael who makes sinister prank calls. Douglas stars as Craig, the brother of Michael who - suddenly and out of the blue - calls up his auntie Helen in panic to say that he's lost and can't find his way home. That doesn't sound too abnormal, except for the little fact that Michael is presumed dead for 15 years already! Michael ran off after his mother was put in a mental institute (where she quickly committed suicide) and custody of her two sons was given to auntie Helen. He got lost in a blizzard and never returned, but now Michael apparently found a phone in the afterlife. The already fragile Helen is terrified, obviously, but luckily her ex-husband Doremus (what kind of name is that?) and Craig approach the mystery rather rationally and investigate further.

Solid, captivating premise based on a novel by John Farris ("The Fury", "Dear Dead Delilah") and perfectly fit for a TV-thriller, and this in spite of the reasonably predictable outcome, the overuse of clichés, and the lack of genuine surprises. The first half hour is strong and contains two noteworthy death sequences, one involving bees and another - quite shocking - one during a school play.

I will always watch whatever early 70s made-for-television thriller that I can. They usually depart from intriguing and original ideas, and somehow always maintain a bleak and sinister atmosphere throughout. Moreover, they're always short and often available for free on YouTube! Apart from Michael Douglas, "When Michael Calls" also stars Ben Gazzara, whom I personally consider a strong and undeservedly underrated actor.