New VOD "When A Stranger Calls Back" Now Available!!!

[Thrashalla]

http://www.rifftrax.com/vod/when-stranger-calls-back

Contains scenes of nudity. (Fortunately, not Charles Durning.)
     

The sequel is coming from inside the house! That's right, one of the tiredest pop culture tropes of all time finally gets a sequel! And you'll never believe where the calls are coming from this time (because it's a really, really stupid reveal. We're talking the end of Signs level stupid.)

Julia is a babysitter, whose motto was evidently "Charisma free child care or your money back!" Her plan to put the kids to bed and then spend an evening quietly enjoying a glass of water is disrupted when a stranger comes to her door. He has a chilling request: he needs her to call the auto club because his car is broken down. Julia responds as anyone would: by lapsing into a hysterical panic attack while the poor guy trudges four miles to a gas station and misses his kid's birthday party. We're just kidding of course, he actually is a maniac and he kidnaps both the kids and they're never seen again.

Traumatized by the incident, Julia responds by growing a Joe Dirt level mullet and enrolling in a small liberal arts college. (Experts strongly recommend you do neither of these things, but if you must choose just one, they tentatively recommend the mullet.) Everything is going just fine until one day she notices that small objects in her apartment are not where she left them. Cue hysterical panic attack. She's really a charmer, this Julia.

Fortunately, she's got Charles Durning and Carol Kane to help her. Durning appears to have gotten over Doc Hopper's failure to sign Kermit The Frog as spokesperson by eating the Electric Mayhem Band and Kane looks appropriately traumatized for someone who had to play the wife of both Billy Crystal AND Andy Kaufman. At one point, in one of the most terrifying and disturbing scenes ever filmed, Charles Durning goes to a strip club to watch a ventriloquist act.

With Mike, Kevin and Bill there to riff, When A Stranger Calls Back will have you holding the line...for hilarity! (The writer of the previous sentence has been fired and is currently working as a strip club ventriloquist.)

Note: This RiffTrax was already underway before Mr. Durning passed away. As Mike wrote back in 2008, we here at RiffTrax stand in awe of his service.



http://www.rifftrax.com/vod/when-stranger-calls-back

[Bob]

That preview is hilarious!

[Johnny Unusual]

Man, these VODs are really branching out from Public Domain to not but "who cares they may as well be and we can afford them."  Which opens up a world of possibilities.  Maybe they'll do the original sometime (obviously not as a VOD though).

[ihavemyreasons]

Awesome. Really digging the new release every week schedule over the last few weeks. Hope it continues and a couple of non-VOD releases come out too.

[Edward J Grug III]

I've never seen the original... Trying to decide if I should bother before watching this...

[ihavemyreasons]

I've never seen the original... Trying to decide if I should bother before watching this...

I've never seen this sequel and saw the originsl so long ago that I don't remember much about it. Something tells me this isn't one of those sequels where you'll be lost because you never saw the original.

[Compound]

I'm just stunned that they made a sequel to the original. I must have missed the Fangoria issue that talked about it back then.

[Compound]

I've never seen the original... Trying to decide if I should bother before watching this...

I've never seen this sequel and saw the originsl so long ago that I don't remember much about it. Something tells me this isn't one of those sequels where you'll be lost because you never saw the original.

Here's the short version:
Once upon a time, there was a babysitter who was looking after some kids. She'd put the kids to bed and sat down to watch TV when suddenly the phone rang. She answered and a voice on the other end laughed and said "You'd better check the children." She hung up, thinking it was a prank call. A few minutes later, the phone rang again. Once again she answered and once again the voice tells her to check the children.

She calls the police and they tell her not to panic and if he calls again, try to keep the man talking as long as possible so that they can trace the call. A few minutes later, he calls again. She tried to keep the caller talking, but he just said "You'd better come upstairs" and hung up. A few seconds later the phone rang again, she picked it up expected the caller, but instead it was the police screaming at her. "We've traced the calls! They're coming from inside the house! " At the same time, she heard footsteps coming down the stairs, so she threw the phone down and rushed outside the house, where the cops had just arrived. They burst in and found the children butchered in their beds. There were no signs of the killer. (Except in the film I think Carol got chased around by him for a few minutes.)

You're up to speed now.

[Edward J Grug III]

I wasn't worried about it in terms of understanding the movie, but maybe it might increase my enjoyment.

[goflyblind]

jill?