When a Stranger Calls, (hang up the phone in 2006)

[onionhead]

I remember this from 1979, killer loose, terrorizes babysitter Carol Kane with creepy phone calls ("Have you checked the children?"), turns out to be inside the house, kids dead, etc.  After a bang-up opening,  Charles Durning enters 7 years later as the cop who put the killer away, now a private detective, and lo and behold, the killer has sprung from the asylum!  The middle of the movie bogs dawn as Durning chases (Charles Durning chasing anybody is not a speedy OR pretty sight) the killer, tossing knitting needles at him all over the place.  The last part of the film has Kane again confronting the killer, and the pace picks up dramatically.  
I've heard this began as a short film, with the middle part thrown in as filler much later, and indeed there is a difference in film quality here and there.  If anybody knows where I can pick up a copy of the original short, please let me know.
Now the bad news:  Remake circa 2006.  PG-13. Although director Simon West drove Con Air, I have reserved feeleings about this one.

[odinn7]

Well, in this case a re-make can't be any worse than the original. Normally I get upset about re-makes because I know they will never match the original but for this movie, there is nowhere to go but up.

[onionhead]

And why do filmmakers bother remaking films that are marginally ineresting to begin with, or in the case of Death Ship smell like rotten moldy cheese that you forgot to flush two days after pooping it out after washing it down with garlic milk last week?

[The Burgomaster]

I saw the poster for this earlier this week in the lobby of a local cinema.  The poster just shows a hand holding a cell phone.  There was also a poster for the remake of THE HILLS HAVE EYES.  The tag line is something like, "The lucky ones die first."  Oh, boy . . .

[odinn7]

A re-make of Hills? Ok, so this I'm p**sed about.

[Just Plain Horse]

I might have gone to see the remake, but they went and showed the entire movie during the ad... I've probably already seen the best parts :)

[raj]

JPH -- my thoughts exactly.  It looked interesting at first, but then they showed basically a snippet from every important scene.  There was no need to go beyond the first 10 seconds of the ad.  That's seven bucks saved.

[Just Plain Horse]

raj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> JPH -- my thoughts exactly.  It looked interesting
> at first, but then they showed basically a snippet
> from every important scene.  There was no need to
> go beyond the first 10 seconds of the ad.  That's
> seven bucks saved.


Yeah, that was sort of nice of them:) I wish they'd done that with Deep Blue Sea, The Jerky Boys Movie and The Phantom Menace...

"Shane, come back Shane" (only funny line in the entire Jerky Boys film, Although the bathroom scene will always be etched into my brain...)