A crazed maniac (Albert J. Dunk) breaks into a sorority house just before Christmas break and terrorizes the inhabitants. It starts with obscene phone calls and escalates to picking them off one by one.
That's it. That's the movie. You have to admire the straightforwardness of it even if everything else kind of sucks. The real crime here is how laughably bad the cops are. Even the one (John Saxon, RIP) who's good at this job still can't really do anything to keep these girls safe. So if you wanted to write a whole thing about the deeper meaning that women's safety is an illusion and power structures are kept in place that actively harm them at the expense of Men's Feelings, you could. Or you could, you know, BE a woman for five fucking minutes and know that to your bones.
But I want to talk about something super spoiler-y because it was the only interesting part to the whole movie so I'm going to put it in white text and you can highlight if you want to read it. SPOILERS HERE. So Final Girl Jess (Olivia Hussey) is being harassed by her asshole ex, Peter (Keir Dullea), because she dumped him and is planning on getting an abortion. The movie tries to pin the suspicion on Peter even though the audience knows it's not him. Here's the thing. When Jess finds the bodies of two other girls, she makes eye contact with the killer, who is behind the door. His eyes are brown/hazel. Peter later breaks in to the basement where Jess is hiding and she murders him with a fireplace poker. His eyes are blue. She knew he wasn't the murderer. She killed him on purpose because she knew she would get away with it and she knew he was never going to leave her alone. This is a woman who absolutely knew she was in danger on multiple fronts and took definitive action to reduce the threat to her person. We stan a legend. END SPOILERS.
On a fun personal anecdote, my mom told me about how there was a rash of obscene calling when she was working as a nurse. Some random dude was calling women just to breathe really heavily into the phone. It had happened to multiple nurses my mom worked with and one day, the phone rang and she picked it up. Heavy breathing. She told me "you were in the other room, screaming, I hadn't showered in three days, I was trying to heat your bottle, and here is this dude with some fantasy. All I could think was 'Buddy, if you could see me now' so I laughed." Dude hung up. Because there is nothing more dick-shriveling than a woman's laughter.
Anyway, it's currently streaming on Criterion, Amazon Prime, Tubi, Vudu, and YouTube.
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