DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
Remember your old babysitter? She was skinny and dumpy, with too many school books and she coulda won the Miss Clearasil title hands down. Once your parents were gone, she couldnt wait to stuff you under the covers, raid the fridge for Creamsicles and yak to her dumb girl friend on the phone.
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More Bore Than Gore
DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
by Bduoard Dauphin
Remember your old babysitter? She was skinny and dumpy, with too many school books and she coulda won the Miss Clearasil title hands down. Once your parents were gone, she couldnt wait to stuff you under the covers, raid the fridge for Creamsicles and yak to her dumb girl friend on the phone. Remember how you wished you could torture her to death and teach her a lesson?
Your wishes come true in When A Stranger Calls, a new movie that depicts the ultimate baby sitters nightmare. Alone except for the kids in a darkened house, the sitter get threatening phone calk, hears creaking doors and footsteps on the stairs. A mans voice whispers: "I want to be covered with your blood." It seems like a lot for $1.50 an hour.
Things get worse. The sitter calk the cops and they dont believe her. The mad whisperer calls back: he k watching her every movement. After thinking it over for about five minutes, the sitter makes a run for it. If the Dauphin had been in her shoes, hed have been half way to Pittsburgh.
Which k where this picture deserves to be. Though it starts promisingly enough with the babysitter's dilemma, it quickly degenerates into a standard manhunt flick, complete with a determined, overweight private detective. In thk role, Charles Durning, looking as though he gulped down three Goodyear Steel-belted radiak for breakfast, reminds us of what Meatloaf will be like in another 20 years (if he slims down).
After an hour of fruitless chasing, the film comes full-circle. It is seven years later and the madman returns to terrorize the babysitter only—you guessed it—this time shes a mother with two brats of her own. Last time out he ripped the children to shreds, using nothing but his bare hands. Thk time hes considering more drastic methods. Maybe strapping them down in the playroom and forcing them to listen to the new Fabulous Poodles album.
A critic for one national magazine has been S quoted assaying When A Stranger Calls isthe c most terrifying show hes ever seen. Guess that % jerk has been raked on a diet of Dkney flicks, | though; for that matter, I thought The Hound That Thought He Was A Raccoon had a few shocks on this turkey.
When a stranger calls, hang up.
"There goes my eyeball, , Into your highball..." —from "Leprosy," perennial childrens street song.
Leprosy would almost be preferable to sitting through Eyeball, a recycled Spanish horror film currently getting a big U. S. push. Released in Europe a year ago as The Devil's Eye, its a poorly-dubbed mess thats about as scary as a visit to your local Vision Center. "You may never live to see the end of it," goes the movies ad copy. And its true: you may very well die of boredom.
Eyeball takes place in Barcelona and at times resembles a travelogue for that town. In fact, it wouldnt be surprising to learn the producer had incorporated 15 minutes of footage from the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce. Which is enough to make you want to rip his eyes out.
And thats what this picture is really all about. An eyeball-gouging maniac terrorizes a group of American tourists visiting Spain, wreaking havoc on sight organs while flamenco guitars play. In other words, If Its Tuesday, This Must Be My Cornea.
The busload of Ugly America ns hails from Burlington, Vermont, so right from the beginning, you have no sympathy for them at all. During the course of the movie, three of them have their retinas forcibly extracted and four more bite the dust in less extravagant fashion. Do the surviving New Englanders ever consider quitting the tour or asking their travel agent for a refund? Nope, for them its Europe On Five Optic Nerves A Day.
Theyre a motley crew. A boorish businessman who wears Hawaiian shirts. A bearded, impotentexecutive. His unsatisfied, bitchy wife. A sinister priest; An interrada I lesbian couple that are enough to make heterosexuality seem chic. I kept waiting for Karl Malden to step into the film and steal aU of their wallets.
Ever seen those phony eyeballs they sell in joke and novelty shops? The ones that look like white marbles with painted-on pupils? Youll spot a lot of them in this flick. A woman even palms a bloody one out of her own socket, smiling toothily and licking her lips. Its enough to make you give up pimentos.
Skip Eyeball. Stay home and roll your own. %
