NOT AT ALL WHAT YOU'RE EXPECTING! OK, so one look at that poster and you'd be excused for thinking "Oh, another "WHEN A STRANGER CALLS" type of horror movie. Admittedly, that's what I thought. But it is sooooooooooooooooooo much more than that. Richard Stringham's 2+ hour first feature is remarkably not like any other horror film I've seen . . . and yet a little like all of them! That's because there's SO much going on in this movie that it leaves a viewer feeling almost as dizzy as the lead character often feels. That lead character is a teenager named MorganMacKenzie (impressively played by Jordan Phipps) who is a troubled teen that's been in and out of rehab and has just been grounded when her father came home and caught her going down on her boyfriend! Morgan's mother has died in the past year (we get to see her ghost . . . or do we?) and Dad (Kristof Waltermire)
is going out to dinner with his "Queen Bitch" girlfriend Brynn (Carmen Patterson in a marvelous, over-the-top "queen bitch" performance). All Morgan is required to do is give Gramma her medication and not have any boys over. Of course, once Dad leaves, Morgan immediately strips down to her bra and panties and does copious amounts of different drugs and alcohol!
The MacKenzie house is very large and affluently-appointed but, for some reason, the room which Gramma is kept locked inside at the top of the house looks like something out of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE -- decrepit bare wooden walls and floors covered with live tarantulas, rats and giant cockroaches. Of course, throughout the whole movie we have to wonder if we're really seeing this or if it's a drug-induced hallucination by Morgan. However, at no point in the movie is it really implied any of this is not really happening. I believe the director doesn't intend that and that all this trippiness IS actually happening. That's what makes this movie so much fun! It is filled with so many horror tropes and twists and turns that there really IS never a dull moment. And again, this movie is over 2 hours long!
So, not only is Gramma (Janis Duley) scabrous and coughing up blood all over her nightgown-front but also not in her right mind. That's why she's kept locked up in the attic! On the way up to the attic, the walls of the stairway are covered with GIANT framed photos of Morgan's dead mother. Which sometimes change into rotting corpses. At various points, Morgan receives bizarre, disturbing phone calls on her Dad's bright red rotary phone (!) . . . . (a la BLACK CHRISTMAS), is drugged and raped (or is she???) during a visit from her boyfriend and then encounters her Dad's business associate Barry (wonderfully creepy Greg Fallon) knocking on the door. All this is probably only halfway through the movie!!!! The film continues to escalate into insanely bizarre horror movie territory!
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| Hey, does that upholstery pattern look familiar to you??? |
Jordan Phipps turns in a very impressive performance; and NOT just because she spends most of the movie running around half-naked! In fact, she manages to overcome that rather silly script requirement and STILL turn in a great performance. Phipps is in almost every scene of this 2 hour + movie and it must've been exhausting (although by all accounts she had a wonderful time doing it).
Greg Fallon also deserves praise for his impressively slimy and quite disturbing performance as Barry. And as mentioned, Carmen Patterson is a Disney witch come to life while Janis Duley's Gramma . . . is ALSO a Disney witch come to life -- Duley is the old hag that gives SNOW WHITE the poison apple while Patterson is her counterpart evil Queen with the mirror mirror on the wall. The female actors (as well as Greg Fallon) are where the acting chops can be found in this film. I was actually shocked and surprised at just how much I enjoyed CLOSE CALLS since the totally misleading poster doesn't give a clue as to what the viewer is in for!
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