HOLD THE PHONE

Sometimes I think that not only does everyone have a cell phone, they are all talking on them at the same time. They say lots of young people don’t even bother with land line phones any more (so how will we find them in the phone book?) Well, there haven’t always been mobile phones. I thought it would be fun to look at some very good movies that depend on the plot device of a land line phone. Warning to young people- (to me that’s anyone under 50) you must keep thinking: THERE ARE NO CELL PHONES!

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) is one heckuva thriller written, scored and  directed by not-yet-famous John Carpenter with actors you’ve never heard of. Precinct 13 in Los Angeles is scheduled for closing and has only a skeleton staff. But cops from there kill several members of the Street Thunder gang. The gang vows revenge and launches an all-out attack on the building. They cut the phone lines and the electricity and those inside must fend for themselves as there’s no way to summons help. For want of a phone, okay? There is a 2005 version with Lawrence Fishburne and in that one somehow the cell phones are jammed (?). Anyway, it’s not as good. 

Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder (1954) is a cracker jack suspenser with Ray Milland, Grace Kelly and Bob Cummings. The plot hangs on a telephone call to pull  Ms. Kelly into the living room where the killer awaits. But things do not go as planned because the phone call is mistimed. The story also depends on a hidden key and who does or doesn’t know where it is. That’s all I’ll tell!

The phone gimmick in The Spiral Staircase (1946) is not that the phone doesn’t work, but that the endangered young woman (Dorothy McGuire) in the creepy old house is unable to speak because she’s been traumatized by the death of her parents. As the killer advances, the suspense builds. For God’s sake, say something!

The Lives of Others (2006) is a German film made well after the wall came down. It chronicles the East German Secret Police’s tapping the phones of a prominent playwright and keeping him under surveillance. He knows they’re doing this and his efforts to avoid their attention is riveting. 

The Telephone (1988) features Whoopi Goldberg who may or may not be making a bunch of prank calls on her land line phone, and the phone company’s efforts to repossess her phone. It’s not that good, but I’m running out of phone movies. 

All of the films in this article are available on DVD. All are for adults.