Don't Hang Up

In Director S.F. Brownrigg's DON'T HANG UP, Amanda Post (Susan Bracken) returns to her ailing grandmother's house, 13 years after her mother was murdered there. Amanda finds her grandmother near death, and a group of unsavory townsfolk seemingly up to no good.

It's not long before she starts receiving some disturbing phone calls, while someone lurks about the place, watching her through cracks and holes in the walls. Murder abounds as the killer's identity and motives are slowly revealed.

While not the best horror movie ever made, it's enjoyable enough, and has an unusual / unexpected twist at the end. It's also fun to watch for actors from other Brownrigg movies, such as DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT...

Don't Open The Door comes from S.F. Brownrigg who made the equally bizarre Don't Look in the Basement which has become a drive-in/grindhouse/cheapie VHS and DVD staple for years. While this film doesn't have exactly the same kind of manic, low budget energy that film has, it has enough charms of its own to make it worth a watch.

Don't Open the Door follows a young woman who returns home to the house where her mother was murdered and begins receiving strange, obscene phone calls from a psycho who wants her dead.

The acting, much like Basement, is enthusiastic but amateur hour. No one is really awful, but no one is exactly brilliant either. You get the feeling that you're watching the area's most competent community theatre actors having a good time. The concept is solid, but the suspense and scares seem to be put on the backburner until towards the end of the film, which gives us a lot of time to watch the leading lady take a bath or go exploring the house, which isn't terribly exciting.

Where Don't Open the Door excels is with the creepy phone calls and the mood. The phone calls are perhaps some of the genre's creepiest and most unsettling. It also manages to produce a fairly haunting ending.

With a little more effort put into the script, pacing, and scares, this one could have been a contender, but as is, it's an interesting regional time capsule. It's worth seeing once.

I have a great affection for 70s rednexploitation/hicksploitation films, so my rating for this film may be a bit inflated in comparison to viewers who do not enjoy the likes of "Gator," "Walking Tall," or "Cockfighter." The story follows a young woman who moves into her grandmother's house only to find herself stalked by a madman. A madman with a creepy doll collection, which later figures into why he's stalking her. "Don't Open the Door" is an oddball low budget horror film that's best described an Italian Giallo crossed with "The Town That Dreaded Sundown." It has the low budget drive-in rural east Texas feel of a Charles B. Pierce film, but it also has some hints of Dario Argento and Mario Bava with colorful lighting schemes, inventive camera angles, and a whole lot of extreme close-ups. However, director S.F. Brownrigg is no Argento or Bava (or Pierce, for that matter) and this is certainly no "Bird with the Crystal Plumage." Still, the film does have some effectively creepy moments (including a creepy montage of dolls over the opening credits), but there's no escaping how amateurishly made the film is (and by amateurishly made, I mean badly made).

An eerie low budget shocker that features a lot of the horror/thriller standbys such as creepy phone calls, a young woman returning to a scary childhood home, and lots of frightening mannequins. Performances are stagey and pitched a little too high but it all adds to the charm.

I admit it. I love this film. True, it has it's drawbacks...like how in many scenes you hear a lot of camera noise and see the boom mike popping up here and there. Also, this thing is real low-budget. However, the acting is retty good (especially from Susan Bracken) and there are some scenes that are really chilling. The plot deals with a curvaceous blonde named Amanda returning to her hometown to care for her sick grandmother. Years ago her mother was stabbed to death there by an unknown slasher. Once she is back at the house, a freaked out transvestite starts axing random folks and calling Amanda, seducing her and whispering perverse lines over the phone. The music is cheesy but good and there are some really creepy scenes involving dolls and a lot of twisted little touches. The gore is low and the ending is somewhat disappointing, but overall this movie is quite watchable.