Murder by Phone

On paper this sounds pretty uninspiring, but 'Bells' turns out to be an ingenious idea well-executed (a bit like Didier Grousset's 'Kamikaze' [1986] in reverse), that reunites the director and composer of 'The Quiller Memorandum'.

The script vaguely recalls 'Quatermass 2', is lively, quite witty in places and generous to the supporting characters (Gary Reineke, in particular, is visibly enjoying himself as the police lieutenant, who gets to develop as the film progresses), the Toronto locations are well used, and it all builds up to a satisfyingly explosive climax. One can nit-pick - Richard Chamberlain gets a lot of lucky breaks looking for information - but it certainly makes you pay attention every time yet another 'phone rings; did every single phone in Toronto - even the Mickey Mouse ones - have exactly the same ring tone in 1980, by the way?

Canadian horror film starring Richard Chamberlain as a professor out to prove a conspiracy exists in a huge phone company as they cover up a mad killer that uses high-pitch frequencies on the phone to kill people. The movie resembles Coma with its thriller-like atmosphere and its one person against the world protagonist. As thrillers go, the film is pretty enjoyable, although it is definitely short on logic. You really will need to suspend some disbelief here. Michael Anderson directs(quite a ways down from directing Around the World in Eighty Days if you ask me...which you didn't) with some polish and flair, using the materials he is given to their best. John Houseman is somewhat wasted in the film, but his verbal reparte with Chamberlain is quite amusing. Chamberlain is adequate in the lead. The special effects are...well, not too impressive. Some of the death scenes are over-acted and over-directed, and unintentionally amusing.

"Bells" looks like an average and routine 80's slasher but you should know to expect a little bit extra from the talented director of "Logan's Run"; Michael Anderson. And indeed, only a couple of minutes into the film and already it turned out that my impressions and expectations towards this film were entirely wrong and I was in for a pleasant surprise. "Bells" isn't a teen slasher movie at all (despite the VHS cover art and the cheesy sounding alternate title "Murder by Phone") but a fairly well plotted thriller that even shows the ambition to question the reliability of gigantic enterprises and refer to government conspiracies. How many "Friday the 13th" rip-offs can righteously claim to have done that? Richard Chamberlain stars as university professor and environmentalist Nat Bridger who privately investigates the bizarre death of one of his former students. The poor girl turns out to be the first victim of a maniac who developed a method to kill people over the phone (!) by sending an extremely high level of voltage through the speaker. Don't ask me to explain the technical aspects, but the victims start to shake and bleed from eyes & ears before getting catapulted in the air by an explosion! Not exactly tasteful but original and very entertaining to look at! This killing modus operandi as well as the further development of the "whodunit" storyline is often very implausible and silly, but you easily look past these flaws simply because the pace is exciting and the suspense-sequences are extremely intense. The film's only real disadvantage is that the scenery has severely dated by now and that some of the observations in the script turned out very exaggerated (for example, the phone company tour guide's estimation that there will be 1.4 trillion phones by the year 2000). Perhaps, this even is a rare example of a horror film that would actually profit from a remake! I'm convinced that some of the nowadays scriptwriters can come up with nifty ideas when re-working this premise into a story that revolves on mobile phones, teleconference attributes or web cams. Class actor Chamberlain is adequate in the lead, but the best performances are delivered by Sara Botsford as his love-interest and Gary Reineke as the obnoxious police detective.

Given the title, you would expect 'Murder by Phone' to be a silly eighties slasher style flick...and that's actually more or less what it is. The most notable thing about this film is definitely the killer's modus operandi. Most slashers simply feature some guy with a knife, but the killer in this film has decided to go a step further than that and had developed a way to use an ordinary telephone as a murder weapon! Obviously, the whole thing comes off as being more than a little bit silly, but the way that the murders are carried out is amusing enough. The plot centres on these murders and takes the form of an investigative thriller, as our hero, Nat Bridger, begins looking into the death of one of his students. The film is never really all that interesting, but at least it's not boring and there's usually another murder scene just around the corner anyway; though unfortunately, they are pretty much the same. Director Michael Anderson does manage some fairly good moments of suspense, a couple of major characters have close calls (no pun intended) when speaking on the phone and there are various other bits and bobs to keep us interested. I can't say that this is a brilliant film, but it's at least worth a look.

Richard Chamberlin makes for an amiable hero in this idiosyncratic Canadian shocker. He plays Nat Bridger, an idealistic, ecologically aware lecturer who eventually discovers through diligent investigation, somewhat incredulously, that a nefarious individual has manufactured a monstrously effective device that turns the once prosaic phone into a conduit of agonizing death! Includes nice support from John Houseman as his crotchety mentor, whose amenable exterior may conceal ulterior motives. 'Bells' might seem to have an entirely implausible premise, but nonetheless manages to coalesce into an efficient, and highly entertaining, early 80s horror; which is lent considerable verisimilitude by Richard Chamberlin's earnest performance. 'Bells' comes highly recommended. 'The very next time the telephone rings, might it in reality be the tolling of your imminent death!'