If someone randomly picked up this movie they would probably dismiss it as a cross between When a Stranger Calls and Halloween. Too bad this little Canadian movie came out years before both of them. This is the movie on which every traditional slasher movie is based; this is the first unless you count Psycho.

A mysterious stranger decides to climb a trellis outside a sorority house, hide out in the attic, then kill girls and make obscene phone calls. That’s pretty much it. You never see the killer; there is no big reveal where reasons for everything come in, there’s just a killer doing what he wants (or has?) to do. The only thing you ever see of the killer is his eye and what a heart pounding chilling scene THAT is!

Our films heroine is played by the young and beautiful Olivia Hussey who beats Jamie Lee hands down for her screaming ability. Margot Kidder plays a drunken trash talking sorority sister who provides most of the movies hilarity. Everyone’s favorite cop John Saxon plays a cop. Mr. Saxon to this day still talks in interviews about how much he likes this movie.

I have to talk about the obscene phone calls the killer makes. If I had even got one of those calls I would have all my phones unplugged and be out of the house in ten minutes. They are one of the creepiest most disturbing things I have ever heard. The killer makes all kinds of noises and voices from barnyard animals to little kids and women, topped off with his own chillingly calm voice telling those on the other line that he’s going to kill them. It was some freaky, freaky shit. Think of Dr. Freudstein’s voice in House by The Cemetery crossed with Brad Dourif’s in Exorcist 3 and you’ll have an idea.

If you’re going to watch this movie and I hope you will, you must keep something in mind. Obviously this whole movie has been done, done, and redone many times. Everything they yap about in Scream is here. You must keep reminding yourself that this movie came out before any of this stuff became cliché and overdone. A few times I caught myself thinking, “Oh like THAT hasn’t been done to death”, but when this movie was made it hadn’t been done at all! Honestly I feel bad for the guys who did this movie because they deserved much more recognition than they got. If you’re a fan, especially a slasher fan, you must see this movie.

8 out of 10 times they can show the same dead body and still have it be freaky as hell