When A Stranger Calls

Hi All,
I've been online for ten years now, writing for three, on various web pages and groups. So I've commented on Memorial Day before. I'll have to dig out one of my 'Memorial Day' posts from days past, to touch on that topic. For now I'll say, Happy Memorial Day to you all. My teammates and I are a bit miffed that we have to work today (Sunday) and tomorrow (Memorial Day). There's not much point in it, really. They've always done this, though, when I was in the Retail and then Service departments. "If the stores are open, we have to be open." So what happens? Retail and Service are finally closed, but I'm now on Innovations and we're supposed to be the test group, the elite group, so we have to be open. It's truly a waste of CC's money to pay us to be here for a few calls, but they do. So here I am.

I was off for three days last week though so I guess that makes up for it. My parents visited and we did some flower shopping with my aunt. It was more like, they did some flower shopping and I just looked and said, "Yeah, that's pretty."

Bean and I saw 'When A Stranger Calls' last Thursday. My memory is hazy on this but I remember a story, possibly an Alfred Hitchcock short (remember those? I loved those as a kid!), where a woman was upstairs and she kept getting these creepy calls. Eventually she learned that the call was coming from downstairs. That's all I remember, but I know it was creepy enough to scare me at the time. I can't say the same for the film 'When A Stranger Calls.' It was ironic, and funny-Bean got really scared by this movie and said, "We have to quit watching these things! My nerves can't take it!" Which was exactly what I said after 'Hostel.' She said she'd much rather see teens getting carved up like in 'Hostel' than see this film, which was tense only in that it was a girl alone in a house, with a killer.

She said the idea was what bothered her. (!!!) Odd that I laughed throughout the whole thing. Actually, we both laughed ourselves silly at a scene that was supposed to be scary. The premise was, as you may know from the original and the famous line: A young teenage girl babysits for strangers in a huge house while they go out for dinner. She gets repeated calls telling her to check the children and with lots of heavy breathing. Eventually she has police trace the call, and we get the famous line: "The call is coming from inside the house." So she runs up and checks the children (finally! This girl went all night without checking them once), and they're not there. I'll try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, so I won't go into great detail about how it all ends up for the heroine, but suffice it to say, this generic suspense film (I can't really call it 'horror' because it really wasn't) was mildy entertaining at best. There was some suspense as she walks around the dark house (these people don't know how to turn on a light!), and of course a friend visits, there's a live-in maid, and we all know how they're going to end up (not much of a spoiler). But the funny part, and if you do rent this for the heck of it, watch for these scenes that involve a black cat named Chester. Chester is supposed to creep us out, just being a black cat and scurrying across vinyl floors. That's the funny part. Bean and I are sitting there watching, and this cat scurries across the floor with what can only be described as tap shoes. I am not kidding! The sound effects were killing us. I guess the idea was that he's walking on his claws? Or we're hearing the pads of his feet? Either way, cats can't walk on claws, and their pads do not sound like someone doing tap. So after that laugh, I couldn't take it seriously. It was okay. I used to have a ratings system on my website; maybe I should start rating these things here too. Grade: C

I hope everyone's enjoying the beach or the cookouts.

Things I'd Have Done to Make 'Stranger' Better
1) Allow The Cute Boyfriend to come over and visit. Sure, he'd die, but at least I wouldn't have to look at teen girls the whole film.
2) Have the babysitter actually check in on the kids. I mean, that's why she's there!
3) Have the heroine say, "Enough with the deep breathing, you bastard."
4) Have the heroine say, "I sure am glad I agreed to babysit in this creepy house with a thousand halls."
5) Give Chester the cat a spotlight at the end, and say, "Hit it, Chester!"

Have a great day!