When a Stranger Calls / Happy Birthday to Me Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

When a Stranger Calls / Happy Birthday to Me Blu-ray Movie Review

Stalker Two-fer

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 7, 2013

When a Stranger Calls occupies a permanent place of honor in the horror hall of fame for its opening twenty minutes, which writer-director Fred Walton originally made as a short film and then expanded into a feature after the success of John Carpenter's Halloween. The simple device of an isolated young woman receiving threatening phone calls from an unidentified voice has such classic appeal that Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson used it to kick off their genre parody Scream nearly twenty years later. The famous question they asked of Drew Barrymore—"Do you like scary movies?"—was the self-referential equivalent of Stranger's original, oft-repeated query: "Have you checked the children?"

One's reaction to Happy Birthday to Me (hereafter, "HBtM") no doubt depends on what one wants from a slasher film. If you're looking for elaborately staged executions of scantily clad and misbehaving teens, the film will disappoint. The deaths are widely spaced, and the buckets of blood that director J. Lee Thompson reportedly tossed around the set had to be toned down to obtain an R rating. (Copies of the uncut version are rumored to exist for those willing to search and pay the price.) If you crave a tautly edited, unrelenting turn of the suspenseful screws à la John Carpenter's Halloween, HBtM can't deliver that either. It has way too much plot, and its suspense rises and falls in waves as it gradually reveals its story in layers.

What HBtM has going for it—and why I consider it a minor classic—is a distinctively loopy originality, a kind of determination, just one year after the original Friday the 13th and three years after Halloween, not to fall into the slasher formula that would generate so many routine sequels for the next two decades and well into the next century. Instead, director Thompson tried to make a slasher movie as if it were the kind of thriller with which he'd had such success when he made the original Cape Fear nineteen years earlier. Admittedly, a somewhat different skill set was required, especially with the credibility-straining script penned by John Saxton (who wrote the original story) and several other scribes, and the last-minute decision to change the ending after most of principal photography had been completed. But Thompson, no matter how cheesy some of his projects turned out to be, remained an old-fashioned storyteller. He always tried to ensure that his characters had reasons for their actions, no matter how convoluted they might be.

For a discussion of When a Stranger Calls, see the When a Stranger Calls Blu-ray review.

For a discussion of Happy Birthday to Me, see the Happy Birthday to Me Blu-ray review.

When a Stranger Calls / Happy Birthday to Me Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

For a discussion of When a Stranger Calls, see the When a Stranger Calls Blu-ray review.

For a discussion of Happy Birthday to Me, see the Happy Birthday to Me Blu-ray review.

When a Stranger Calls / Happy Birthday to Me Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For a discussion of When a Stranger Calls, see the When a Stranger Calls Blu-ray review.

For a discussion of Happy Birthday to Me, see the Happy Birthday to Me Blu-ray review.

When a Stranger Calls / Happy Birthday to Me Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This disc contains no extras for either film.

When a Stranger Calls / Happy Birthday to Me Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Mill Creek has done a remarkably good job with these two minor classics of the slasher genre, each of which, in its own way, kicks against the genre's limitations. For that reason alone, both are worth owning, and in the case of Stranger for the additional reason that it has inspired many of the filmmakers who came after it. Highly recommended, as long as you're not expecting buckets of blood.