To this day, this obscure movie from 1987 has not been released on DVD yet (and no, definitely not on Bluray too) to the best of my knowledge. It seems to be a “forgotten” movie, probably its commercial value is not deemed high enough for a modern much needed re-release. I’ve got an old copy originally from an US VHS tape.
As the movie begins we see a man spying on a woman who is fueling her car. She drives to her home and underway home she finds a car parked in the woods, she opens its compartment and finds two broken dolls… Yikes! She gets scared and quickly exits the car and drives to her home.
While she is cooking and doing stuff, we see she lives alone, while she has family pictures on the wall. It’s obvious she used to have a child and a husband living with her. When the woman takes a bath, we see an older male spying again, she feels somehow she is being watched and gets a bit afraid. She gets to the phone and apparently is calling her daughter and chat-chats with her. The conversation gets awkward when she says “It’s going to be fine this time, you’ll see Allison. You’re going to be proud of mommy, what mommy is going to do. Say your prayers”.
While walking around the house she find out her car got a flat wheel unexpectedly (she just drove with it a few hours ago after all). Still, she decides to continue the cooking of a big meal. Then someone’s knocking on the door. She apparently is waiting for someone and happily opens the door. She is visually disappointed when she realizes it was a stranger, an older man, who knocked on the door. He asks her if he can get in to make a phone-call to the garage because his car broke. The girl seems confused and says she is expecting company and doesn’t want to let the man in, but finally, after giving it a long thought, decides hesitatingly to let the man in anyway.
This is the start of one of the most awkward movies I have ever watched. I can’t remember ever watching a different movie which really only have a cast of two persons. There are absolutely no extras, nor any other actors or actresses in the movie, not even in the background (we don’t even hear other person talking on various phone-calls that are made). For 90 minutes you are only looking at and especially listening to dialogue of those two people. Even their names are not mentioned once, also the end-credits just mention “The girl” and “The caller”, which I thought was a brilliant detail.
While introducing himself, the girl notices the man is not saying the truth and soon she notices the man knows the phone-number of the nearby garage at the top of his head which she think is weird. He also seems to know the address of the house, while she notices that the street sign has been taken away a long time ago. This analyzing and confronting goes on and on, and it’s getting scarier by the minute, for example at one point he even mentions the name of her daughter, while she never mentioned it once. As the movie progresses we find out more and more about her very troubled pasts. It’s apparent the woman has a very troubled, traumatic past. From early on it is getting harder and harder to find out who is telling the truth though… or whether they are both telling lies about their lives. It’s almost like they knowingly are living their fake lives and both try too hard to hide it for each other (so much that it’s obvious to both of them that they’re lying). The man is behaving as a stalker and at one point she suggests he might be a murderer or private detective. She decides he has to leave the house to wait outside on the person of the garage who is supposed to fix his car. He leaves, but the next day they meet again unexpectedly in the nearby village though.
The Caller is a very unusual psychological thriller, for the most part completely dialog-driven. That makes it hard to review, especially as I don’t want to spoil anything. Some very strange events take place and some very weird things happen along the way, but I decided not to write detailed about these events here, although it’s very hard for me not to do not so 
Let’s just say these scenes are… unexpected. I probably wouldn’t have believed the reviewer it if I had read a review who spoiled those things If you can find the movie, you’ll probably never forget the ending scene 
Reading the Internet Movie Database entry of the male actor, Malcolm McDowell, it’s suggesting this movie was recorded while he was experiencing serious alcoholic and drugs problem and he only could get signed to B-movies as a result. Prior to this he starred in movies like A Clockwork Orange (by Stanley Kubrick) and several other better-known movies. I thought his performance in this movie was marvelous though, he really behaves like a scary person who is trying hard to hide something and visually panics for a very short time every time when he is being confronted with his own lies. Malcolm McDowell later featured in Star Trek movies and more recently took the role of Dr Loomis in the Halloween remake. The girl , played by Madolyn Smith Osborne, was in “2010″ (the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey) prior to this movie and after it had some roles in various TV movies/series. This movie was directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman, who directed dozens of other TV-movies and TV-series episodes both prior and after this movie.
This is a dark movie and probably one of the most unique (or absurd, in a positive way?) movies I personally know of, but overall is quite well done. It’s a movie you’ll have to watch a few times, you’ll understand it a bit better the more times you see it. And you’ll understand some references that make little sense the first time. I like it, probably especially since it’s so unconventional. This movie couldn’t probably have been made in the form it was nowadays, it’s taking too much time to build up (to today’s standards) and most of the audience would have been getting bored way too early in the movie. It’s almost a million miles away from the usual movies you’ll see on TV or at the theater these days and that alone makes it a unique experience.
