Join us in this special tribute episode of Two Guys in a Chainsaw as we dive into ‘Murder by Phone’ (1982). We bring a mix of nostalgia and critique as we explore this lesser-known horror flick starring Richard Chamberlain, who passed away this year.

From amusing kill scenes to dated technology, we give you an in-depth look at what makes this movie both charming and painfully slow. Plus, a special listener shout-out and a fun discussion on vintage phones! Tune in for our honest review and see if this film is worth a watch—or a skip.

Here is a comparison between the original (titled “Bells”) and the USA-released cut of “Murder By Phone”. Check the description to jump to the edited parts.

Episode 445, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, today we are doing a film that I chose. This is mainly a tribute to Richard Chamberlain, long time American actor slash heartthrob slash singer, who really made his. Name in the sixties on a television show called Dr. Kilder. Mm-hmm. It’s like a medical drama. He was just the handsome, dashing Dr.

Kilder, who saved lives and solved problems. And then, you know, went on to be in a lot of television, a lot of movies. I remember him most. From this film that my dad take took me to see in the movie theater in 1985 called King Solomon’s Mines. Did you ever see that that was a Canon movie that was meant to be sort of an Indiana Jones knockoff, or just trying, they were trying to start.

A franchise and they did two of them and they didn’t do very well. He later talked about how he thought he was kind of tricked into doing it because the budget was so lousy and there were a lot of famous people involved, but they, some of them were phoning it in. Some of them, the director was clearly just kind barely even there, and so it was a very disappointing experience for him.

The movie got terrible reviews, but when I was a kid, I remembered it being kind of a cool movie. And then as an adult, I went back to see it and I was like, yeah, I can see this is very, very dated, but this film we’re doing, I saw when I was a kid on tv. Now I dunno about you, but I have these movies that I caught when I was a kid and then forever for the rest of my life, I’m remembering it and wondering what movie was that for us?

One of those movies we did was Burnt Offerings. Because, yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. Both of us also had that about The Red Room or whatever. Yes. After School Special was that we talked about. 

Todd: We finally managed to track it down and actually watch it after all those years. This was one of those movies when I first caught this movie on television and I probably came in in the middle of it.

I was so entranced and freaked out by it. The movie is called Murder by Phone from 1982. 82. And I, I was terrified by this idea that there’s this guy who could, with just the push of a button, zap people through their phone and kill them. And I think that the, the kill scenes also kind of shocked me at the time as well.

So this is a movie that I had this gone back to look for. And you would think that murder by phone would be the easiest. Thing to find. I was looking up dial M for murder and murder this, and phone this and that. And I never, until about a couple years ago, found this film Murder by phone. And then, uh, when he died, I instantly was like, Craig, if we’re gonna do a tribute to this guy, I really want to do this movie.

It’s, it really is one of the few horror movies that he was in. And, uh, it just left such a deep impression on me, and it turned out to be kind of hard to find. I found it on YouTube. Yeah, it’s on YouTube, but it’s not a very good copy. No, it’s not. It’s ripped straight from the VHS. This has never gotten a proper like DVD Remastering or anything like that, but we were able to find it and I don’t know, had you ever seen or heard of this before?

No. 

Craig: No, I never heard of it. At all. Richard Chamberlain, I don’t really know a whole lot about him. Frankly. The thing that I know him from is he did a one episode guest appearance on Will and Grace, and I think that he was kind of making fun of himself, but he, he didn’t appear as himself, but he was.

Elderly, and, and that’s what he played. Like he played this, this really, really elderly gay guy that the other men on the show felt, we need to look out for him. You know, like these elder gays, you know, they paved the way, you know, we’ve, we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta take care of them now. But, but he was just very annoying and clingy and I think, I think as it turned out, he was.

Really not a good person. Like I don’t remember if he was racist or like something there see was something, and so eventually they were like, no, fuck you. But it was cute to see him play an elder gay ’cause he was right. He, he was a gay guy. But you know, of course in Hollywood, in his heyday, that’s just something that.

You didn’t talk about it. You know, leading men had to work to keep that quiet if they wanted to maintain their careers. And he did for a long time. He didn’t come out, I think he came out in like 2003 or something like that. Yeah. He wrote, he 

Todd: also wrote a book about his personal life, I think as a gay man.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And I, and, and I think that he was in a long-term, committed relationship with another man. And so, and, and like, but like you said. He was this big heartthrob and I went back and for purposes of research Okay. Looked at, looked at, looked at some old, like shirtless pictures of him. And, uh, he was a good looking guy.

He really was a good looking guy. Yeah. The, he’s, you know, I, I don’t have any idea how old he is in this movie. He’s like in his 

Todd: forties. He’s pretty, but pretty close to our age now. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. He, and he, he still looks great. I mean, I, God, I wish I was in the shape that he was in at that time. I wish now I was in that shape and I’m certainly not.

He looks good. I don’t know. It, it, he’s in a period I think in his life where he’s got like a big bushy beard and, yeah. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t personally find it appealing. You like the clean cut 1960s, uh, Richard Chamberlain. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I myself have not shaved my face in probably five years, so I get it.

I get the appeal of a beard, but, ah, it just wasn’t working for me. Nor was this movie. I hated this. Did you? Yeah. Hated it. Absolutely. It was painful to watch. I started trying to watch it last night and I was very tired. It had been a very long day. 

Todd: Oh, that’s not good. 

Craig: A great day. It, it was a, it was a, a great day, a great day of friends and family, but I also, I managed to incorporate alcohol into all of that.

And so my, my nine o’clock at night when I got home, I was so tired. Like I had told myself like, it’s fine, I’ll, you know. I’ll watch it tonight. I have plenty of time, but I got home at nine o’clock and I was so tired and I put it on and I watched like 20 minutes of it and I just gave up. I’m like, I can’t do this.

Mm. I got, so I got up at six 30 this morning. To finish it so that we could talk about it. And that was fun too. God bless you.

Todd: I don’t think this is, I mean, I agree. The least you can say about this movie is it’s a slow burn. It’s not. Action packed. It’s more of a thriller mystery in a way than just a, I know, 

Craig: but like, who cares? Like this guy is just killing people over the phone. Okay, so, so a guy, I mean, we can talk about specifics or whatever, but the premise is some mysterious guy who, nobody knows who it is.

It’s just calling people seemingly at random. Pushing a button and then they’ve explode and that’s it. What 

Todd: I know, it was terrifying when I was a kid and oh my God, it’s hard to believe it’s rated R. It is, yeah. I suppose for the time, maybe the blood and it felt very much to me like a made for TV movie.

I know. I was thinking the same thing and I kept going back to see if it was, and it wasn’t. This was Shot Canada. 

Craig: I can’t believe it was rated R. It seems, this seems like something that would’ve. Been a movie of the week or, right, like you said it, it’s much more like a thriller. Yeah, it, it’s far more like that than horror.

Todd: Well, people have called it like a slasher esque type movie, except the slashing is done through the telephone. And I can get that idea. There’s a person out there who is targeting specific people, except for the first one we learn is targeting specific people and taking them out and you know, they’re dying in these horrible ways.

One right after the other. As the mystery grows, this guy is tracking it down. It was shot in 1980, like two years before it was released in the States, and it was called Bells Up there, and it was actually longer than this. I know. Did you find So I found a no. 

Craig: I, I can’t imagine. No. It’s like I, I, I, I read that too.

I read that like 17 minutes were cut. I’m like, are you kidding me? Like when they were cutting that 17 minutes, why didn’t they cut the other 90 like, so boring. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Tell tell me about the deleted stuff. 

Todd: I wonder, I wonder if, if you had been kind of fresh when you watched this and not at all tired, if you might’ve had more patience for it, or you might’ve found some charm in it like I did.

I thought the movie was very retro. I mean, because it’s a film of its time, and I liked the ideas that they had in the movie. They were so charmingly, quaint. They were like. Three different things that are charmingly quaint about this. Number one is the simplicity of the story. It’s so textbook this guy finds himself in this mystery who’s just like this college professor who is expert.

Yeah, but why? 

Craig: Why is he even involved? And I don’t even understand that. Like he’s like an environmentalist professor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who gets pulled into this telephone murder? Like 

Todd: what? The first person who’s murdered is one of his former students who had gone. Who he had sent to New York. So it’s hard to maybe pick up because it’s just a little bit in the beginning where he meets up with this farmer guy who is the father of the woman who dies.

But the, the first thing we see in the movie is this woman, uh, she’s on a subway platform. She kind of stumbles an old bag they call Bag Lady. That’s what we used to say about homeless people. We would call them terrible things like bag ladies kind of is there and kind of helps her out. The phone starts to ring a public phone.

Another charming thing on this pillar, which by the way, there are like four public phones on this one pillar alone, and every other pillar on this platform has at least two public phones posted to it. I thought, my God, do you remember that? 

Craig: Uh, yes. Yes, I do. And that’s what I was gonna ask you. I I, in America, I know that you visit from time to time, so it’s not like you’re totally ignorant of what things are like over here.

But, uh, no, payphones they just don’t exist anymore. Yeah. Of, I mean, they, they used to be ubiquitous. They were everywhere. Of course, there were were phones everywhere. Yeah. And now they’re just gone. They just don’t exist. Is there, is that, is it the same way in China? Yeah, nobody’s got a payphone here. 

Todd: There are some little phone booths that around the city.

When I first got here in 2016 and there was big news that they were kind of converting them into little, they were gonna try to convert them into little wifi stations. I don’t think that happened, but they, they did that in Japan. As well. When I was living in Japan in 2001 to 2004, people were still using payphones, but they were kind of going out out the door.

And I don’t think in the US we were really, it’s been at least 25 years since any of us have probably seriously thought about using a payphone. I, I used to carry a quarter. In my wallet. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Just, just in case, you know, you had to call home. Me too. It was crazy. 

Craig: Me too. And, and that’s, you know, I don’t know, most people have cell phones now, but I think of payphones kind of the same way that I think of like public libraries.

Like they’re just kind of, they were one of those kind of great equalizers, like mm-hmm. Virtually anybody could. Scrape up a quarter if they needed to make a call. 

Todd: Yeah, and it’s almost like a have and have not type situation. Like maybe people couldn’t afford a phone in their house, or maybe they only had one line when really they should have had two or three or something like that.

You know, public phone, like you said, everybody could use it. And people would take calls on public phones. I mean, you see it in old movies, right? Where uh, public phone actually has a number that you can call and you could say, Hey, I’ll be at the phone at such and such time. Please give me a call and then tell me the way to the library or whatever you need.

You know, or tell me where to find you, that kind of thing. I mean, it’s so 

Craig: nuts. What do you think? I can this, think about it, talk about this. I, I could talk about this all day, like, I know, right? And I, I’m far more interested in the, in this than the movie, but like, like payphones, like, you know, like you could call your parents collect and, and they could just not take, but like.

They could not accept the charges, but they would know you were okay. You know what I mean? Yeah, 

Todd: exactly. Oh, we used to do, oh, there’s so much we could talk about in the, in the context of this movie, I was making furious notes about charming, little retro things that I forgot because the whole overarching idea of this movie is that the phone company is kind of the villain.

There’s setting the phone company up to be like this all powerful, all controlling corporation. Satellite bounces, 

Paul: microwave relay, international communications, time lag. All the calculations are made from this room. By the year 2000, there will be 1.4 trillion phones in the world, including cable switches, long distance facilities.

The cost will amount to approximately $1,000 per phone. That’s what I call an industry. 

Todd: I mean, it’s a dated idea and it’s really cute and quaint, but really it’s just a modern day parallel of our internet companies now, or Facebook or something like that, just for the time. And it seems especially quaint because of how limited that would be, you know, a phone company.

But like there’s a point at which they threaten the, the boss of the phone company is threatened to have like a, we’ll shut you down. And he says stuff like, what would you do then if, if all these people needed to call the doctor, how many lives would be. Lost for emergencies and you’re not gonna dare to shut me down for one minute.

You know, this kind of thing. And I, I was thinking about it as I’m watching it, and there’s quite a bit of phone porn in here too, because every phone in this movie is different. The physical phone. Mm-hmm. It’s got these very dramatic closeups of phones ringing. It has to be. ’cause the whole movie’s about it and like one person’s phone is that classic, you know, touchtone one, one person’s phone is this classic dial one.

The woman’s got this what we thought were like the cool like sleek, eighties phone that just looked like a dildo. It looks like a dildo 

Craig: standing up. Right. My notes too, like her phone is a dildo standing upright on a table. The base of it is like balls. It just, and, and it just. Sticks up like a curved, erect penis on the table.

That was nuts. 

Todd: At the same time. I remember those. I mean, we didn’t have that one. I do not. I remember seeing that style of phone and thinking how cool it was because it was so modern. ’cause you, you couldn’t even see the dial on. Right. You lift it up and underneath the base is 

Craig: where the dial is for you to dial.

Well that was funny to me too, like, and that’s how you like. Hung it up. Like you just sit it down and that Yeah. Hanging out and then you pick it up. Oh my gosh, that dildo phone was my favorite part of the movie. One girl has a Mickey Mouse phone. Yes. She gets killed by the Mickey Mouse phone. And it’s so funny, like, I don’t remember any details about this.

I don’t like, I remember who the killer is, but I have no idea why he’s doing this. I, I don’t get it at all, and I don’t care. It was so boring to me, but. The kills are so funny because people, people, it was like ring, ring, ring, like the phone rings and then they’ll pick up like, hello. And the killer will be like, is this so and so?

Yes it is. And then he’ll just push a button and then they explode. The phone explodes. They don’t, the phone explodes like, like we see. Yeah, like, like they have some kind of convulsion or whatever and, and blood runs out of their nose and their eyes. But then. The culmination of it is that there’s an explosion and they just get like shot, like they don’t blow up, but their bodies just like, shoot.

Todd: Yes. 

Craig: Across the room. 

Todd: It’s so cool. It’s so violent. Really. It’s crazy. It’s done on a very low budget scale, so there are moments where it’s unintentionally funny. 

Craig: Those moments where like imagine, you know, in a, in a normal movie. Imagine like, you know, a door explodes or something and the person on the other side of it like just gets projected across the room, like their, their legs out in front of them as they just get shot.

That’s what it’s like every time. Yeah. Oh, it’s badass. 

Todd: Can you see how that would freak me out as a kid, though? As a kid, I can, I can Jesus. But 

Craig: like the movie is just so dated. Yeah. That it’s hard. It’s just hard to even take seriously. It’s, I mean, even just seeing them on those rotary phones with. Like the curly cords and like uhhuh, it just seems so dated and corny.

Like I just, I just couldn’t, this is what I loved about it. I’m glad that you found joy in it. I’m always, I’m, I’m so happy for you. I’m always so happy for people when they can find joy in things. I did not, I found this. Torturous to watch really bad. I thought the acting rest in peace. Richard Chamberlain, nothing Mad respect, but not good in this movie.

Not 

Todd: your finest hour. No, no. He’s, I can tell what he’s going for and you can tell from the writing what he’s going for too. He’s kind of almost just on the edge of likable. Because there’s a smug smarm nest to him. Yeah. That gets turned on whenever he is talking about environmental things. 

Craig: I felt like he was going for Donald Sutherland.

Yes. Like an animal house. That kind of smarmy sexy professor. That’s what I felt like he was going for. 

Paul: What’s your line Partner like you. Pollution. Yeah. Well, for all I know, you can be some geek off the street. Who wants to make love to her shoes? You got some identification. I take it the attitude, the, uh, wardrobe, the posture designed to let the public in on just who’s in charge here?

Well, it’s a second rate charade. Your style doesn’t impress me. In fact, it sucks. 

Craig: And I, I get it. I see what he’s going for, but then when I see him making out with a woman and it looks like the most forced, uncomfortable, it’s uncomfortable thing I’ve ever seen in my life, it’s really bad. I could make out with a woman more convincingly than I have done.

Todd: The, the whole chemistry between him and this woman is so shoehorned in it just feels so forced. It’s awful. It’s really bad. Now, I’ll tell you, I watched the deleted scenes. You can go on YouTube and you can find somebody went through the trouble of posting a split screen comparison between the two versions.

The bell, which was its original title, Uhhuh that was released in Canada and this murder by phone as it was cut and they cut like 17 minutes out of it. And it’s really cool because you can go down in the description and you can just click They, he put all the edits like where they are, so you could just click on it and then it jumps.

To that point, to be fair, a lot of what was cut out was relationship stuff between him and her that that eased that in a little bit better, like that kind of gave them some. Things to do with each other. It kind of gave them like opening up moments and like where they were chatting and, but when all that’s cut out, it seems really jumpy and really fast, how quickly these two just like smashed together?

You know, 

Craig: we’ve seen this trope a bazillion times, like just, you know, throwing people together to have a romantic line, right. It, it’s not necessary at all. No, but, but like, I think it was in Piranha, they do the same thing in Piranha, like. Random stupid romance plot that nobody needs. And we’ve seen it a bazillion times.

It’s not new, but that was more charming, right? 

Todd: The kind of drunk guy, I guess. That kind of goofy girl. And they have some awkward moments and it doesn’t really, they don’t really need a lot to just establish that, I think, in that because it’s like, okay, I just 

Craig: thought it was so funny. Like they’re, they’re.

I hated the movie, but that the, the romance is, is kind of like a through line, like it’s kind of, yeah. It starts out, I don’t even remember how he meets her, like he meets her on the job, but then she like stalks him outside and she’s like, Hey, you want to go on a date or whatever, and it’s, and so then they do, what I was trying to get to is I appreciate them trying to.

Up the ante of the sexiness. Like eventually they do hook up and then there’s like a scene where. She gets a phone call. ’cause the movie’s all about phone calls. It hurt. She takes her dildo phone into the bathroom where he’s taking his shower. That was a little sexy. Yeah, that was my favorite part when 

Todd: he opens up the door.

I 

Craig: desperately You wanted a little, wanted him to. Kevin Bacon. It, I totally won a little bit of dong and I didn’t 

Todd: get it. We got almost dong this, the, the door opened just enough and then it just, the, the camera changed angle right as he was coming out. But, but you notice how she hands the, the phone and the towel over to him and she’s looking down and smiling.

Craig: Yes. I think that’s funny too. That’s such a funny movie thing. Like, yes. He just. You like, you need to get, you need to take a peek at his wiener like he’s been inside you. Come on. Yeah. It was cleaner. Now, maybe, I don’t know.

And, and that’s a total lie because I, I, I’m always. Sneaking a peek at the wiener. I was gonna say, you don’t, you’ll look all day long. I’m sure. It doesn’t matter what you just did. Come on. Totally. It’s, it’s a hundred percent true. Always sneaking a peek at the wiener.

I am sure that at least 50% of our viewers appreciate a wiener, so. 

Todd: As do I, I also appreciate a wiener. I’m a straight guy, but good looking. Good looking. Uh, so, but the, well see, I guess there’s so much you don’t remember ’cause a lot of it went by you. Maybe you weren’t in the mood. The whole reason that he gets into this thing in the first place is that he.

Is a professor who’s very much into environmentalism, but he’s also like an electrical engineer. I mean, it took me a while to kind of figure out how those things combined, and then I just realized I don’t think they do. I just think the natural idea in the early eighties was if you’re a college professor, you’re this ultra liberal and you’re gonna be really irritatingly into environmental issues and putting off.

All the people around you by commenting on whether or not they recycle and what, what do they think about this, and why don’t they do that? And, and that’s how he kind of comes across. But he was going to a conference, an ecological conference in the big city. I don’t even know if the city’s ever named, if it’s New York or whatever, but he had sent his, stu, one of his former students there to go to the conference.

Like just suggested she go, and that’s why she was in the. City. And so when she dies from that phone call on the subway where she gets blasted, the only witness to that is the quote unquote bag lady as they keep calling it to her, which again was one of those charming, dated things I thought. And he meets up with a farmer who’s like, clearly this, this woman’s.

Father and he asks that while he’s in the city, could he go and get her things and look into exactly what happened? ’cause it just doesn’t make sense. Like she said, they say that she died from of a heart attack, but she’s really young, right? That just seems very weird. And so he does it as a favor to him and that’s how he gets in, involved in this, in this mystery.

In the meantime, he’s also meeting up with his, who we learned was his, uh, protege. A much older man played by John Houseman. Mm-hmm. Who we’ve talked about, 

Craig: but yeah, we’ve talked about him before. He’s been in tons of stuff. 

Todd: He was in Scrooge and he was also in the fog. He was the narrator at the beginning of the fog.

Craig: Oh, right. The guy was, yeah, I like him. He play, but I. I still don’t 

Todd: understand what’s going on. He also feels like he’s phoning it in. 

Craig: Yeah, and I don’t understand. ’cause I think at some point, like he’s friends with the main guy, Nat, for the whole thing. But then there was a point late in the movie, and I swear to God, I was just looking at the.

Like Jesus Christ is over yet, but there there came a point where it seemed to me like he was in on it. 

Todd: Yeah. Sort of. Again, the cut scenes give a lot more stuff between those two. He meets up with him before he ever goes to the phone company before he ever starts this investigation. They’re at the conference sort of registering.

And they have a chat, and that’s when you immediately establish like that. The two of them are that he was his old teacher and all this stuff, and they’re, they’re very, very friendly and he says, oh, you should stay at my house. There’s all this stuff that’s not in the movie that if it were in the movie, I would’ve been far less confused.

So to a certain extent, after watching the stuff that was cut. I do feel like the, the movie was a little bit a victim of being cut to pieces as far as these relationships were. On the other hand, I can see why it was cut, because all this stuff is rather slow. It’s boring. It’s so long and boring. It’s already slow.

The time between the kills is, yeah. It’s just, it’s a little boring. 

Craig: Yeah, and, and the kills are. Fun. I agree with you. Like I love that, like I love the big explosions and them flying across the room, but it’s exactly the same every time. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: So it’s gonna be exactly the same every time. Like, don’t make me wait for it, like.

Let’s just blow people up all over the place. You’re, I, I think you’re gonna have to explain it to me ’cause I don’t get it. I don’t understand why Nats friend was in on it. Sometime early in the movie. The killer says, I just have this in my notes. I have no context. I don’t have any idea what it means, but he says something like, you stole it from me, Gordon.

It should have been mine. Then that guy gets murdered by phone. I, I think that this also has something to do with like fiber optics. Yeah. Like, I like the killer, like invented fiber optics and somebody stole it from him. So then he hinted a away to kill people over the phone. 

Todd: I mean, that is what kind of ends up by the end.

When the killer has his monologue in explaining how he did it, that just pops outta nowhere. Oh yeah, I invented fiber optics, but this other guy stole it from, he’s basically killing all the people he has a beef with. So the first girl we learn was just a test. She was totally random, right? He was just testing to see if this tech would work, and it did.

Craig: I loved the way too, that the, they went out of their way. The, the filmmakers went out of their way to make it very clear that this was a lovely, lovely young woman. Like, like, like she’s helping people and being super, super nice, and then she gets killed and so then later the main guy can confront the killer and say, well, that.

The lady was a good person and he’s like, well, she was just a test. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Sort of established that he’s, he’s loony and, and reckless that his morals are not so great as he claims because at that point there, there, he’s claiming to sort of be on the same side as Ned the net, you know, the rich, the 

Craig: environmentalist.

Todd: Yeah. He’s like, we’re doing this for the same reason. I 

Craig: don’t understand how that ties in either. Ah, it’s so weird. Three quarters of the way into the movie, and I feel like it’s all affront for something. But Nat gives a lecture about environmentalism. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Craig: What is happening? 

Paul: Ladies and gentlemen, the world is gonna die unless we turn around and fight.

We’ve gotta become noisy, radical, and insubordinate. Now I know what I’m gonna do about it. So what the hell Stanley Markowitz would wanted me to ask, are you gonna do about it? Acceptable casualty levels. Acceptable to whom? To working. Men and women, to our, our children, to our children’s children.

Mankind’s destiny is not to become father for his own technology. 

Todd: That’s what’s I find so charming about this movie, is that I feel like this is a very sloppy and simplistic attempt to make this. A movie about the evils of corporate, corporate American corporations and allowing technology into our homes.

And I’m down with that. 

Craig: I’m down with the critique of that. 

Todd: Yeah, it, it’s that plus what it does to the environment. There’s some conversation they have earlier about how they’re building new fac. Facilities and, and whatever, and they’re like, yeah, but at what cost? You know, to, it’s, again, it’s, it’s all just kind of like we’re abstractly supposed to understand it’s bad, you know, without really getting into the details, I guess.

And the phone company’s really set up to be villainous at first. When he goes, he looks around the, the, the phone on the platform and he notices that one of the receivers is brand spanking new and he thinks that’s odd. So he decides to go to the phone company to ask about who repaired that phone.

Because it’s just a clue. It’s a weird clue. Right. But maybe because he’s into. Electronics or something. He thinks it’s significant, so oh, oh, oh. It’s because the bag lady said that the woman just exploded and they’re not saying anything about it. They don’t want me to talk about it, yada, yada, yada. So he goes to the phone company and it, and, and there are a lot of these upward shots of this big gleaming skyscraper.

And he goes into the lobby and it’s huge and it’s marvelous. And there are all these people in there, and there’s a guy giving tours of the facility like it’s this, and maybe this was true. Or I think it’s just fictitious for the film, but people are in just such awe of this new phone tech that they’re taking tours to see all the behind the scenes stuff.

And so that’s constantly going and he’s getting the run around when he goes and, and he kind of pushes his way in. But in, in what has to be the oddest way, two people are going to meet. This woman is, I think, an artist who has been commissioned to put a giant mural in their lobby, and he walks over and looks up at it and is like, sees a photo that she has used as part of the mural that she’s gotten from the phone company.

He is like, oh, that’ll never work ’cause of this, this, this, this, that, and the other. And then they have this cute banter back and forth. Which catches her eye. Which catches his eye. And then you’re right after he walks out, pretty unsuccessful, she’s out there eating a sandwich or something, and they have this playful banter and she says, you know, I might actually be able to help you.

Would you like to meet up? And she’s like, yeah, at this restaurant. Yeah, so it’s like a date thus begins. Their whirlwind romance and her usefulness to him is because, somehow because she’s putting a mural together in this giant lobby, she has been given access to anything that she wants at the company.

So she’s gonna be his in for him to request apparently whatever he wants, because this artist has been granted, been granted permission for that, for the mural. It’s so weird. 

Craig: Yeah. I feel like you’re trying really hard to make this movie interesting. And it’s not. 

Todd: That’s it. I mean, that’s how it played out, right?

I don’t think it’s, I think it’s kind of dumb, but they cut out a lot of their byplay because like you said, they’re, they’re basically in bed with each other. In the meantime, we see another random guy get killed. We think he’s random. We don’t know who this guy is. We never met him. He’s just in a high rise office building in a very eighties style modern office with a very eighties style modern phone businessman on a rolling chair.

And he picks it up. And that’s the guy who we never see again, nor hear about again, nor did we see him before. And that’s where he says, you stole it from me. And he gets blown out the window and down to the street, which I thought it was kind of dramatic. 

Craig: Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, that’s, that’s kind of how all the deaths are.

I like, again, I, I, I, I’ll repeat myself. I liked those kill moments, even though they were always exactly the same. Somebody just gets shot across from it looks good. I enjoyed watching it. It was fun to watch, but. I don’t know. I mean, the whole thing was just boring. You talked about that homeless lady in the subway.

At some point she asked somebody for a quarter. Do you remember that? Yeah. And then the next thing that we saw was she used that quarter to buy lipstick out of a vending machine. Yeah. Wait a minute. Did you? That’s all I have to say about that. 

Todd: Did you see a scene of her applying the lipstick to herself?

Yeah, it was, dude, you must have seen the uncut version. 

Craig: Oh boy. The, the version I saw was only an hour and a half long, so I don’t know. But I did see that woman use that quarter that she begged for to buy a lipstick out of a vending machine in the subway. 

Todd: Put it on 

Craig: what is happening. 

Todd: Why? Oh my God. Oh boy.

Yeah. According to the side-by-side comparison, that was cut out of murder by phone. That was one of the original ones. Well, I don’t know what version I saw. Maybe you saw the more boring version. I don’t know. Yeah, I 

Craig: don’t know. And then my notes, I, I took hardly any notes. That’s okay. Here’s where my notes are.

Woman killed while sun picks up chips. Stink explosion at the push of a button, like 

Todd: again, the way it’s chopped up. You have no idea why this woman is, is being targeted, right? 

Craig: No, and like that’s, that’s, that’s a good segue. Please tell me because I don’t understand. At some point in the movie, they know who the killer is.

Now they have figured out that somehow, and I thought that they didn’t even make this pun, but I thought the pun was so funny. Literally, what they need to do is reverse the charge. Like he’s, he’s sending electricity through the phone lines somehow. And if they can trace his number, they can reverse the charge.

Like you would reverse the charge on a phone call. You know, like, it’s so funny to me, so funny to me. But they can reverse the electrical charge if they can track his phone number. Now, here are the things that I have questions about. 

Todd: Yeah. Who the 

Craig: fuck is this guy 

Todd: Uhhuh? 

Craig: I have no idea. What the fuck is this problem?

I don’t understand that either. And then the whole end is just so stupid, like, okay, so please. 

Todd: Alright, talk now. So this guy works at the phone company. He’s the guy who gives the tours. Oh my God. But he’s also, apparently, I. Think, and I’m a little unclear on this, but I think he’s also involved in the research at the special lab that they have.

The recall lab they’re calling it. Yeah, 

Craig: the recall lab. Right. Oh, Jesus. There’s a scene 

Todd: where Richard Chamberlain’s character net. Improbably manages to sneak out of one of these tours that they schedule and find his way all the way to the back rooms past a security, gets a security guard to open a door for him, stumbles into a random room that just happens to be exactly where he needs to be, and at precisely the time he needs to be there because at the moment he walks in, there is a guy doing an experiment on the table of exactly this tech where.

He’s like, shoots an electrical charge across the room. 

Paul: You could 

Todd: send 

Paul: a thing like that down the line. You from the recall lab? Uh, no. Just visiting. Yeah. Where From, uh, up north printing, microprocessor chips, that sort of thing. Mm-hmm. What do you think boys in the recall lab wanna know too? That’s why I thought, uh, anyways.

Sure, yeah. Use the receiver as a capacitor, store up the voltage input to the point of spontaneous discharge and, uh. Sounds simple. Not really. No. You working on it or something? Uh, sort of, yeah. 

Todd: And you’re thinking, why is the phone company developing this? Like, why are they experimenting with this? But anyway, this dude who is also the guy who gives the tours is involved in that lab and he’s gone rogue, but nobody knows.

So he is basically using this tech secretly. At night when nobody else is there to get revenge on random people that he hates. 

Craig: Okay. Okay. All right. All right. But that’s it. It’s like a slasher 

Todd: basically 

Craig: at some point. They know who it is. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: They know who is doing it, but they don’t. But instead of just going and grabbing him, they set up some kinda like sting, like it doesn’t even make any, it doesn’t make any sense.

Todd: They don’t know where he’s doing it from. But he is not doing it from the phone company. He, he turns out he’s got his own setup in a basement somewhere. That’s where he’s doing it from. So they, they don’t know. And he 

Craig: can zap people from the basement, but they can’t trace him to where he is. 

Todd: Yeah. Well, I mean, they do eventually, but this is the old phone tech, right?

This is the whole. Tracing the call, and I don’t even know if this is real, but you remember it from black Christmas, right? Where they go through that whole phone tracing routine? Yeah. Where they’re running up and down aisles of those mechanical switches. Yeah. And they’re jumping to one and they’re climbing a ladder and seeing the other one.

Okay. The The second number’s two. I love that. The third number’s four. Oh, I love this shit. I ate that up. I was so giddy watching this happen. That was fun. Oh, that was the most fun part. Yeah. And the woman at the sink. I was just baffled. I’m like, what did she have to do with anything? This woman, with a kid?

And that was kind of a, a, you gotta admit that was kind of a clever little bit where it, they, they shook it up a little bit. Right? ’cause the kid first answers the phone and then he calls to his mom, Hey mom, you know the phone’s for you? ’cause the guy asks, is this Soandso? Yeah. She picks it up in the kitchen and then the guy says, is there anyone else on the line?

And she looks in and her son is listening in. Yeah. Up to that moment I thought, oh my God. Is the, is the kid gonna get it? But the killer actually makes sure that the. Kid hangs up the phone first. Yeah. And then this kid has got these, that was funny. Again, another trope, right? He’s got these big ass eighties style headphones on and this Walkman, which was New Tech at the time, that’s too loud for him to hear his mom exploding in the kitchen.

There were, there were a couple of funny things, especially at the 

Craig: end, near the end at least. 

Todd: But real quick, I wanna tell you who that woman was. If you had seen the deleted scenes from the early, from the earlier version, there was a whole POV. Sequence from the killer of him going into like the tax bureau and trying to settle some tax situation.

And she was the clerk behind the counter and she was giving him a hard time. So that was his revenge on her. 

Craig: Yeah. The phone killer takes revenge on people for petty things. I, I do remember that. 

Todd: So did you see that sequence too? I think so. So you saw, I think, I don’t 

Craig: know Todd, I don’t remember. You saw the uncut version maybe.

I don’t know. What I do remember is that towards the end, the main guy, Nat, is like gonna go off and find the killer and his lover says to him, don’t do anything stupid. And he looks at her and says, Hey. I’ve got a PhD.

I nearly died. 

Todd: Liz looked at me and we rolled our eyes. 

Craig: I nearly died. Oh my God. That was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life. Oh, that guy’s such a douche. Oh my God. Yeah. 

Todd: He comes across alternately like a douche and like totally charming. It’s so funny. 

Craig: I also. Like I expect there was a joke in friends, Phoebe Lisa Ro dated this guy who was totally obnoxious, but she liked him so she was trying to like him, but he kept saying super obnoxious things and he, and well, yeah, I’ve got PhD a pretty huge, she was like, okay.

And that was, that was the vibe that that gave me. Uhhuh, don’t do anything stupid. Hey. I’ve got a PhD. H

Oh man. Yeah. Yeah. Oh boy. Well, the, the other thing that I thought was funny, that was that by the end, all of our main characters knew that the killer was killing people over the phone. So. They would talk to him on the phone until he’d be like, well, hold on just a second. I’m about to kill you.

Todd: I know when, when they were coming up with that plan. Yeah, yeah. I know I said. If you knew this was going on, would you be even holding the phone to your head? Wouldn’t you like hold it away from you with like a pair of tongs or something? You know, speakerphone. My, do we have speaker phones? Back then 

Craig: we, of course we had speaker, we had answering machines, we had all kinds of things.

Yeah, that’s true. 

Todd: Oh man, that was so stupid. Okay, so you were asking about, uh, Stanley. So Stanley’s deal, his older professor friend, played by John Houseman. His deal is that he was. A college professor and he is speaking at the Ecological conference, but he’s now retired and he’s kind of quote unquote, gone to the dark side, like he’s now a lobbyist, okay.

For these same companies that apparently he used to rail against. And so even though they’re really friendly and they’re on good terms, and they have this friendship. Net is ribbing him about how he’s kind of, you know, do you really care anymore? Like you, so he’s a consultant for the phone company, so he’s got conflicts here of interest.

And apparently, I think what they’re trying to say, and I’m, I’m not a hundred percent on this, is that he knew this shit was happening initially. You’re meant to think that the phone company might be in on it, but when they do confront the phone company, Maine, the boss, the big boss, he’s a dick, and he’s like, yeah, we know what’s going on.

We’ve got top men working on it. And the detective there with net is like, yeah, but you don’t have the police involved. And he is like, yeah. So what are you gonna do? And that’s when he is like, well, we’ll shut you down. He’s like, nah, you’re not gonna do that. You’re not gonna shut down the phone service.

So the whole thing is that the phone company knows what’s happening, but they’re kind of covering it up and not involving the police. ’cause they wanna solve it themselves. And I think that Stanley is aware of this as well. And so that’s his big. Evil thing. And so on the one hand, the phone company’s like, Hey, Stanley, like you’re not doing your job.

But that gets muddied by this other dude who calls Stanley and is like, yeah, dude, you’re not doing your job, and so your time is up. And he zaps him and kills him of his own accord. Not like, you know, like the phone company instructed him to do it or anything. 

Craig: Well, all the trivia that I read made a big deal about how John Houseman did all of his own stunts, and that’s great.

I think he was in his seventies. I think when the movie was made. Yeah. And I can only imagine that his own stunts just meant being like falling backwards, thrown, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And good for you. And, and that’s great. Out a glass door, 

Todd: you know. 

Craig: Good for you. Good for you. Oh boy. I, I still like, I don’t understand, and I apologize if you’ve already explained this, but they.

They understand, like I’m just, I’m just so bored. Like I’m bored with this conversation. I was bored with the movie. Um,

Todd: oh man. I thought you and I were gonna get all nostalgic about certain aspects. I didn’t think we were gonna say the movie was great, but I did think we were gonna find some charm together. 

Craig: You know, I say it all. Time, but it also has a lot to do with how you set yourself up for it. I think so, and I didn’t set myself up for this well at all.

And ultimately I was just bored by it. God, I feel like maybe you just explained it and I wasn’t listening, but why is this guy, eventually they figure out who this guy is and they reverse the charge. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And they send the electricity back towards him and it just kills him. It’s a little bit.

Anticlimactic in my opinion. And then in the very end, and I’ll, I’ll be very honest with you, I got hungry. And normally when I would watch these movies, like if, if I get distracted or whatever, I’ll pause it and I’ll go and do whatever I have to do. No, I got hungry and I need a snack, and I just left my earbuds in and I didn’t even pause it.

I’m like, I don’t care. Like I need a snack. So maybe I missed it. Maybe I missed it, but. Again, why was he doing this? Why was this bat guy killing people? 

Todd: First and foremost, he’s crazy. So he’s and, and and stole fiber. And he has access 

Craig: to this optic from him. I, right? Yeah. So is 

Todd: it 

Craig: just 

Todd: revenge? It’s just revenge.

It’s revenge. At the dude who stole the fiber optics from him, it’s revenge at the woman who a fronted him at the tax bureau, anger at Stanley for not doing what he thought he was supposed to do and helping to cover all this shit up. And the girl with the. Mickey phone. I’m not really sure why he killed her.

I thought it was so cute that she gets dropped off at her apartment by a guy, and I don’t think it was him. Now that I go back, was it that guy? Dropped her off at the apartment. I don’t 

Craig: know. I mean, they’re, they’re, they’re all attached to him at some point. And like, there’s killer POV shots like him interacting with people who are 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: I mean, kind of casually rude to him, the girl that you’re talking about, she wasn’t rude to him.

She was just, she worked in a. Bank or somewhere. Oh, that’s right. He wanted to get in, but it was closed. Like it was so petty. It was late. So petty. He but yeah, stupid. That wasn’t her fault. In fact, she was very friendly. She said, I’m sorry, we’re closed. And they were like celebrating the boss’s bay or something.

Somebody’s birthday or something, whatever. But she wasn’t a bitch at all. 

Todd: No, not at all. It’s very petty. Well, yeah, neither was the woman to the tax bureau. The tax bureau. This woman was just like, like clearly the guy was in the wrong and she was, you know, busy and she was kind of frustrated ’cause he kept pushing her and she was just like, I’m sorry sir, there’s nothing I can do for you.

And she moves on to the next person. So, yeah, I mean that’s pretty typical though, right? I mean, this is kind of your slasher thing sometimes the slasher guy just got this really petty, stupid reasons for killing people. Sure. Fine, whatever. But he had 

Craig: the tech, he had the tech. That was the key boy. I mean, look, I know that we didn’t go through this movie scene by scene, and if you wanna watch it, watch it, but I don’t recommend it.

I was bored outta my mind. I, I thought that the, the acting, like I respect Richard Chamberlain. I really do. Like he has a storied career. Like yeah. He’s a cool dude and I respect that, but this is not a good movie and I didn’t think that he was good in it. And I think that maybe the premise of killing people over the phone might have been interesting in a particular period of time.

But I don’t find it interesting now. No, I find it ade and boring. It’s super dated. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: in so many ways. Skip it. 

Todd: Skip it. I don’t know, man. It’s fine. Skip it. I completely agree with your sentiment. It is pretty slow. It’s basically police procedural type thing. Not police procedural, but your typical. Every man gets involved in this case that the cops can’t solve, and he follows one clue after another, and he’s just one step behind the killer until finally he gets enough evidence and then gets the police involved.

And then there’s this final scene where they’ve, you know, man to track down the killer. Only, it’s not very physical, it’s running around. It’s like when Black Christmas, where the detectives running around the, the phone company trying to manually trace this call across these switches, which I find charming.

But no, it’s, it’s very dated and it’s not really fast paced in any sense of the word. 

Craig: And I love black Christmas, don’t get me wrong. I love those types of movies. Yeah. But that’s. Black Christmas is a great one. Not comparable to this 

Todd: movie. I’m not saying this movie’s like Black Christmas. I’m just talking about that one scene.

Craig: I get it. No, I get it. I get the comparison. It’s a fair comparison, but this one does not succeed, whereas that one does. 

Todd: Well, the director of this film has directed good stuff. I mean, Logan’s run and, uh, one movie that we absolutely loved called Orca that we did a while ago. Oh, I wouldn’t say I absolutely loved it, but I enjoyed it.

Craig: Oh, we really, it was fun. 

Todd: Oh, I thought we really loved, I loved Orca. I thought it was way, way more fun than we thought we were ever gonna have with it. Michael Anderson is his name, and again, it’s got these stars in it. It just. It’s too dated, I think, to work, and it’s a little slow. And honestly, like I said, I do think that it should have been chopped.

It’s good that they cut it down, but I think they did leave out a few things. They could have cut some different places to at least make the movie a little more coherent in what all these characters relationships were, were for each other and what their motivations were. It got really muddied. In the cutting.

Apparently there was a, a novelization that was released before the movie, while the movie was in development. They had a screenplay written, and then they wrote, a couple guys took the screenplay and wrote a book based on the screenplay, which had a lot more detail and apparently is a lot better. And then the movie went and actually took a few things from the book and added those to the screenplay by the time it was produced.

So this is one of those cases where there was a book version and a screenplay version kind of really closely related and. I did read somebody online who said, honestly, if you thought this movie was bad, but had promise, if you read the book, you wouldn’t be disappointed. So I dunno if that’s gonna go on your reading list.

Probably not gonna go on mine. 

Craig: Probably not. But speaking of that, and I realize that this episode will probably air after we’ve already discussed the long walk by. Stephen King. Mm-hmm. In our book club. This will probably air after that. However, we do have a book club on our Patreon page that we have a lot of fun.

I like, I just can’t say enough how much fun I have with that. So if you are a loyal listener and are interested in. Talking more about stuff, check out our Patreon page. We do like minisodes and other reviews that we don’t release on our regular page, but the book club is a lot of fun, so, yeah. Yeah. Check that out.

Todd: Mm-hmm. Maybe we, maybe we read this in book club one time. Who knows? Or, or not. I don’t know, man. I just, I think, again, I was in the spirit for it. I had, I was full of caffeine. It was the middle of the day I sat down. I did not expect this to be a great action packed movie, and in that way I was totally right.

But I was just really charmed by the retro aspects of it, of both the, the aesthetic, the sets that kind of. Filmmaking mentality of the way that the plot kind of is laid out. It’s just so cliche now. So much of it is so cliche. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Todd: And the phone tech just reminded me so much of that era that I grew up in, that I was just, I had a bit of fun with that.

I get it. And again, you’re either in the mood for it or you’re not, or you just don’t like those kind of things. And that’s fine too, as, as, as it stands as a horror movie, it’s not that effective if you’re not gonna appreciate it for those things. I think 

Craig: No. And, and I understand what you’re saying from a nostalgia perspective.

It just didn’t work for me. It was just too slow for me. But I also wanted to remind you that we had a message from Paul, one of our listeners. Yeah, let’s listen to that. 

Paul: Hey guys, it’s Paul from Alabama. Just wanting to say I appreciate everything I do. Y’all have kept me entertained for years. I’ve loved pretty much all the episodes.

Um, there’s been a few y suggested and I appreciate the shout outs. Uh, what’s funny, I, the funniest episode, man, I, I don’t know, I don’t know about the funniest episodes, but I do love it when, when Craig does the voices and Tyler tries to sing how much entertainment that is for us.

And, uh, keep up the good work. And I really thank y’all so much. Still listening every day from Alabama. Just Paul signing off. 

Craig: It was so nice. Thanks Paul. People are so nice. Yeah, yeah. Gosh. Yeah. Thanks Paul. 

Todd: Well, I guess I’ll keep singing.

I don’t know if that was an endorsement of your, he said he thought it was funny, so maybe it’s not, but you know, we take what we can get, I suppose. What is that? Any attention is 

Craig: better than none at all. Oh gosh. Thanks Paul. That was really nice. That was super, super nice and it’s, it’s nice to hear from people.

We’re, we’re just trying to give you some lighthearted stuff to listen to and I know that sometimes people get a little bit troubled if, if we get too much into politics or, or those types of things. And we try to avoid that ’cause we don’t wanna upset you that, you know, that’s what we’re here for is, is just trying to have a good time just for fun.

Right? Yeah. Just having a, it’s just you and me, Todd. Mm, having a good time and, and sometimes we have to talk about those things ’cause they’re a real part of life. But it, it’s really nice to hear from somebody like Paul, who just is having a good time listening to us for years. 

Todd: It makes me feel. So good.

It really is. And thanks also, Paul, for, you know, sending in the suggestions that we’ve done some of your, of your suggestions over the years. You know, we, we don’t always get last names, so we can’t match up who’s who, but we’re happy to shout you out there on the show. One of the perks that we have for our patrons is because we do get a lot of requests and we have over the years just kept this long running request list.

We thought it’d be a nice perk to give our patrons the ability to vote on which ones we do next. Yeah. So we no longer just pick the ones that we want, but we pick like. Three or four that we want, right? And, uh, we put it up to the patrons as a, as a poll and they vote on it. And by golly, whether or not we’re enthusiastic about it, we, that’s the one we do.

So we do. And that’s another perk that you can get by going to our Patreon. That’s patreon.com/chainsaw podcast. Just five bucks a month. Well, yeah. Thank you for joining us, guys. Suggest some other films that we might have missed. Also, let us know if you’ve seen this movie and if you have fond memories of it from childhood like I did, I sure would like to hear another perspective than just Greg’s grumbling that, uh, he didn’t enjoy it while he was half asleep and drunk over two days.

I 

Craig: would, I wouldn’t. I was just tired. 

Todd: Uhhuh, right? Chainsawhorror.com. You could leave us a message there, or you can of course, uh, find us on Facebook, Instagram, just by googling two guys into a chainsaw podcast. Until next time, I’m Todd, and I’m drunk Craig, apparently. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.