WHEN A STRANGER CALLS/HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

Mill Creek Entertainment's blu-ray disc offers two cult horror films for the price of, well, half a film...

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS opens famously with a 20-minute segment in which young babysitter Jill (Carol Kane) turns up to mind a couple of little ones at the home of Dr Mandrakis (Carmen Argenziano) and is subsequently tormented by 'phone calls throughout the course of her evening.

Each times she answers the telephone, a sinister male voice asks "Have you checked the children lately?" Eventually Jill rings the police, who put a trace on the calls (this is the 70s - no caller ID and all that jazz). True to the urban legend this set-piece is based upon, the cops soon ring back alerting Jill to the fact that the calls have been coming from inside the house...

The police race to the Mandrakis house and arrive in time to save Jill, apprehending her would-be tormentor Curt (Tony Beckley) in the process. Alas, by that time he's already torn the children apart with his bare hands (thankfully off-camera).

Fast-forward to "Seven years later", and one of the cops who worked on the case - Clifford (Charles Durning) - is now working as a private detective. When Curt escapes from the mental hospital that's housed him in the interim, Mandrakis hires Clifford to track him down. Clifford resolves to not only find Curt, but ultimately kill him.

In the meantime, Curt becomes infatuated with middle-aged lush Tracy (Colleen Dewhurst) who he first meets one afternoon in a downtrodden bar. "I want you to be my friend", he tells her after breaking into her apartment.

As Clifford's net closes in on his quarry, at one point using the hapless Tracy as bait, Curt continues to run while living on the streets ... until finally setting his sights once more on Jill, who is now married and with children of her own ...

STRANGER took its cue from the aforementioned urban myth, which was the inspiration for director Fred Walton's original 20-minute short "The Sitter". Apparently this short was expanded upon and Curt's story extended to feature-length when Walton became aware of HALLOWEEN's outlandish success.

This is arguably where STRANGER's big problem begins. The first 20 minutes of the film are taut, tense and lean. Once we shift to the telling of Clifford's search for Curt, the action does become decidedly more pedestrian. The scary music cues are still there, and the performances are uniformly great - but Walton's direction is flat to the point that he has characters pause between responding to dialogue in EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION. Consequently, despite a screenplay that never deviates from the main storyline (and offers a fairly original spin on a familiar theme for the most part), the middle-hour of this film feels sluggish. It hardly helps that a lot of this segment is shot to look like a flat TV movie.

Still, we get a strong 15-minute finale that almost lives up to the iconic opening (which was famously paid homage to in SCREAM, of course). Beckley (THE FIEND; GET CARTER), who was terminally ill with cancer during the shoot, elicits an unexpected degree of sympathy as the confused outsider who doesn't know how to relate to people, or how to cope with rejection. He's not your typical monster, despite an early hospital tape recording which seems to suggest he speaks in tongues (though this is never followed up). Kane is a memorable heroine for the 40-or-so minutes of screen-time that she gets, while Durning is Durning: always highly watchable.

The film doesn't hold up to scrutiny in terms of logic; it's best enjoyed on face value.

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS was fondly remembered enough to have its own 21st Century remake made a few years ago. Needless to say, the original remains by far the superior of the two versions.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME meanwhile was directed by J Lee Thompson, the guy who also made the likes of ICE COLD IN ALEX, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE and the original CAPE FEAR.

It's a studio picture through and through: decent production values, a token 'name' actor in Glenn Ford, and a director with a certain pedigree for successful versatility employed to deliver one of those in-vogue-at-the-time (1981) slasher films.

But, as cynical as that set-up sounds, BIRTHDAY is actually a decent film.

It centres on a clique at the exclusive Crawford Academy school who call themselves the Top 10. This wealthy bunch of teens like to play pranks on one another, drink in the local inn and invariably cheat on each other within the group.

Virginia (Melissa Sue Anderson) is a new recruit into the Top 10, having previously been a student at Crawford Academy 4 years ago for such a short time that no-one seems to remember her. The reason she left back then relates to an incident which resulted in the death of her mother - though Virginia was left in a coma for some time and, having undergone pioneering brain surgery, can't remember much about that.

As members of her elite group start getting knocked off by someone they're clearly familiar with, Virginia attends therapy sessions with campus counsellor David (Ford) in a bid to fully recover her memory of the night her mother died. Does the forgotten reason behind mom's death tie in with the reason Virginia's friends are now getting murdered?

All will become clear, come Virginia's imminent 18th birthday...

Along with STRANGER, BIRTHDAY was originally released by Columbia Pictures (the film print used here opens with their logo, following a nice MPAA ratings board title card) and has elements of it that were pilfered for inclusion in the original SCREAM: the close circle of college friends set-up; the father who goes away on business as things heat up, thus making himself a suspect).

But that's where the similarities end. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME is a slasher with a whodunit plot that throws so many suspects and red herrings at the screen that it's almost amusing. It works, purely because the cast are excellent (Frances Hyland as headmistress Mrs Patterson is a standout) and the aesthetic qualities are very stylish indeed.

Some imaginative deaths punctuate the film on its way to a revelation that many will have no doubt deduced ahead of time - again, there are echoes of SCREAM come the denouement. Gore is minor (flashbacks to brain surgery are the bloodiest moments), nudity is nil: at times, the whole thing feels akin to an episode of "Midsomer Murders" with American accents and added profanity.

But, hey, I like "Midsomer Murders". I like this film too, although I'd like it more if it was 15 minutes shorter. There's no reason why it needed to be padded out to a bum-numbing 110 minutes in length.

So, that's the films. What of their presentations on this budget-priced disc?

STRANGER looks great, especially when compared against previous VHS and DVD versions. For a start, we get the film in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and can finally see how well-framed many of its compositions are. Take, for example, the extended sequence where Curt follows a drunken woman home from a local tavern: what previously looked ugly and dark is now a well-lit, attractively photographed and colourfully atmospheric triumph of camerawork and editing.

Blacks are deep with no noticeable compression troubles; colours are rich and well-rendered. Flesh-tones are accurate throughout while a fine level of natural grain ensures an authentic, filmic texture to proceedings is maintained throughout.

BIRTHDAY looks even better, with deep blacks and strong colours competing against a surprising amount of added detail for top prizes in this impressive 1.85:1 presentation. If you've seen the US blu-ray of the original MY BLOODY VALENTINE and liked that (the main HD transfer, not the SD inserts), then you'll like what you see here as it's a very similar visual proposition.

Both films are furnished with clean, healthy 2.0 English audio mixes which have been mixed in DTS-HD Master Audio. It's worth noting that BIRTHDAY comes with its original soundtrack with atmospheric piano-led score, and not the much-maligned disco alterations as featured on most DVD releases.

Optional English subtitles for the hard-of-hearing are well-written and easy to read in each case (for some reason, the subtitles for BIRTHDAY are all in capitals - hardly worth mentioning, but I thought I would anyway ...).

The disc opens to an animated main menu page. From there, pop-up menus include scene-selection options for each film (15 chapters apiece).

There are no extra features.

But, blow me, it seems churlish to bemoan the lack of bonus material on a disc that proffers two cult horror films, fully uncut and remastered as MPEG4-AVC files in full 1080p HD. Both films look fantastic, boast Master HD audio tracks and hold up well as a solid night's entertainment even now.

What's more, this disc can be bought online for less than £5 including postage to the UK.

A brilliant bargain for horror fans. The only potential downside for UK fans is that this disc is locked to region A.

Review by Stuart Willis