What a beautiful movie!

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Let's be realistic.

Am I Missing Something?

Richard Chamberlin makes for an amiable hero in this idiosyncratic, Canadian shocker. He plays Nat Bridger, an idealistic, ecologically aware lecturer who eventually discovers through diligent investigation, somewhat incredulously, that a nefarious individual has manufactured a monstrous device that turns the once prosaic phone into a conduit of agonizing death. Includes nice support from John Houseman as his crotchety mentor, whose amenable exterior may conceal ulterior motives. 'Bells' might seem to have an entirely implausible premise, but nonetheless manages to coalesce into an efficient, and highly entertaining, early 80's horror; which is lent considerable verisimilitude by, Chamberlin's earnest performance. 'Bells' comes highly recommended.

Given the title, you would expect 'Murder by Phone' to be a silly eighties slasher style flick...and that's actually more or less what it is. The most notable thing about this film is definitely the killer's modus operandi. Most slashers simply feature some guy with a knife, but the killer in this film has decided to go a step further than that and had developed a way to use an ordinary telephone as a murder weapon! Obviously, the whole thing comes off as being more than a little bit silly, but the way that the murders are carried out is amusing enough. The plot centres on these murders and takes the form of an investigative thriller, as our hero, Nat Bridger, begins looking into the death of one of his students. The film is never really all that interesting, but at least it's not boring and there's usually another murder scene just around the corner anyway; though unfortunately, they are pretty much the same. Director Michael Anderson does manage some fairly good moments of suspense, a couple of major characters have close calls (no pun intended) when speaking on the phone and there are various other bits and bobs to keep us interested. I can't say that this is a brilliant film, but it's at least worth a look.

"Bells" looks like an average and routine 80's slasher but you should know to expect a little bit extra from the talented director of "Logan's Run"; Michael Anderson. And indeed, only a couple of minutes into the film and already it turned out that my impressions and expectations towards this film were entirely wrong and I was in for a pleasant surprise. "Bells" isn't a teen slasher movie at all (despite the VHS cover art and the cheesy sounding alternate title "Murder by Phone") but a fairly well plotted thriller that even shows the ambition to question the reliability of gigantic enterprises and refer to government conspiracies. How many "Friday the 13th" rip-offs can righteously claim to have done that? Richard Chamberlain stars as university professor and environmentalist Nat Bridger who privately investigates the bizarre death of one of his former students. The poor girl turns out to be the first victim of a maniac who developed a method to kill people over the phone (!) by sending an extremely high level of voltage through the speaker. Don't ask me to explain the technical aspects, but the victims start to shake and bleed from eyes & ears before getting catapulted in the air by an explosion! Not exactly tasteful but original and very entertaining to look at! This killing modus operandi as well as the further development of the "whodunit" storyline is often very implausible and silly, but you easily look past these flaws simply because the pace is exciting and the suspense-sequences are extremely intense. The film's only real disadvantage is that the scenery has severely dated by now and that some of the observations in the script turned out very exaggerated (for example, the phone company tour guide's estimation that there will be 1.4 trillion phones by the year 2000). Perhaps, this even is a rare example of a horror film that would actually profit from a remake! I'm convinced that some of the nowadays scriptwriters can come up with nifty ideas when re-working this premise into a story that revolves on mobile phones, teleconference attributes or web cams. Class actor Chamberlain is adequate in the lead, but the best performances are delivered by Sara Botsford as his love-interest and Gary Reineke as the obnoxious police detective.

Richard Chamberlin plays a college professor who is trying to find out who is the psychopath (more like a postal ex-phone company worker) who is killing victim with a Hi-frequency sound through the phone. It kind of runs like a TV film, if you cut out the Phone/blood violence. John Houseman also star in this Canadian film that was released a year earlier in Canada as BELLS, and released in U.S. as MURDER BY PHONE. The American print is edited to 78 minutes as the Canadian print runs 95 minutes. Roger Corman probably edited it to save money on the print stock when he picked it up for U.S. release. Canadian print is recommended. Originally sold overseas under the title THE CALLING.