I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

'Shattered Silence', a suspense movie with Gazzara and M. Douglas, gives a strong sense of the unconscious' power over our consciousness, over what we acknowledge and what we deny, also like the everyday struggle between acknowledgment and denial.I liked the girl, and the carved pumpkin, and believe we deserved to see those pumpkins at the harvest festival; I also enjoyed the '70s casualness, if one likes thinking in terms of decades, and perhaps most of all I enjoyed M. Douglas' glamor, his father had been, 25 yrs earlier, also into torn youth, yet the two have very different styles, with the son able to delve into neurosis and hysterical behavior.M. Douglas gives a good role, and he upstages Gazzara; 'Shattered Silence' is an enjoyable '70s horror for the TV. The movie is a scary whodunit, and atmospheric, with the masks and the suggestions of impersonation, even visual gags (the fatso copper: a pumpkin; the shattered pumpkins, as these were only the '70s, when pumpkins were still shattered, not smashed); there are a few nice views of the setting, the mentioned pumpkins, and the daughter is very funny. Less good seems the quirk of the hypnosis and remote control, a plunge into '30 silliness that makes the denouement look explained away. Both murders, with the bee venom that prompts the swarming, and at the harvest festival, are unlikely, laborious and too staged. After a couple of such nerdy murders, the psychotic arrives at his aunt's home with a bat ….After having exported so many players and people in the showbiz, Canada rented these two actors, and a likable TV movie has been made. M. Douglas improves very much upon the script, and looks almost too urbane for the modest setting; on the other hand, Gazzara is too convincing as a ne'er do well cur (or marten …).In the early '90s, I remember being very keen on M. Douglas, '90-'93.

@ tamstrat "The acting is good, especially a young Michael Douglas, but there were several things left unanswered, why did Michael run away,"If I can recall correctly, (I'm not positive because I haven't watched it in over a decade) either he didn't actually run away or he did, but only because of something that Craig (Michael Douglas' Character) had done to him. But either way his death was because of something Craig said or did to him. " why after all these years do the phone calls start up, etc?"Again, it happened because of Craig. Something set him off and he had a mental break down which caused him to seek revenge for Michael's death. First, he pretended to be him and then he enlisted a young boy who was around the same age as Michael at the time of his death to play the part for him. I say "enlisted" but I'm pretty sure what he had actually done is kidnap the boy.Ironically enough, it was his guilt over what happened to Michael that caused his final mental breakdown which is why the calls didn't start right away. It must have taken years for him to come to grips with what he did but in the end he just couldn't handle the guilt anymore ergo he lost his mind and assumed Michaels identity and the subsequently had another child assume Michael's identity as well. His guilt over what happened was obvious, I think things happened the way they happened because part of him wanted to be caught and punished for his role in the death. The other part to that equation of getting rid of his guilt was to attempt to convince himself and everyone else that Michael wasn't actually dead. Which would be why he fixated on another little boy the same age and wanted to make him become Michael.

One of those TV films you saw in the seventies that scared the hell out of you when you were a kid but still gives you an eerie feeling. No great actors or expensive production but everytime that phone rings......

I remember being scared to death when this film first aired on TV in 1971. Of course, I was all of nine years old at the time. When Michael Calls was recently shown on Fox Movies, and I had a chance to relive my memories of terror. Surprisingly, the film holds up remarkably well, even with the tacked on and predictable happy ending that ties up all the loose ends. I even had to turn a light on while I watched!