Fred Walton Movies

Another psychopath haunts another baby sitter in this made-for-TV sequel to the 1979 feature When a Stranger Calls. When prim schoolgirl Julia (Jill Schoelen) accepts a last-minute baby-sitting assignment from a doctor and his wife (Kevin McNulty and Cheryl Wilson), she follows all the rules: She studies diligently, checks often on the kids, and refuses to open the door for strangers -- even when a stranded motorist asks to come in and call his auto club. Julia offers to call for him, but the phone is dead, and rather than alert a strange man that she's without a link to the outside world, she lies and says they're on their way. The man returns to the door repeatedly, angrily wondering why help hasn't arrived; as he continues to badger Julia, she notices things aren't right in the house. Slips of paper disappear, doors mysteriously unlock themselves, the children vanish, and Julia barely escapes with her life. Five years later, Julia is an introverted college student with some heavy-duty locks on her door. Nevertheless, she starts getting that familiar feeling that something isn't right. Enter Jill Johnson (Carol Kane), survivor of a similar baby-sitting atrocity many years earlier. Now a guidance counselor at Julia's university, she offers to help the girl track down her stalker. With the help of an old friend, private eye John Clifford (Charles Durning), Jill picks up the trail of a disturbed ventriloquist (Gene Lythgow). But when Julia ends up with a bullet in her head in an apparent suicide attempt, even John thinks Jill's investigation is a wild goose chase. Reuniting stars Carol Kane and Charles Durning with writer/director Fred Walton, When a Stranger Calls Back features another horror veteran in its cast. Jill Schoelen previously starred in 1990's Popcorn. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a convicted rapist is released from prison and immediately returns into the lives of his victim and the son he sired during the rape. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Kathleen Quinlan is Trapped in this made-for-cable thriller. Cast as a junior executive, Quinlan finds herself electronically locked inside a high-rise office building. Think she's all alone? Mais non, monsieur. There must needs be a homicidal maniac (Ben Loggins) on the premises, else the movie would be only 12 minutes long. Trapped premiered June 14, 1989, over the--you guessed it--USA Cable network. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A Detroit priest (Donald Sutherland) is trying to help solve a crime spree that has resulted in a horrible series of slayings of area priests and nuns. When he hears the murderer's admission of guilt (while giving confession) he is torn between honoring the vows of privacy and secrecy afforded repentants and revealing the murderer's identity. ~ All Movie Guide

NBC's 1985 revival of the classic suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents begins with the two-hour pilot episode, made up of four new versions of classic Hitchcock episodes from the 1960s: "Incident in a Small Jail," "Man from the South," "Bang, You're Dead," and "An Unlocked Window." Although Alfred Hitchcock had been dead since 1980, he still manages to introduce each episode, via colorized excerpts from the original black-and-white series. After this extra-length opener, the series proper gets under way with a remake of the original 1955 Alfred Hitchcock Presents debut episode, "Revenge," with Linda Purl taking over from Vera Miles in the role of a traumatized rape victim. Indeed, virtually all of the episodes seen during the revival's first season are remakes of vintage Hitchcock efforts. The best of these include "Method Actor," an updated version of 1962's "Bad Actor," directed by Burt Reynolds and starring Martin Sheen in the old Robert Duvall role; "Final Escape," a gender-switch version of the 1964 nail-biter with Season Hubley replacing Will Hutchins as an escape-happy convict; "Breakdown," with John Heard as the paralyzed accident victim originally essayed by Joseph Cotten; and the Ray Bradbury shocker "The Jar," with Griffin Dunne stepping into the part created by Pat Buttram. Also in the manifest is "Four O'Clock," an abbreviated remake of a one-hour playlet that Alfred Hitchcock had directed for the 1957 anthology series Suspicion. Only handful of "originals" -- that is episodes expressly written for the 1985 version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents -- were seen during season one. These include "Prisoners," directed by series producer Christopher Crowe and starring Yaphet Kotto as a fugitive and Cristina Raines as his extremely willing hostage, and "A Very Happy Ending," with Leaf Phoenix (aka Joaquin Phoenix) as a deaf boy who holds the fate of a murderer (Robert Loggia) in his hands. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this thriller, a baby-sitter is terrorized by an anonymous telephone caller who turns out to be a particularly persistent serial killer. When a stranger calls to ask, "Have you checked the children lately?" teenaged sitter Jill Johnson (Carol Kane) is understandably spooked. After a series of increasingly creepy calls culminates in a request for "your blood...all over me," Jill learns from the police operator that the man is calling from inside the house. One narrow escape and two dead children later, the police capture British maniac Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley). Several years later, the killer escapes from a mental institution and plagues Tracy (Colleen Dewhurst), a hard-drinking New Yorker. Foiled by John Clifford (Charles Durning), the same cop who investigated the original case, Duncan sets his sights back on his original victim, Jill Johnson, who, now married and out to dinner with her husband, has left her own young children at home -- with a baby-sitter. When a Stranger Calls helped inspire Drew Barrymore's famous opening scene in Wes Craven's Scream. Kane, Durning, and director Fred Walton would return for 1993's TV-movie sequel, When a Stranger Calls Back. Beckley died a year after the original film's release. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide