When Michael Calls (1972)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Doremus and Helen Connelly (Ben Gazzara and Elizabeth Ashley) have been divorced for some time, and Doremus takes it upon himself to simply show up at Helen's home. He says he's come to see their daughter, Peggy, which is a violation of their divorce agreement. Soon after his arrival, Helen begins receiving phone calls from someone claiming to be the title character. Helen doesn't believe it, since her nephew Michael died fifteen years prior. Of course, the calls continue, becoming more urgent, eerie, and unhinged. Has Michael somehow returned from the grave, or is Helen losing her mind? Or, is something else going on? Helen is suspicious, and there are plenty of potential suspects for her to choose from. A school of red herrings, so to speak! Then, Michael begins forecasting death and doom, and everything changes. WHEN MICHAEL CALLS is another made-for-TV horror movie from the early 1970's. This was a time when such quality films as this were being made for network television. All these years later, it's still effective, though I do admit to finding Michael's whiny voice a bit annoying! Co-stars Michael Douglas as Craig, and Marian Waldman (BLACK CHRISTMAS, DERANGED) as Elsa Britton...

The Robert Drasnin theme music from Daughter of the mind (1969) is a perfect suited theme song for this psychological thriller. It actually hints the fact that its not a ghost story but a deep rooted thriller within the hood of supernatural ambiance. I still have horrors just remembering the words from other side of the phone - "Auntie my Helen... " I loved Ben Gazzara's persona in the movie. However, its the young Michael Douglas (28 years old) playing a much mature psychologist with tainted emotional setup is almost uncaught up until the climax. Loved the movie and its twists - would have been great if remade with selective cast for the big screen!

"When Michael Calls" was made in 1972 and stars Elizabeth Ashely as Helen Connelly, a woman going through a divorce from her high powered attorney husband (Ben Gazzara) and has moved to a small New England town with her young daughter Peggy (Karen Pearson). Her nephew Craig (portrayed by a young Michael Douglas)is a psychiatrist at the Greenleaf School for Boys, an institution in the same town for troubled young men.Things begin to get scary when Helen starts receiving eerie calls from a young boy who claims to be Michael, her nephew (and Craig's brother) who died 15 years earlier after he ran away from home in a snowstorm. You have to remember this movie was made long before there were cell phones or caller id, and the calls are genuinely creepy.My only complaint about this movie is that I wish that the makers of this film would have spent more time answering some basic questions such as why would the calls start suddenly after 15 years? Who is the voice of the young boy on the other end of the line? These questions are never explained and I think it would have been nice to have the answers to these basic questions. There are a couple of not real scary murders until the killer is revealed at the end. Despite some minor flaws, I love this movie and remember watching it when I was a kid when it came out in 1972. I recently got to see it again when it aired on the Fox Movie Channel. It was also fun to see Michael Douglas in the picture as he is very young and basically at the beginning of his long and storied career. Fans of 1970's Movie of the Week will definitely have to see this one!

Michael is -- or was -- the brother of Elizabeth Ashley and Michael Douglas. Thirteen years earlier, he ran away into a Vermont blizzard at twelve and his body was found months later and identified because of his coat. Ashley is now the mother of a young girl and is estranged from her husband, Ben Gazzara, a "high-powered lawyer." Gazarra comes to visit his wife and child and he seems like a nice, loving guy. Michael Douglas has become a bland psychologist who works with exceptional children at the nearby Greenleaf School.That's the set up. Then suddenly Ashley and the rest begin receiving phone calls from what sounds like the voice of a terrified young boy who claims to be Michael. The calls say things like, "Help me!" and "I'm dead, aren't I?" So where are the calls coming from? Are we into the supernatural? Or is there something more mundane going on? Everyone is puzzled. The local doc is puzzled too, but he's murdered -- stung to death by his own bees. (His death has absolutely nada to do with the plot.) A sheriff is murdered too. And, well, there's a reason for the sheriff's death, though it too has nothing to do with the plot. The sheriff must be murdered so that his dead body can plop unexpectedly into the middle of a Halloween display and cause the audience to erupt in shrieks.After half an hour or so, I was fairly convinced of two things: (1) Ashley and Gazarra would get back together again at the end, and (2) Michael Douglas was the murderer. I figured Douglas was the killer not because he acted strange in any way, and not because he had a motive, but because of The Law of Excess Characters. He had too prominent a part and too little to do.After the New England setting was established I was hoping the film would convey a strong sense of place. Not picture-postcard pretty, of course. We don't necessarily want maples aflame because this is early winter, after all, and anyway autumn foliage in Vermont would be trite. Not to worry. The dismal chill of Toronto defeated any effort in that regard. The whole movie in fact seemed to be made for TV. I swear, there are even mini-climaxes before what appear to be breaks for commercials.Ashley is attractive, sexy, and competent. She has the eyes of a calf and her long nose slopes down and out in a fascinating French curve. Gazarra is competent too, and a bit more light hearted than his usual persona. Michael Douglas is here in an early role. He's vaguely handsome. How does he do at this stage of his career? Not too bad, actually. He plays the character as wispy and at times almost feminine, but that's what the role calls for. Only once, at the climax, does he flood out in a spasm of excruciating insight. His old man handled that kind of scene even better -- in "The Juggler" and "Champion."