Watch: Don’t Answer the Phone! 1980 123movies, Full Movie Online – A deeply disturbed photographer and Vietnam veteran, named Kirk Smith, terrorizes Los Angeles by going around strangling lingerie-clad young women in their homes while taunting Lindsay Gale, a young psychologist, by calling her on a radio call-in show to describe his sexual hang-ups and misogynistic ways, while a local police detective, Lt. McCable, is always two steps behind in trying to catch the psycho..
Plot: A deeply disturbed photographer and Vietnam veteran, named Kirk Smith, terrorizes Los Angeles by going around strangling lingerie-clad young women in their homes while taunting Lindsay Gale, a young psychologist, by calling her on a radio call-in show to describe his sexual hang-ups and misogynistic ways, while a local police detective, Lt. McCable, is always two steps behind in trying to catch the psycho.
Smart Tags: #los_angeles_california #serial_killer #psychopath #radio_show #victim #crying #spanish_accent #therapy_session #detective #witness #shoot_to_kill #pimp #love_affair #photograph #falling_into_pool #strangler #telephone_terror #psychologist #sexual_violence #multiple_homicide #investigation
123movies | FMmovies | Putlocker | GoMovies | SolarMovie | Soap2day
4.8/10 Votes: 1,991 | |
N/A | RottenTomatoes | |
N/A | MetaCritic | |
N/A Votes: 33 Popularity: 4.592 | TMDB |
Exploitation Lite.
Snickering Vietnam vet Kirk Smith (Nicholas Worth) is one hell of a sicko: for a living, he shoots obscene pornographic photos, and in his spare time, he strangles pretty young women BEFORE raping them. LA detectives Lt. Chris McCabe (James Westmoreland) and Sgt. Hatcher (Ben Frank) are hot on the maniac’s heels, but can they catch him before he kills his latest target, radio psychologist Dr. Lindsay Gale (Flo Lawrence)?With such a sleazy premise, Don’t Answer The Phone looks set to be a classic slice of extremely offensive exploitation, but with director Robert Hammer reluctant to go that extra mile to offend, the film falls short of the high (or should that be low?) standards set by his contemporary William Lustig, whose similarly themed film, Maniac, goes all out to shock the viewer.
Worth’s character, Kirk Smith, is an undeniably repugnant fellow, and what he gets up to certainly ain’t nice, but Hammer’s approach to his patently sensationalist material is surprisingly cautious: whilst he doesn’t mind showing the audience a little nudity (for example, all of the victims have their tops torn off before being choked to death), he doesn’t quite seem to possess the cojonas necessary to present his sex and violence in the no-nonsense manner the genre demands.
Instead, his characters simply fill us in on the salacious details through conversation: a psychic gives a graphic account of the murder and rape of one girl, offering lurid tidbits of info about Kirk’s modus operandi, and several characters pass comment on the particularly explicit nature of his photography. At the risk of sounding like a dangerous psycho myself, I ask ‘Where’s the really good stuff?’. A few throttlings and some tits only qualify this as exploitation lite!
To be fair, Don’t Answer The Phone does manage to deliver a couple of scenes that almost make the grade—Kirk strangles a junkie hooker whilst she is live on air with Dr. Gale, and one topless victim is subjected to scalding by melted candle wax— but with too many other scenes pulling their punches, this film is most likely going to disappoint fans of degenerate cinema.
5.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 6 for IMDb.
Nicholas Worth gives a gloriously gonzo performance as a severely deranged Vietnam vet psycho in this choice chunk of early 80’s horror exploitation trash
Beefy, plug-ugly character actor Nicholas (“Swamp Thing,” “Darkman”) Worth hits marvelously messed-up maniacal mondo disgusto wacko paydirt with his juicy starring role as Kirk Smith, an impotent, psychotic, misogynistic, schizophrenic and utterly unhinged ‘Nam vet rapist/strangler photographer who viciously murders assorted luckless lovely young ladies in this terrifically tawdry’n’trashy low-budget Los Angeles-set exploitation psycho horror howler. Crying, bellowing, hefting heavy weights in grunting’n’grueling slow motion, insanely ranting over the phone to female talk radio shrink Dr. Gale (the very pretty and appealing Flo Garrish) in a hysterically phony’n’fulsome Mexican accent, and savagely throttling hot babes with a coin-filled stocking in a warped, desperate attempt at appeasing his deceased abusive father (Worth’s single most sublimely screwy moment occurs when he cuts loose in a massive let it all hang out rant and roars in a monstrous scream, “Are you proud of me now?! Do I measure up?!”), Nic’s gloriously gonzo eye-rolling hambone portrayal is an absolute hoot and a half that’s in equal degrees hellishly riveting and rather uncomfortably riotous. James Westmoreland gives a similarly strong performance as the ramrod homicide detective who’s determined to nail Kirk, a hard-nosed sort with a brutish and fiercely amoral “you gotta bend the law in order to enforce it” attitude that makes Dirty Harry seem like a soft’n’sappy bleeding heart liberal (and nicely blurs the fine line between good and evil as well). Better still, writer/director/producer Robert Hammer goes whole hog on the seedy atmosphere, really pours on the gratuitous nudity, graphic violence and full-bore profanity, and doesn’t show a shred of either subtlety or restraint, thereby making this sensationally slimy, gritty and downright nihilistic grindhouse nugget a total tacky treat for hardcore sleaze cinema buffs.
Original Language en
Runtime 1 hr 34 min (94 min), 1 hr 25 min (85 min) (DVD) (USA)
Budget 0
Revenue 0
Status Released
Rated R
Genre Horror, Thriller
Director Robert Hammer
Writer Robert Hammer, Michael D. Castle, Michael Curtis
Actors James Westmoreland, Ben Frank, Flo Lawrence
Country United States
Awards 1 win
Production Company N/A
Website N/A
Sound Mix Mono
Aspect Ratio 1.85 : 1
Camera Panavision Panaflex
Laboratory Metrocolor, Hollywood (CA), USA
Film Length N/A
Negative Format 35 mm
Cinematographic Process Spherical
Printed Film Format 35 mm