Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘Your style doesn’t impress me in fact it sucks.’
How do we decide what films to review?
‘Patience, process, perseverance’
and Patreon. Yes this another chosen by one of our Patreon Shadows who are usually out to get us.
But Murder by Phone is directed by Michael Anderson best known for classics like The Dam Busters and Logan’s Run,
Here winning the Dark Corners John Borman award for talented directors going temporarily insane.
'Kiss the bride!'
'You picked well, I will take the bride.'
I should say, it is Murder By Phone we’re looking at,
which is the truncated US release version of the original Bells.
But it’s certainly the US title that captures the plot.
'Hello?'
That’s what happens if you don’t hold the hand rail.
Friend of the family Nat Bridger, played by Richard Chamberlain,
tries to find out what happened.
‘She died of a heart attack in a museum subway station’
One of those heart attacks that blows you halfway up an escalator and leaves third degree burns on your ear.
I guess the coroner was… phoning it in.
‘You think theat the police are part of the cover-up.’
Bridger is an activist and conspiracy theorist.
‘You were in the front rank of every march and demonstration.’
in a sort of non-specific way and so is immediately sure that They are responsible.
‘You work for them’
Meanwhile…
Textbook heart attack.
‘Sounds pretty up the wall to me, I mean a telephone killing you’
Bridger infiltrates the phone company via a guided tour.
'By the year 2000, there will be 1.4 trillion phones in the world.'
On your left is our death lab, we don’t lock it, so help yourself to a uniform and just wander in.
'Hows the progress?'
‘You can send a thing like that down the line.’
The science is obviously nonsense and,
for once, I’m not going to beat them up for the hero jumping to the correct conclusion with unseemly speed,
because it keeps on happening…
and I think if you find multiple corpses next to melted phones, you might ask questions.
Unless you’re the police.
‘Check through your jackets and see if there have been any similar deaths’
At this point there have been 4 deaths and it’s only when Bridger berates the detective in charge that he spots the connection.
‘You’re telling me a telephone killed that girl?’
'I'm leaning that direction.'
But of course this is to make Bridger the stereotypical hero.
‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’m taking you up on your offer’
And Dark Corners subscribers will already know how much I dislike this man.
‘You’re fast Bridger, I like your style’
when a movie goes out of its way to tell you how awesome the lead is...
‘We are the forces of goodness and mercy’
It’s because he’s not.
‘I mind the smug attitude where you dictate information to the law – that says you’re above the law’
Says the man who broke into the phone company,
assaulted a man on the street.
'Help call the cops!'
and has his picture next to the word ‘smug’ in the dictionary.
‘Don’t do anything stupid’ ‘Hey, I got a PhD’
In the same way that mad science in the 50s tends to be done purely in the name of ‘science’,
mad technology in the 70s and 80s is done purely in the name of ‘conspiracy’
‘Must be a pain the ass going through life thinking there’s a Watergate behind every closed door’
The phone company has developed this technology for ‘Them’
‘They run the world and they’re scared of what? Of you?’
but they’re not the ones doing the killing.
‘That’s Noah Clayton the tour guide, I told him where to find you.’
A twist I’ll admit I didn’t see coming but Noah is helpful enough to explain things over the phone.
‘Fibre optics was min e Bridger. They stole my vision’
I’ll buy the man who invented fibre optic being robbed of credit,
not sure you then demote him to tour guide and,
despite knowing better than anyone how all this works, he keeps talking long enough for Bridger to turn his device against him.
Why did he kill Bridger’s friend at start?
‘That was a test. I didn’t even know her name’
Because it would have been so difficult to test it on someone you wanted to kill.
This is just so he kills someone innocent,
the tacit suggestion being that if he was just killing people who work for the phone company, that would be fine.
‘You’ve lost track of the enemy you can’t tell the innocent from the guilty’
And speaking of people he might want to kill...
‘In a city of 4 million people how come you’re the only one who thinks that’
No one believes Bridger at the start,
he is literally the lone voice.
Kill him and Clayton can act with impunity, and all he has to do is phone him.
'And all he has to do is give a phone call.'
But he doesn’t even try.
‘They don’t fit into this cheap little paperback plot you’re cooking up’
If you can get past Bridger’s holier than thou attitude.
‘What really hurts is someone glorifying something she doesn’t understand’
there’s no reason this shouldn’t work, and it has its tense moments,
but the implausibilities and inconsistencies mount up and bury it.
'I expect it didn't work.'
Thanks for watching. If you’d like to pick a movie for us to review, join us on Patreon as a Shadow.
What are the best and worst conspiracy thrillers? Let us know in the comments below.
'Call ya!'