Production
When a Stranger Calls is essentially an expanded remake of Fred Walton's short film The Sitter, which comprised the first 20 minutes of this film. Walton was inspired to turn the short into a feature-length film after the considerable success of John Carpenter's Halloween.
The film marked Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Donald Peterman's feature film debut as director of photography.
Tony Beckley, who plays Curt Duncan, was terminally ill throughout production. Because of this, he did not at all fit the description of the killer, but Fred Walton refused to replace him. Beckley passed away soon after he finished filming his scenes. The 1993 sequel, When a Stranger Calls Back, was dedicated to his memory.
Read more about this topic: When A Stranger Calls (1979 film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)
“The society based on production is only productive, not creative.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)