When I was a kid my parents didn’t put many restrictions on what my two older sisters and I could watch. I don’t know if they were intentionally lenient, or if they just had bigger things to worry about than whether some movie gave me nightmares.As a result, I ended up watching a number of things during my early childhood years at least ten years sooner than I should have. But I’m not a mass murderer or anything, so I guess watching age-inappropriate dreck didn’t affect me too profoundly.I’ve forgotten most of the stuff that we watched, and for good reason, I’m sure. But over the past 30 years or so there are three particular scenes from films I watched as a youngster that have stuck with me.Two of the scenes I’ll leave for a later post. (A cliffhanger. Something I picked up from those movies.) But one scene has me in a quandary. And I’m hoping you can help.I don’t know how old I was when I saw this movie. I’m guessing I was four, but I know for sure that I was no older than five-and-a-half or so. I don’t remember the circumstances under which I watched it. I’m pretty sure my dad was watching it, and since this was the early eighties and VHS rentals probably hadn’t expanded into Peoria, I suspect he was watching it on broadcast television.And since I was so young, I remember next-to-nothing about the movie. I don’t know any of the actors in it, or who directed it. I can’t really describe the movie very well. This one thing that I remember about the movie, which has stuck with me for almost 35 years, is literally all I remember about it.I can’t picture the exact scene, but I suspect the film is just a collection of the same scene over and over again anyway. That repeating scene is a good summary of the entire plot: a guy calls someone and sends some sort of signal or electricity over the phone line and kills the person on the other end of the line.Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how scary that is to a kid? I could just go answer the phone and then a minute later find myself pushing up daisies? How the hell do I protect against that? In that era the only way to find out who was on the other end of the line was to pickup the phone and talk.So even though I claim that it didn’t screw me up, watching that film, or scenes from that film –I have no idea if I saw the whole thing—must have impacted me somehow since I’ve thought about it off and on for the past thirty-five years.For a long time I’ve wanted to watch it, but I had no idea what it was called. I’d describe it to people, and they’d return a vacant stare. When I worked in a video store in the late 90s I searched for it, but had no luck. I’m sure that I Googled it before and found nothing, but I might be wrong about that because this time a simple search of “movie kills people over the phone” returned the title right away.Murder By Phone. (Alternate title: Bells)Just like that, a mystery that has lasted most of my life, solved. I was so excited I couldn’t stand it.And as I checked the IMDB page for the film, I couldn’t believe that reputable actors starred in it. Richard Chamberlain. John Houseman. Sara Botsford. Those aren’t actors I usually associate with films that might have appeared as B-movie staples on USA Up All Night back in the early nineties.Maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye.The only way to find out is to watch the film. Unfortunately, it’s not on Netflix or Amazon. The Chicago Public Library has a copy of it on VHS, but I don’t live in Chicago, and I’m currently on my public library’s blacklist for overdue fines.Amazon has a used copy available for $19, so I could go that route, but I’m not certain my VCR works.Which brings me to the quandary that I’m hoping you can help with.It is available on YouTube. Someone uploaded it in five parts. I could just click on over and watch it right now. However, I have a long-standing moral objection to illegally watching copyrighted material.On the other hand, we’re not talking about the hottest new release here. It’s not like I’m watching it on YouTube to avoid paying money that will go to the people who created it. There’s no way that I can watch this that will compensate the people who made it.The VHS tape from Amazon is used, so that money is just going to the reseller. There’s a new copy for sale for $64, but that’s just going to a reseller as well. I could pay my library fine and get the library copy through interlibrary loan, but the creators get nothing from that either.So I guess what I’m asking is should I allow myself off the moral/ethical/legal hook here and just watch it on YouTube?Are copyright exceptions granted for situations where lifelong mysteries are solved? Does this film’s importance to me outweigh whatever the copyright holders would lose by me watching the film for free at this point?I suspect not, but I’m interested to hear what you have to say! Leave a comment below.And let’s all hope that this technology can’t be updated to kill us through Ethernet lines!IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Watching Jaws With my KidsPREVIOUS POST: Alarm Clocks SuckType your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.