I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a film from my childhood called Murder by Phone. It’s thirty-five years old, and rather obscure, so it’s not streaming on Netflix or Amazon. However, after I saw it when I was four or five years old it left such a long-lasting impression on me that I wanted to watch it again.Although the film was available on YouTube, and the VHS was for sale on Amazon, I had hoped to obtain a legitimate copy of the film so I didn’t have to violate the copyright in order to watch it.Elliot, a kind gentleman at my work with whom I’d discussed the film, took it up on himself to buy a used VHS copy from Amazon for me. Before I watched the VHS copy, I did a little research and discovered the First-Sale Doctrine. This is a legal concept that states that a person or entity who legal purchases a copyrighted product, may then legally sell that product to another buyer.The VHS tape came from Blockbuster Video, who I assume legally purchased it, and when the store went out of business, I assume someone purchased it from them, who then sold it to Elliot. Therefore, I could watch the film without worrying about violating the copyright.(Not that the copyright holder is going to come after some dude trying to satisfy a thirty-five-year-old curiosity by watching a film forgotten by almost everyone else on Earth. But it’s the principle, I suppose.)So I watched the film, and it did not disappoint! I didn’t remember one single second of it from the first time I saw it all those years ago, but I had the basic gist correct: a madman invents a way to kill people by sending a signal over the phone lines.Richard Chamberlain and John Houseman star, and Michael Anderson is the director.I enjoyed it from beginning to end.First, the madman gets his first victim right away by murdering someone before the opening credits. Not only does the murder occur before we even settle into our seats, but the victim is an innocent do-gooder who had just helped an old guy up from the ground after some hoodlums pushed him to the ground in a subway station.Right away we get the feeling that anything goes with this maniac.A regular film review won’t capture the magic of this wonderful piece of art. Instead, I’ll just point out a few of the “finer” points.During the opening credits the name of the production designer caught my eye: Seamus Flannery. That’s quite possibly the best creative name I’ve ever seen.The film gets off to a murderous start, with a second person killed just six minutes in. And since this is the early eighties, these deaths aren’t that fake, CGI garbage, but rather special effects that took some ingenuity, especially the way the bodies fly through the air in slow-motion after being shocked over the phone.I wish I sounded like John Houseman when I talked. If you don’t know what he sounds like then stop reading this and listen to him.John Houseman’s character is ahead of his time with recycling. At one point Chamberlain’s character is at Houseman’s apartment, and has just finished a beer, and Houseman grabs the can from his guest’s hand and says, “See I haven’t changed; still separate the trash. Cans on the right.”Despite an impressive start, the body count really falls off. I only counted six deaths by the end.In a ridiculous combination that is never fully explained, Chamberlain’s character is both an environmental expert and a telecommunications expert. Neither of his fields of expertise impress the detective trying to catch the phone murderer. When Chamberlain tries to help, the detective says, “Go on back to your soybean patch and leave the police work to the grown ups.”As part of his investigation, Chamberlain destroys a phone in a subway station, and then calls the phone company to tell them about it. He then sits on a bench, waits for the phone repairman to show up, and then talks to him.Now, I’m willing to suspend disbelief long enough to accept that a crazy guy is killing people over the phone, but how in the world can they expect me to believe that a phone repairman would should up that quickly?It takes guts to kill one of the movie’s major characters. I didn’t see it coming, and I almost applauded the person’s death, just because it was so unexpected.One thing we’ve lost with the demise of landline phones is adventure in phone design. Remember hamburger phones? Mickey Mouse phones? We don’t have cool stuff like that anymore.Perhaps the most ironic thing about the film is that the killer possesses this advanced technology that enables him to kill people by sending a signal through telephone lines, yet he has to use a rotary dial to make the call.I didn’t know what to expect from the film, but it did not disappoint. Compared to films that are made today, the violence is rather tame, and while the idea of killing someone through the phone lines might not terrify me as much as it did when I was four years old, it’s still rather unnerving.I enjoyed the process of tracking down and watching this film so much that I hope to find more films that I vaguely remember from my childhood. Some were child-appropriate, some not. But I look forward to watching them from an adult perspective.IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: The Lego Movie SucksPREVIOUS POST: Why You Should Subscribe by e-mail to My BlogType 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.