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Released a year after John Carpenter's 1978
Halloween, this thriller by longtime actor-turned-director Fred Walton has held a strong following of its own. In an exemplary piece of suspense, the film begins with a babysitter (Carol Kane) fielding threatening phone calls while on the job. She soon finds that a pair of children in her charge have been murdered in their beds; she is nearly killed herself by the homicidal maniac before police arrive. As with
Halloween, the action jumps some years ahead, when Kane's character is herself a wife and mother--and the monster escapes from a mental institution to re-create his original carnage in the heroine's own home. Between these exciting bookends, the film loses its way and becomes dissatisfying and obscure. But Walton compensates by engineering a couple of great horror moments worth savoring.
Tom Keogh
