10 Terrifying Horror Movie Phone Calls You'll Never Forget

When a Stranger Calls is the horror movie likely most synonymous with the concept of a chilling phone call.

It may not have been the first horror offering to utilise an eerie call, but the 1979 picture is the most impactful in its use of the humble telephone. As the film begins, we find Carol Kane's Jill Johnson on a babysitting mission where she's plagued by sinister calls. The big reveal of that opening act is that these calls are actually coming from within the house where Jill is babysitting - and then it's revealed that the children she's been tasked with looking after have been murdered by an insane fella called Curt Duncan.

From there, the film jumps forward seven years, with Jill and cop John Clifford once more tormented by Duncan and his telephony terrors.

When a Stranger Calls Back would follow in 1993, although it was the 2006 When a Stranger Calls remake that stood out as a fascinating showcase of the trusty telephone. In the redo, the film drags out the original movie's opening act and makes that the entire picture - and it works!

Until When a Stranger Calls, the telephone was largely viewed as an instrument of safety and as a way out of trouble. Yet in that 1979 film, the tables were turned, and the telephone was shown to be a conduit of evil and suffering.