12 Movies You Can Stop Watching After The Opening Scene

No, not the infamous 2006 remake from Con Air director Simon West (how the mighty fall)—that PG-13 remix managed to sanitize even the brief pre-credits kill of this 1979 original. No, we mean the Carol Kane starring proto-slasher, released only a year after John Carpenter’s Halloween gave the burgeoning subgenre some serious mainstream exposure.

Incredibly enough for an otherwise run of the mill thriller, the opening scene of When A Stranger Calls can stand toe to toe with Halloween’s iconic opening sequence in terms of incredibly tense, unforgettable horror scenes, and the movie’s first frames were so effective that they even provided the basis for Wes Craven’s legendary pre-credits sequence in 1996’s Scream.

It’s a shame nothing else in the flick lives up to these twelve minutes, but the scene nonetheless deserves a place in horror history as an absurdly influential standalone sequence, with homages to the scene cropping up as recently as 2013’s indie horror hit All Hallow’s Eve.