The greatest movie ever made..!

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE! is a serial killer thriller that makes up for a lack of gore and bloodshed with a really sleazy atmosphere that gives it a low-down gritty feel. This is one of the most interesting films to be released by low budget purveyors Crown International Pictures, and it's the first one I've watched from the studio that has real power.It's reasonable to expect DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE! to be a dud, because many of the elements in the film simply aren't very good. The plotting is haphazard and the police investigation stuff is really boring. The majority of the cast give stilted performances and the scripting is sub par too. The whole film has a scuzzy, on-the-street type look to it that makes it very much a product of its era.The film has a single saving grace in the form of Nicholas Worth, who plays the killer. Worth was a long-time B-movie veteran and this is the performance of his career. His crazed maniac goes around slaughtering women while at the same time praying to the spirit of his stepfather and going off on incredibly entertaining spiels that were by all accounts ad-libbed by the actor. I've always liked Worth and his performance here is the stuff of greatness; sad, then, that due to the film's subject matter it is a role that remains unseen and unappreciated by most.

So i was up last night at some ungodly hour and this flick comes on straight out of 1980 about a big, huge guy who strangles the life out of sexy woman in L.A. It's called "Don't answer the Phone" and it stands out at being violent, sexy, and scary. This film caught my eye for two reasons, first off the killer is wearing an Airborne/paratrooper jacket in the movie, which seems to fit extremely well with a "Ed Parker" Kempo Karate patch on the right shoulder. Second, the flesh. Every five minutes some Extreme hottie gets squeezed to dirt, its a ninety minute flesh parade of death and desire dealt out in a lethal, one-sided manner. There's almost no blood to be seen, just lots of strangulation and domination. It's slightly reminiscent of "Maniac" the classic that catapulted Joe Spinell to fame for his role as the bloodthirsty woman butcher. There both excellent pieces of cinema that pushed the genre into cold, tension filled depths, AND they both came out the same year. I'm starting to love Hollywood b-genre, bit actors. Nicholas Worth, Brion Johnson, Joe Spinell and Robert Z'dar round out some of my favorites in this weird, forgotten genre. Ten stars.

Some of the old Grindhouse movies leave you wanting to take a shower after it's all said and done. Many of the films of this nature ("Maniac", "The Toolbox Murders", "Don't Go in the House") are just ugly beasts. They are vicious, questionable, possibly misogynistic, and all around scuzzy, like a man trying to pick a fight with you. Yet, several of these movies have an undeniable edge to them, thanks to strong performances, a pervasive, dread filled ambiance and a look and professional feel to them. One of the movies of this era that almost joins the ranks of these movies is Robert Hammer's nasty but all around flawed 1980 film "Don't Answer the Phone!" A deeply disturbed Vietnam veteran named Kirk Smith (Nicholas Worth) has taken a shining to strangling scantily clad women in Los Angeles, all while taunting a young psychologist named Lindsey Gale (Flo Lawrence) on the radio. Can Lt. Chris McCabe (James Westmoreland) stop this deranged lunatic? From the get go, "Don't Answer the Phone" is a rough little movie. It's not the goriest movie, but the murder scenes are queasy, voyeuristic and all around sadistic, making the viewer feel very uncomfortable, which is clearly the intent. That out of the way, Worth does a great job as the psychopath. A veteran character actor, he really bites into the role, creating the portrait of a man you wouldn't want to run into for many reasons. Byron Allred contributes a great old school electronic score which complements the sleazy proceedings quite well.Sadly, that's were the good aspects end. The movie ends up suffering from several flaws, such as the misplaced comic relief. For a movie that wants to provoke and offend sensibilities so much, it almost feels like it's afraid it will go too far, and ends up using poorly timed comic relief to pad things out. It also doesn't help that the other performances are pretty weak, and don't really offer anything as far as characters are concerned. Gail in particular is a weak character-a stereotypical, weak liberal type who doesn't stand a chance without the help of the more conservative cop characters. Even the direction feels lackluster. While other movies of this nature were pretty questionable, they at least felt like they were under capable hands. This just feels like a jumbled mess from a director whose unsure of himself.In the end, "Don't Answer the Phone" is a movie caught between two worlds: it wants to be a grim psychological study, but it doesn't seem very sure of itself. It's an ultimately uneven viewing experience that might be of interest to those curious of what kind of movies played in the likes of 42nd Street back in the day, but if you already know what kind of exploitation fair was shown back in the day, then you probably don't need to see this, as there are better examples.

Snickering Vietnam vet Kirk Smith (Nicholas Worth) is one hell of a sicko: for a living, he shoots obscene pornographic photos, and in his spare time, he strangles pretty young women BEFORE raping them. LA detectives Lt. Chris McCabe (James Westmoreland) and Sgt. Hatcher (Ben Frank) are hot on the maniac's heels, but can they catch him before he kills his latest target, radio psychologist Dr. Lindsay Gale (Flo Lawrence)?With such a sleazy premise, Don't Answer The Phone looks set to be a classic slice of extremely offensive exploitation, but with director Robert Hammer reluctant to go that extra mile to offend, the film falls short of the high (or should that be low?) standards set by his contemporary William Lustig, whose similarly themed film, Maniac, goes all out to shock the viewer.Worth's character, Kirk Smith, is an undeniably repugnant fellow, and what he gets up to certainly ain't nice, but Hammer's approach to his patently sensationalist material is surprisingly cautious: whilst he doesn't mind showing the audience a little nudity (for example, all of the victims have their tops torn off before being choked to death), he doesn't quite seem to possess the cojonas necessary to present his sex and violence in the no-nonsense manner the genre demands.Instead, his characters simply fill us in on the salacious details through conversation: a psychic gives a graphic account of the murder and rape of one girl, offering lurid tidbits of info about Kirk's modus operandi, and several characters pass comment on the particularly explicit nature of his photography. At the risk of sounding like a dangerous psycho myself, I ask 'Where's the really good stuff?'. A few throttlings and some tits only qualify this as exploitation lite!To be fair, Don't Answer The Phone does manage to deliver a couple of scenes that almost make the grade—Kirk strangles a junkie hooker whilst she is live on air with Dr. Gale, and one topless victim is subjected to scalding by melted candle wax— but with too many other scenes pulling their punches, this film is most likely going to disappoint fans of degenerate cinema.5.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 6 for IMDb.