By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: director Fred Walton (pictured far right, top), who helmed When A Stranger Calls, April Fool’s Day and The Rosary Murders.
Of all genres, the most heavily populated with generally under-appreciated talent would arguably be horror. Largely ignored by mainstream media (but dissected with great enthusiasm by more niche commentators) and derided sniffily as “low culture”, all but the biggest names in the horror genre (John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Sam Raimi and the like) remain largely unknown, and even the biggest names only receive real recognition when they move outside the genre into more “acceptable” territory. But even within the horror genre itself, and amongst those who discuss it with frothy levels of excitement and appreciation, the name of writer/director Fred Walton is rarely mentioned, likely because of his limited big screen output. Walton’s 1979 feature debut, however, still stands as one of the creepiest and most chilling horror films of its splattery decade, and for the masterful When A Stranger Calls alone, the writer/director should be far more celebrated.
Born in 1949 in Maryland with no familial connections to the film industry, Walton was attracted to filmmaking at an early age, and had to make his own way in the field. While studying theatre at Denison University, he and fellow student Steve Feke hit upon the idea of utilising a vague, distant personal connection to break into the business. Feke knew someone who worked as a story editor for the 1977 anthology TV show Quinn Martin’s Tales Of The Unexpected, and the duo set about writing a short that they thought would appeal to the creators of the series. When Feke came up with an idea drawn from an urban legend about a teenage babysitter being harassed via a series of chilling phone calls placed by a deranged killer, Walton suggested they instead make a short film together.
Produced in three days on a budget of $12,000, 1977’s The Sitter was a highly effective 22-minute exercise in terror co-written by Walton and Feke and directed by Walton with bravura skill and assurance. While the film didn’t immediately work out as a job seeker’s calling card as the duo had hoped, Walton and Feke were able to score a one-week engagement at a theatre for consideration at the 1977 Academy Awards to qualify for a nomination for Best Live Action Short. The Sitter enjoyed a brief theatrical run as a pre-feature short screened before the gritty Diane Keaton-starring drama Looking For Mr. Goodbar at Mann’s Village Theatre in California. The Sitter didn’t get nominated for an Oscar, but it did get seen by the right people. Aspiring producers Barry Krost and Douglas Chapin loved The Sitter and eventually convinced financier and burgeoning producer Melvin Simon to back the expansion of the short into a feature length film.
The result was 1979’s When A Stranger Calls, an ingenious example of a horror film that feels much more violent and horrific than it actually is, with Walton effectively mining mood and tension over bloodshed and gore. The great Carol Kane gives a superb performance as Jill Johnson, a babysitter menaced by a killer over the phone while she looks after the children of a wealthy doctor, all of whom are asleep upstairs in the large two-story house. The film’s opening sequence is basically a remake of The Sitter, with the final first reveal – SPOILER ALERT – that the phone calls are coming from inside the house one of the most terrifying in horror history. The second reveal – SPOILER ALERT – that the children have already been killed upstairs hours earlier by the deranged phone caller is even more shocking and unforgettable.
Though many have argued that When A Stranger Calls has trouble regrouping after that first stunning sequence, we would beg to vociferously differ. On expanding their masterful short, Walton and Feke take the story into fascinating new territory, effectively getting inside the head of the killer, Curt Duncan, who is apprehended and committed to a mental institution but escapes seven years later to continue his reign of terror. The character is brilliantly played by English actor Tony Beckley, who passed away just six months after the release of the film. Chilling but curiously sympathetic, the murderous Curt Duncan is one of the greatest villains in horror cinema, and is a far cry from the wordless, hulking likes of other cinematic killers of the era like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. Equally fascinating is the character of pursuing, vengeful detective and possible vigilante John Clifford, played with characteristic excellence by veteran character actor Charles Durning. Aggressive and violent where Curt Duncan is quiet and sensitive, Clifford almost plays like the film’s “bad guy” in a fascinating toying with audience expectations.
A truly absorbing and inventive horror film, When A Stranger Calls was a well-deserved box office hit of the time and remains a minor cult favourite today. “During the opening weekend, people didn’t know much,” Fred Walton explained to Sci-Fi Now in 2021. “People didn’t know what it was about. But by the second weekend, it was number one at the box office. And we knew, actually, because we’d had cast and crew screenings with the finished thing, and we knew this really worked…we knew that this really worked well.”
Though the success of When A Stranger Calls should have seen Fred Walton elevated to the status of a major player in the horror genre, the director instead shifted gears with his next film. Something of a pet project for Walton and co-written again with Steve Feke, 1983’s now largely forgotten Hadley’s Rebellion is a highly affecting coming of age drama in which young actor Griffin O’Neal (the son of Ryan O’Neal, and a promising if somewhat under-realised talent in the 1980s) gives an impressive performance as Hadley Hickman, a misfit student at a polished prep school whose obsession with the sport of wrestling places him at odds with just about everyone around him. Deserving of far greater praise, this heartfelt drama boasts great supporting performances from William Devane (as Hadley’s coach) and Charles Durning (as a boozy former wrestling champ), and an air of charming youthful regret.
Walton returned to the horror genre with 1986’s delightfully cunning April Fool’s Day, a self-reflexive and very funny kinda-sorta parody on the genre which still works as a thrilling horror flick…not unlike Wes Craven’s later smash hit Scream, which also referenced When A Stranger Calls in its first scene of shocking telephone terror. A cheeky, freaky delight, April Fool’s Day did reasonably well at the box office, but could have been much, much bigger if it had been marketed better. “The tragedy, I think, or the great disappointment, was that Paramount didn’t know how to release it other than as a typical slasher picture,” Walton has said of the film. “So, most audiences came in expecting to see something that they weren’t going to see.”
After the surprisingly goofy April Fool’s Day, Walton veered back into the icy, chilling territory that he’d established with When A Stranger Calls with the powerful and thought provoking 1987 thriller The Rosary Murders. Based on William X. Kienzle’s novel and co-written with crime novelist extraordinaire Elmore Leonard, Walton delivers a masterclass in mood here, as an in-top-form Donald Sutherland plays a conflicted Catholic priest investigating a spate of murders involving members of the church. Set in a bleak, broken-down Detroit and featuring a cast of haunted, well-defined characters (excellently played by the likes of Belinda Bauer, Josef Sommer and Walton fave Charles Durning), this keenly intelligent low budget thriller is a quietly powerful treatise on abuse, grief, and responsibility that also grips the audience through strong storytelling and sensibly understated filmmaking. Only enjoying a limited release and incorrectly remembered (if at all) as a straight-to-video shocker, The Rosary Murders is a true forgotten gem deserving of far greater celebration.
Despite the high quality of The Rosary Murders and the strong direction on display, Walton very sadly never made another feature film, and instead turned to the world of telemovies, where he delivered a number of strong works, including 1988’s I Saw What You Did (another impressive slice of teen-themed telephone terror) and 1989’s high-rise horror Trapped. Most enjoyably, however, Walton helmed a surprise sequel to his biggest hit with the 1993 telemovie When A Stranger Calls Back, which featured returning stars Carol Kane and Charles Durning. An interesting new take on the material that cannily involves the original film’s stars, When A Stranger Calls Back is a well-constructed small screen horror flick that serves as a nice continuation of the original.
“I needed work and this frequently happens – you’re driving around LA and you’re alone in the car and thoughts come to you,” Fred Walton explained to Sci-Fi Now in 2021 of the origin of the TV sequel. “And I had this idea of a variation of the opening act of When A Stranger Calls, but this time with someone actually at the door instead of on the phone, requesting help because his car had broken down; that was my original idea. And because I needed money, I went to Doug Chaffin who was the co-producer on the original and I told him I had this idea and I asked what he thought of it. He said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s great, let’s go set it up.’ So, it was set up at 20th Century Fox and we developed a script for it, and then they decided they didn’t want to do it. Then [cable channel] Showtime decided they would do it, so that’s how that worked.”
With his last film being the 1996 telemovie The Stepford Husbands, Fred Walton appears to be retired from the film industry, leaving behind a small clutch of imaginative, original, superior films. An obvious influence on the late Wes Craven, as well as other filmmakers (When A Stranger Calls was remade – badly! – in 2006 by director Simon West), Fred Walton is a true Unsung Auteur, and should be far more feted for his savvy, restrained and highly intelligent approach to both the horror genre and filmmaking in general.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
