To the phone - no complaints, all claims - to cruel men Well, Dad? Are you proud of me now? Do I fit in?
© A quote from the movie.
Once more than forty years ago, one Robert Hammer tried very hard to create a novelty for the genre of “jallo”. Just enough of a new director for one job. It contains the most anecdotal stamps for identifying psychopaths: Vietnamese syndrome, stockings on the head, a pinch of religion paired with sex - and wow, the portrait is ready!
But still, “Don’t answer the phone!” is not without an outdated charm by today’s standards. A man in a military suit roams the poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles, as if parodying Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," and looks for negligent victims. He deals with them quickly and bluntly, without using sophisticated methods to the fullest. But then he calls the shrink on the radio (when was the last time you heard the psychological “order table?”) and unobtrusively reports his condition. In parallel, brave soldiers from the police undertake to capture the scoundrel, but, of course, collapse after collapse. It's fun, isn't it?
In the course of the plot, the strangler, about whom almost nothing is known at first, turns from an impersonal functional threat into a possessed rapist. It is revealed as if wide, and not in depth. We observe a different emotional range – from lust to repentance, not really immersed in the villainous biography. However, episodes that do not deal with cruelty and eroticism look more curious: take at least psychotherapy sessions with “left” ladies or psychic performance in the police station. Situations with cops sometimes broadcast sudden comedy, rather than being a pure detective. For a good suspense answer peculiar preludes to murder: you know exactly how it will end, but do not know when and how it will happen.
A typical “jallo-movi” undergoes a metamorphosis during viewing: atrocities for the sake of atrocities recede into the background. For the first time, we have to look deeper. The world of the film is a direct reflection of the patriarchal foundations of American society. Observing the behavior of the characters, it is impossible not to be convinced: the maniac is terrible and vicious, only that he is completely random in a given value system. Here the girls are called “horses”, the streets are teeming with prostitutes and drug addicts, and the only adequate man is the investigator, who took on at any cost to do justice, although even he does not manage to remain sufficiently sensitive and understanding.
“Don’t Answer the Phone!” draws a strange, chilling parallel to another post-Vietnam War novel, Stephen King’s Fury. Published in 1977, the novel was about a boy who took his classmates hostage, and was even withdrawn from sale after a similar incident. The boy suffered from the abuse of his father, a former soldier - in some places this was explained especially colorfully. The war broke men, made them monsters, and their traumatized descendants chose their own path of confrontation with others. Both King and Hammer have a central character that is essentially not autonomous: Dad’s figure swings with an evil pendulum from behind, and if the child is ready to resist it, the adult, in addition to being a veteran himself, is already irreversibly imprisoned in a prison of masculine subservience.
Violence breeds violence. Most often it has the form of misogyny and excessive power. The main character in the picture is an amateur bodybuilder and pornographer. His imaginary strength lies in his fighting skills and powerful body, and his weapon is a camera that attracts stupid nymphets, strips naked and allows him to use them. Despite attempts to work out the image of Kirk Smith in detail, as well as turn the Jallo into a little digestible statement, the director-debutant hardly managed to make a really worthwhile film that can leapfrog his era. Robert Hammer saddled several skates at once, without fully understanding any. To justify genre affiliation, there is not enough imagination and ingenuity. To mirror the imperfection of social foundations – depth and seriousness. "Don't answer the phone!" (by the way, a very inappropriate name) at the exit is hardly going into something holistic. Critic Vincent Canby hailed it as a "disgusting, poorly executed exploitative movie," which has some truth to it.
And yet, if you do not find fault with vague interpretations, this is not the worst story about a maniac. Clumsy and straightforward, yes. Rightly forgotten. Full of lust and dirt. But it does not cause so much negativity.
5 out of 10