In the 1979 film, “When A Stranger Calls,” the family babysitter, played by Carol Kane, is terrorized by a threatening caller. She calls the police, who tell her to keep the caller on the line long enough to trace the call—this, in the days before caller ID. The police eventually advise her that the calls are coming from inside the house.
It’s a scary and iconic moment—one that we’ve seen recreated again and again, perhaps most famously in Wes Craven’s 1996 flick, “Scream.”
What makes that scene so compelling is the feeling that we’ve all had that we could be ...