Trivia / When a Stranger Calls

• Dawson Casting: In the original, high school student Jill Johnson is played by 27-year-old Carol Kane, who also portrays the character seven years later as a young adult. It's surprisingly convincing.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Fred Walton's original 1977 short film "The Sitter" (which he was commissioned to adapt into this feature following the success of Halloween (1978)) was completely unavailable to the public for decades, to the point where many fans assumed the opening 20 minutes of this film was that short film, with the rest tacked on later. This was proven not to be the case when it turned up as a bonus feature on Second Sight UK's Blu-ray release of the original film, and later on Scream Factory's Blu-ray of When A Stranger Calls Back, due to fan demand. The 1977 short film is very similar and uses almost the same script, but it stars Lucia Stralser as Jill Johnson, and the 1979 film is far more polished and atmospheric.
• What Could Have Been: There was a sequel planned for the remake that never got out of the planning stages, where Jill would have become a mother herself and had to rescue her children and their babysitter from the Stranger. The new babysitter would have served as an Audience Surrogate, and there were plans for John Clifford appearing in the film as well.
  • Earlier than that, Fred Walton had planned a third sequel to the original during the horror boom created by Scream (1996), even planning on having Dimension Films distribute it. Carol Kane and Charles Durning were planned to return too.

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