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Released
1979 · FILM

When a Stranger Calls

A babysitter receives a series of sinister phone calls that escalate into a terrifying game of cat and mouse with a deranged killer.

Every babysitter's nightmare becomes real...

Directed by
Runtime
97 min
HorrorMysteryThriller
Streaming on
  • Prime Video

Synopsis

A student babysitter has her evening disrupted when the phone rings. This begins a series of increasingly terrifying and threatening calls that lead to a shocking revelation.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 19

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Sam VitaleShot by Donald PetermanScored by Dana KaproffDesigned by Elayne Barbara Ceder

Box Office

1979 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 17× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$25.0M

Budget$1.5M
Worldwide gross$25.0M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $20.1M 81% of worldwide · International: $4.9M (19%)

Also known as

  • Das Grauen kommt um 10de
  • Das Grauen kommt um Zehnde
  • Terreur sur la lignefr
  • Quando chiama uno sconosciutoit

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