Episode 25: Telephone Terror with Erica Shultz

Squeezing in one last special episode for the Halloween season, this is another subject I’ve been dying to talk about since I started Eros + Massacre. Erica Shultz was kind enough to join me to discuss about a series of ’70s and ’80s thrillers and horror movies featuring the phone as a source of terror. You probably know Erica from her podcast, Unsung Horrors, and her book, The Sweetest Taboo: An Unapologetic Guide to Child Kills in Film. She has an upcoming Miskatonic lecture on November 18th all about that very subject, so get your tickets here.

We start off mentioning the early classics, like Black Christmas (1974) and When a Stranger Calls (1979), before diving in to more obscure efforts like Someone’s Watching Me! (1978), Don’t Answer the Phone (1980), Eyes of a Stranger (1981), Murder by Phone (1982), Disconnected (1983), Open House (1987), and Out of the Dark (1988). We talk a lot about how the phone and technology function in these films,and the bliss of life before cell phones, among many other things. Answer the phone at your own risk!

Happy Halloween, everyone!!!