Watch When Michael Calls For Free

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

An enjoyable atmospheric, psychological thriller; better than you might expect. A little odd and even humorous at times, but that's part of the charm. Pretty good for a TV movie.

This film is the type that truly scares you, because of the unknown factor. Who's the mysterious caller? Is it a prank, a ghost, or something even darker? Of course, having pillars of the community die in ugly ways adds tension. Plus the child's voice is chillingly desperate and surreal, like an angry ghost out for revenge. While there may be darker or more violent movies, few rival this in atmosphere and emotional claustrophobia. Who can our main character trust? Who wants her to suffer? The answer will shock you. Also watch for a excellent performance from a young Michael Douglas. A word to the wise: Watch this with friends, it's too creepy for solo viewing.

ABC Movie of the Week involves Elizabeth Ashley as a divorced single parent who mysteriously begins receiving a series of spooky phone calls from a child who says he's her nephew, a boy who allegedly died in a snowstorm years prior; ex-husband Ben Gazzara and brother Michael Douglas (who heads up a home for emotionally disturbed youngsters) investigate on their own after a bee-keeper and a sheriff both turn up dead. Spotty teleplay from James Bridges, adapting a novel by John Farris, inexplicably drops a thread about a young burglar caught red-handed, and also a farmhouse which the killer sets on fire. However, the phone calls here are certainly creepy (even better than the ones from Doris Day's "Midnight Lace") and the performances by Ashley and Gazzara are solid. Bridges and Michael Douglas later reunited on "The China Syndrome".

Elizabeth Ashley is receiving phone calls from her nephew Michael--he's crying, screaming and asking for help. The problem is Michael died 15 years ago. This film scared me silly back in 1972 when it aired on ABC. Seeing it again, years later, it STILL works.The movie is a little slow and predictable, the deaths are very tame, it's never explained why it takes Michael 15 years to call and there's a tacked-on happy ending, but this IS a TV movie so you have to give it room. Elizabeth Ashley is excellent, Ben Gazzara is OK and it's fun to see Michael Douglas so young. And those telephone calls still scare the living daylights out of me. I actually had to turn a light on during one of them!A creepy little TV movie. Worth seeing.