Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Inadvands Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Richard Chatten On paper this sounds pretty uninspiring, but 'Bells' turns out to be an ingenious idea well-executed (a bit like Didier Grousset's 'Kamikaze' [1986] in reverse), that reunites the director and composer of 'The Quiller Memorandum'.The script vaguely recalls 'Quatermass 2', is lively, quite witty in places and generous to the supporting characters (Gary Reineke, in particular, is visibly enjoying himself as the police lieutenant, who gets to develop as the film progresses), the Toronto locations are well used, and it all builds up to a satisfyingly explosive climax. One can nit-pick - Richard Chamberlain gets a lot of lucky breaks looking for information - but it certainly makes you pay attention every time yet another 'phone rings; did every single phone in Toronto - even the Mickey Mouse ones - have exactly the same ring tone in 1980, by the way?

kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** Richard Chamberlain looking like a Chuck Norris clone is ecologically minded Teronto collage professor Nat Bridger who's out to solve the murder of one of his students Connie Lawson, Lenore Zann,who was killed by answering a public telephone at the Toronto Museum subway station. What happened was that Connie had her brains blown out after answering the phone that exploded like a hand grenade. Nat soon finds out that a number of other people died the same way who had no connection to each other! And is determined to find out if this is some kind of insane plot by the phone company to get people to pay their phone bills or just some psycho getting his kicks or rocks off by terrorizing the people for his own sick entertainment.With the help of artist Ridley Taylor,Sara Botsford, whom he met at an local art exhibit Nat tries to track down the phone killer who by then has murdered-by phone-some half dozen people. That included Art's mentor and good friend Prof. Stanley Markowitz, John Houseman, whom we later find out knew a lot more then he let on to who was behind the "Phone Murders". ****SPOILERS*** Much like the 1977 Charles Bronson thriller "Telefon" where the phone was used to activate those who answered it to commit mass murder the movie "Bells" or "Murder by Phone" uses the everyday land line telephone, cell phones were not that readily available back then in 1982, as the murder weapon itself. And it's victims are anyone who's unlucky enough to answer the killer phone! The big surprise is that the killer was an ex-phone company employee who felt that phones were taking over his life and, by ringing all day and night, keeping him form among other things getting a good night's sleep. It's his very invention that ended up killing a number of innocent people that in the end did him in with the help of Nat-Who also turned out to be an electronic expert- hooking his phone up to the device and getting him to answer it.

Coventry "Bells" looks like an average and routine 80's slasher but you should know to expect a little bit extra from the talented director of "Logan's Run"; Michael Anderson. And indeed, only a couple of minutes into the film and already it turned out that my impressions and expectations towards this film were entirely wrong and I was in for a pleasant surprise. "Bells" isn't a teen slasher movie at all (despite the VHS cover art and the cheesy sounding alternate title "Murder by Phone") but a fairly well plotted thriller that even shows the ambition to question the reliability of gigantic enterprises and refer to government conspiracies. How many "Friday the 13th" rip-offs can righteously claim to have done that? Richard Chamberlain stars as university professor and environmentalist Nat Bridger who privately investigates the bizarre death of one of his former students. The poor girl turns out to be the first victim of a maniac who developed a method to kill people over the phone (!) by sending an extremely high level of voltage through the speaker. Don't ask me to explain the technical aspects, but the victims start to shake and bleed from eyes & ears before getting catapulted in the air by an explosion! Not exactly tasteful but original and very entertaining to look at! This killing modus operandi as well as the further development of the "whodunit" storyline is often very implausible and silly, but you easily look past these flaws simply because the pace is exciting and the suspense-sequences are extremely intense. The film's only real disadvantage is that the scenery has severely dated by now and that some of the observations in the script turned out very exaggerated (for example, the phone company tour guide's estimation that there will be 1.4 trillion phones by the year 2000). Perhaps, this even is a rare example of a horror film that would actually profit from a remake! I'm convinced that some of the nowadays scriptwriters can come up with nifty ideas when re-working this premise into a story that revolves on mobile phones, teleconference attributes or web cams. Class actor Chamberlain is adequate in the lead, but the best performances are delivered by Sara Botsford as his love-interest and Gary Reineke as the obnoxious police detective.

William Richard Chamberlin plays a college professor who is trying to find out who is the psychopath (more like a postal ex-phone company worker) who is killing victim with a Hi-frequency sound through the phone. It kind of runs like a TV film, if you cut out the Phone/blood violence. John Houseman also star in this Canadian film that was released a year earlier in Canada as BELLS, and released in U.S. as MURDER BY PHONE. The American print is edited to 78 minutes as the Canadian print runs 95 minutes. Roger Corman probably edited it to save money on the print stock when he picked it up for U.S. release. Canadian print is recommended. Originally sold overseas under the title THE CALLING.