Murder by Phone
Murder by Phone is a 1982 science-fiction slasher film directed by Michael Anderson and starring Richard Chamberlain, John Houseman, Sara Botsford, Robin Gammell, Gary Reineke and Barry Morse. Its plot follows a series of murders committed by a disgruntled phone company employee who designs a device that kills victims when they answer their telephones.
Plot
The movie begins with a woman hears a phone ring at a subway train and goes to the public phone booth to answer it. She hears nothing at first until high pitched beeping sounds slowly climb up, which makes the woman shake vibrantly and make her eyes bleed and is then thrown onto the escalator due to the explosion that sounded like thunder.Nat Bridger, an ecology professor, goes to the Thorner home after teaching his class. Thorner and his wife can't handle the fact that their daughter, Sandra, is dead after her murder. Later that night, a businessman, Gordon Smith is later electrocuted by the phone he was using when it ringed and was thrown out through the large glass window and crashes onto a car and was killed.
The next day, Nat goes for a ceremony and gets called for the letter of authorization to send to the caller. He goes to see Lt. Merra when he finds out that Sandra's death was caused for a heart attack. Then Nat stays over at Stanley Markowitz place and interviews a lady who had witnessed the murder. Later that night, Mrs. Andersen gets killed by the phone.
Nat tries to figure out why the phone at the subway was repaired and gets rejected at first then gets to talk to the supervisor at a business industry. He met Ridley Taylor inside not so long ago after a talk with the supervisor and invites her to dinner. And another phone gone wrong happened at Connie Lawson and was killed.
Later the next day, Nat gets into an argument with Meara for not helping him on the case. Nat gets followed by a tourist guy who takes pictures and thinks he's working for someone but gets pulled away. After being arrested and healed by Stanley, Nat goes to the phone control center to search for evidence that can led to the mystery and finds pairs of phones that were used for the murders. After Nat has arrived at Ridley's house, Stanley gets murdered by the phone.
Nat and Meara go to the commissioner about Stanley's discussion on the phone murders and gets called out. Nat goes to Stanley's house for evidence until he realizes that from the video tape player, an address that led to Ridley's house and plays the tape at Ridley's house realizing that Noah Clayton, the tour guide, must be the phone operator, killing people by the use of a phone. After Nat leaves, Ridley gets a phone call from Noah and before he can kill her through the phone, Ridley throws it away, not getting killed.
Nat and other men, along with Ridley, go to the Power company for clues and Nat gets the phone call from Clayton, revealing his innovations for killing people through phones for revenge over perceived injustices. Before he kills Nat, the deadly high-frequency sonic pulse he designed for his telephone murders is reversed and sent back through the line, causing Clayton to convulse and a shelf behind him falls on him and is killed.
The movie ends with the whole mystery solved and Nat gets a call from Al Histlip, the public safety department of the city, congrates him for solving the phone murders and as Ridley leaves to go home, Nat calls out "I'll call you" before the high pitch beeping noises come again and the movie cuts out to the credits.