The Secret Night Caller (1975)

I'll tell you why so serious

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Fred Durant is an IRS agent by day, hen-pecked by his overbearing mother and left frustrated by his sexless marriage. Even his breakfast ritual is sad, as he squeezes an orange and stares out the window, wondering why he goes on. He needs a release and if it has to be calling young women up in the middle of the night and unleashing pure filth on them, then so be it!Yes, in the 1970's, we lived in a world without caller ID and cell phones, when we had no idea who was on the other side of the phone. In fact, for years a burglar who had stolen my family's stereo equipment would call back and tell my mother that he could come back at any time. Years later, he would find religion and call her back, asking for forgiveness.It's in that world that we find Fred (played by Robert Reed, who will be forever typecast as the dad from the Brady Bunch, but who knows all about playing a man who is hiding a secret). On his way to work, he dreams about kissing the gorgeous woman next to him in traffic, to the point that he completely loses himself and cars beep their horns at him. If only he could feel that way about his wife (Hope Lange, Bronson's doomed wife in Death Wish)Directed by Jerry Jameson (Airport '77, Raise the Titanic and The Bat People and numerous episodes of Murder, She Wrote), we soon realize that Fred is calling the women from his office, who find him sweet and old-fashioned. And while we never get to hear what he's saying to them, it's enough that it leaves them so confused that they can't hang up.He can't even bring himself to tell his therapist what's really going on. Oh, Fred. Your life is such a mess. At least you can get lost in your world of plants and dote on your teenage daughter (Robin Mattson, Are You in the House Alone?, Candy Stripe Nurses). Or get upset when she shows up in a bikini. And throw in that mother (Sylvia Sidney, Damien: The Omen 2 and God Told Me To) and Fred just keeps giving in to his craziness, even if it leads co-workers to wreck their cars and him getting blackmailed by strippers that he has to choke out!Between this movie and Haunts of the Very Rich, Robert Reed really could bring the acting to small screen movies.Producer Charles W. Fries has brought us a wide array of films, from Trashin' to 1987's Flowers in the Attic and the Lifetime remakes (we did also all three sequels, Petals in the Wind, If There Be Thorns and Seeds of Yesterday on our podcast), Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge, Troop Beverly Hills, the Spider-Man TV Movies, The Initiation of Sarah and Amicus' Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror! What an IMDB page! What an arsenal of films to enjoy!Sadly, this has never been released on DVD. You're left to the mercy of the grey market and YouTube if you want to see this for yourself.

I don't want to claim this 70's made-for-TV movie is good or especially entertaining, but it is a rare chance to see Robert "Mr. Brady" Reed in the role of a respectable family man with a dark, secret life (rather ironic given the actor's real-life story that emerged years later when he died of AIDS). Reed plays a seemingly respectable IRS supervisor with a devoted wife and daughter, who nevertheless likes to secretly make anonymous obscene phone calls to women, including a secretary in his own office. Unfortunately since this is TV movie, we never get to actually HEAR "Mike Brady" doing his mouth-breathing pervert thing, but he must pretty good at it because he causes one woman to run out of her house and get in a near-fatal car accident! Hope Lange plays Reed's oblivious wife. Michael Constantine plays the shrink who discovers his secret and manages to cure him in a typical trite TV movie fashion. 70's TV regular Elaine Giftos plays a stripper (who does only as much stripping as one can do in a TV movie) who blackmails Reed's character. Robin Mattson plays his teenage daughter. (Mattson is perhaps most familiar from sexy drive-in fare like "Bonnie's Kids" and "Candy Stripe Nurses", but she also appeared in a lot 70's and early 80's TV--perhaps not surprisingly, she wears a skimpy bikini in one of her few scenes here). Also, in the cast is Karen Lynn Gorney who couldn't really act her way out of a paper sack, but later became semi-famous playing John Travolta's love interest in "Saturday Night Fever".The best, of course, though is Reed who, even in this short and pretty trite movie-of-the-week, displays a tragic character depth rarely scene in his other TV work. It's obvious he had the talent to go beyond his iconic but very limited role of clean-cut family man "Mike Brady".