Don't Answer the Phone! (1980)

An American mystery directed by Robert Hammer, starring Denise Galik.
A pair of police detectives are trying to catch a serial killer who strangles women.
For a "video nasty", this was dull and tame. An hour and 32 minutes went by a little slowly while watching these detectives. The plot seemed to be stretched out thinly over more time than it took to tell the story, with inconsequential scenes thrown in as filler. The shallow detective characters reminded me of the classic 1970s detectives like in All the President's Men (1976). The killer was clearly not an actor, but fit the part. It seemed to me that there was too much footage of him lifting weights with his shirt off. Fortunately (the only positive aspect), female characters spend about as much time with their shirts off too, gaining some serious female anatomy points. Dialogue and acting are not where this film shines (as if it did at all). Let's call the dialogue cliche and the acting unconvincing at best. Costumes and locations looked convincing, but still had that 1970s vibe. I didn't notice any good camera-work. What I did notice were under-exposures, lack of lighting and a generally flat look. The audio was the worst part of this. I heard way too much dead air, way too loudly between sections of dialogue and music. IMDB gives this 4.9/10 and Rotten Tomatoes has a 17% audience score for it, giving this a 33% average. I tend to agree: this was a horrible film. I rate it bad. DO NOT WATCH!