In 1977, a 22-minute short film called The Sitter was screened before a showing of the lurid, quasi-notorious Diane Keaton thriller Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Producers in the audience saw feature-film potential in The Sitter; co-writers Steve Deke and Fred Walton developed their short into the 1979 film When a Stranger Calls, with Walton once again taking on directorial duties. Beyond casting Carol Kane as babysitter Jill Johnson for the feature, little changed in those 22 urban legend-flavored minutes and they remain some of the most intense and iconic in horror.

After that terrifying opening, When a Stranger Calls becomes something of a police procedural, more in line with crime thrillers than with horror or slashers—if you want to see a film that tonally follows through with that opening sequence, watch Wes Craven’s Scream. Disappointed horror fans (myself included!) have long summed up When a Stranger Calls as “a great first 20 minutes, but the rest…” After watching it this week simply as groundwork for this episode’s true focus, though, I was surprised by how much I loved it—yes, all of it, even the thriller-bits. A large part of this owes to Colleen Dewhurst, doing some terrific actressing as the world-weary broad Tracy. Ultimately, she’s only in the movie for a few scenes, and we learn very little about her. Thanks to Dewhurst, though, it feels like we know Tracy just the same. There’s something honest in all the moments we get with her, from her line delivery to the cock of an eyebrow. She’s a character who has had and will continue to have a full life—not necessarily a good one, mind—outside the events that put her in the orbits of the murderous, sweaty menace Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley) and the determined PI John Clifford (Charles Durning). I couldn’t get enough!

Then came the 1993 sequel When a Stranger Calls Back, the subject for this week’s episode as chosen by last week’s guest, Mike Muncer of The Evolution of Horror podcast. I hadn’t seen it in literal decades (good LAWD) and all I remembered, really, was the wacko climax. This film, too, surprised me by being more than a bonkers climax! It’s a feminist (!) take on trauma and the ways women form communities and their own support networks when their cries for help aren’t taken seriously. It’s also an (all-too rare) example of a legacy character done right, with Carol Kane reprising her role as Jill Johnson: She’s a dash of Nancy Thompson from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and a whole lotta the Laurie Strode that new Halloween trilogy thought it had. Like its predecessor, When a Stranger Calls Back boasts a killer opening 20 minutes (this time with The Stepfather’s Jill Schoelen as the babysitter-in-peril) before becoming more of a thriller than a horror film, but who cares? Not me! As far as I’m concerned, those weirdo strangers can just keep on a-callin’.