Ten Days of Terror!: I Saw What You Did

Film: I Saw What You Did
Format: DVD from Ella Johnson Memorial Public Library through interlibrary loan on gigantic television.

There’s a part of me that loves a William Castle movie. Castle’s movies were often campy and goofy and relied at least in part on gimmicks. 13 Ghosts gave the audience special glasses to see the ghosts on screen; The Tingler had movie theaters add seat buzzers to freak out the audience. Because of this, it’s easy to forget that William Castle was actually a decent film director. I Saw What You Did is right up Castle’s alley, but it’s a surprisingly effective little thriller.

In fact, it’s a little surprising that I Saw What You Did hasn’t been remade, although parts of it have certainly been used by other films at times. The central conceit is that a couple of girls and the younger sister of one of them, given a night on their own, decide to make a series of prank calls. And, as it happens, they call the wrong guy on the wrong night and say exactly the wrong thing.

Libby Mannering (Andi Garrett) and her younger sister Tess (Sharyl Locke) are left at home alone by their parents, who are visiting friends a couple of hours away. They almost don’t go because the sitter falls through, but Libby convinces them that she can handle things. She arranges for her friend Kit (Sara Lane) to come to dinner. That night, looking for something to do, Libby and Tess tell Kit that what they do for fun is make prank calls. They start silly, with the older girls pretending to be looking for a date with the man of the house and Tess pretending to look for her mother. At one point, they call Steve Marak (John Ireland), who is in the shower. When his wife comes to get him, he kills her, then finds the phone off the hook.

Later, the girls decide to call him back to see if he’s ever gotten out of the shower. At this point, the game has changed and the girls are now saying, “I saw what you did and I know who you are” when the person answers the phone. Harmless until that call is to the guy who just killed his wife, and that guy has become paranoid because his neighbor Amy (Joan Crawford!) knows of the murder and is using it to blackmail him, not for money but to force him to marry her.

The girls, of course, know nothing of this. Libby is enamored of Marak’s voice and decides that they should go get a look at him, so off they go, but they are caught by Amy, who manages to take the car’s registration, something that Marak takes from her, which gives him the address where Libby lives. Since by this point Steve Marak has also murdered Amy and feels the need to tie up any loose ends.

Here’s the thing: I Saw What You Did has a really good plot. It’s a sort of cautionary tale—this is what can happen to you if you play jokes on people or act in ways that are against the norm. It plays into the same kind of teen slasher ideas that populated movie theaters for a few decades after this movie’s release. Libby and Kit are just a mid-‘60s version of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, and Steve Marak, while not at all touched by the supernatural or possessed of the ability to slay indiscriminately, is no less terrifying or dangerous, and since his murderous rage turns even on young Tess, he’s perhaps even more upsetting.

I’m genuinely surprised that no one has thought to update this film, although these days, it’s probably too late. No one has a land line anymore and cell phones readily identify callers, making the sort of anonymous pranks a thing of the past. Set this in 1982 or 1994, though, and it could be turned into a really effective little film, and one that could be made pretty cheaply. It feels like a solid project for a new director just learning the trade.

I do love Castle’s movies for exactly what they are. The gimmick for this one is really the appearance of Joan Crawford, which is fun, but was hardly necessary—it would have worked just as well with any woman of roughly the same age. The fact that Castle legitimately could have made this without anything like a known actress demonstrates just how solid the plot really is.

Is there a problem? Well, it’s sad that Andi Garrett never made another movie because she was a fun screen presence. It’s also worth noting that the music is completely inappropriate. It belongs to an early television half-hour comedy or a teen beach party movie. It never shows up at the wrong time (we don’t get wacky songs when the girls are seriously threatened), but it does happen right after a murder is committed, and it just feels weird.

Why to watch I Saw What You Did: It really is a great idea for a movie.
Why not to watch: The music is completely inappropriate.