I went into this with a relatively open mind, not knowing much about it except it was an early Bob Clark work and has claim to being the first slasher film. Many of the tropes it either introduced or was one of their to exploit are highly familiar now - obscene phone calls, creepiness in the attic, POV of the killer, the phone call coming from inside the house, sorority girls - and maybe they were familiar then, I'm not that across the history of the genre, but it is very well directed - genuinely spooky and I got chills watching some scenes.
There is lots of effective poking around the house at night and going up to the attic and down to the basement etc. The logic of the script doesn't really hold up but if you go with it like I did you'll have a good time. Good use of obscene phone calls and an unexpectedly pseudo feminist bent as most of the bad characters are trying to oppress women - the killer is misogynist, Keir Dullea wants Olivia Hussey to have his baby even though she doesn't.
Hussey is a perfect slasher film heroine - beautiful, likeable, vulnerable (she looks so scared you have no confidence she'll survive). Margot Kidder has fun as the obligatory slutty friend, Keir Dullea is appropriately creepy and John Saxon does a cool turn as a cop (most of his scenes done in the one set, the cop shop). I didn't mind the ending.
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