"I Saw What You Did" (1965)

Tonight's movie was a cult classic from producer/director William Castle, called "I Know What You Did" (1965). Castle was famous in the 1960s for his low budget but effective horror films and westerns. He make some schlock too, like "The Tingler", and he also produced big budget pictures like "Rosemary's Baby", but mostly he worked right down the middle on competent B-Movies like this one.

I have a vague memory of this title from when I was a five year old, and it may have been because my sister saw it. For me, the memory would have been generated because of her reaction to it, and also because of the catchy title, a finger-pointing accusation. If I remember correctly, this movie was heavily advertised toward teenagers and caused quite a splash at the time. In fact, it became a forerunner to the slasher/stalker pictures of the late 1970s through the 1980s, especially ones with provocative titles like "He Knows You're Alone". But even in watching a horror classic like "Halloween", you can still see traces of influence from "I Know What You Did". It's an innocent yet spooky film that is very well executed.

Newcomer actresses Andi Garrett and Sarah Lane play teenaged best friends, back when Teenagers ruled the cultural landscape with a capital T. The two girls like to talk on the phone a lot but don't get to see each other very often because Libby (Garrett) lives outside Los Angeles in a rural area while Kit (Lane) lives with her family in the suburbs. One night, though, they arrange for Kit to have dinner at Libby's house. Libby's parents will be away for the evening and they can have fun while babysitting Libby's little sister Tess.

The atmosphere outside Libby's house is dark and misty. The property has animals, a goat and a dog. Her family lives out in the country, basically, and there isn't much to do. So, once her parents have left, she and her small sister show Kit what they do for fun. They like to make prank phone calls.

Now, if you are my age, you certainly remember prank phone calls. In fact, you probably made a few of them yourself. I know I did. Something like "Is your refrigerator running"? would have been one of the milder questions my friends and I asked. More often the topics would tend toward the type of humor an 11 year old boy finds hilarious. :)

But in the movie, the two girls are older, at least 16 because Libby can drive a car. The phone pranks she prefers are a little more risque. At first, she calls men chosen at random from the phone book. If their wives answer, Libby lowers her young voice and breathlessly pretends to be "the other woman".

"Is John there"?, she intones, hoping to rile the wife and complete the prank. In doing so, she gets a laugh out of her little sister.

Her friend Kit is also amused, though she comes from a strict family and would never consider to pull such a prank on her own. She plays along, though, and now Libby ups the game. She starts calling randomly chosen men and telling them : "I saw what you did and I know who you are".

The psychological intentions and implications of such a statement, made to an unknown person, are worthy of a separate study, but this is the mind of a 16 year old girl feeling her oats, so you get the gist. She means no real harm, excitement and titillation are the goal, but she is getting in way over her head by making such a statement to anonymous males. In the course of a few more phone calls, her game will become deadly serious.

I can't tell you why, but surely you can guess. I will give you a hint in that, following the home run phone call, Libby convinces her little sister and her friend Kit to get into her parents' car so she can drive them to the house of the man she has just spoken to. The girls have just made a big mistake, and you will see why.

Joan Crawford, in one of her later weird and creepy roles, plays a neighbor woman in love with the pranked man. When the girls arrive at his house.......well, forget it. I can't tell you.

I haven't seen very many William Castle pictures, but the ones I have seen have all been high quality, even "The Tingler", haha. But with "I Saw What You Did", he created a picture of influence. It's a thriller rather than a horror movie, and yet it begat all the slasher movies of the 80s as I mentioned. What Castle did was to set up a double-edged plot. On one side you have the adults and their relationships, which seem to be concerned either with business or jealous romance. You know how in the "Peanuts" cartoons, the adult voices were provided by muted trombones? That's somewhat the case here. The adult world is real, but this was the era of the middle class boom in America, when businessmen were climbing high and concerned mostly with their careers. They trusted their children to be alone with each other in the immediate world around them. It was the era when five year olds could walk a half mile to school by themselves. In this parentless void, Teenagers blossomed also.

I mean, parents were there, and they loved their kids, but they also left them alone so that they could be kids. That's what we had in the baby boom years of the early 1960s, it was a World Of Kids. Parents let us play all day and didn't call us inside until dinnertime.

And so the older kids took on the more risky aspects of assumed adult behavior. Perhaps it was always this way to an extent, but the idea of The Teenager didn't become a cultural reality until the early 1960s, and that is kind of what this movie is about.

On the surface, it's a girls' get together where limits are pushed. But underneath, even though it's a B-movie, there is a lot going on. An actress named Andi Garrett carries the film as Libby. She had a very brief career and I was unable to find any information on her, but she was quite good and set the stage for later Scream Queens like Jamie Lee Curtis.

More than anything, "I Saw What You Did" captures the vibe of middle class America 1965, after the '50s layover look of the early 60s, but before the blown-out Hippie era late in the decade.

I have said that in the 1960s, every year had it's own character, as if every year was a decade in itself. That's what the '60s felt like, and 1965 was right down the middle, like William Castle's films, both innocent and dangerous, fun and foreboding of what was to come.

"I Saw What You Did" is just for fun, but there is an undercurrent present that could never be recreated because of the year in which it was made.

Two Thumbs Up, shot it nighttime black and white. ////

That's all for tonight, see you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)