I Saw What You Did

Filmmaker and savvy promoter William Castle turned low-budget thrillers and horror flicks into hits using a steady stream of gimmicks through the late 1950s and 1960s (such as employing vibrating devices on theater seats for his 1959 film The Tingler). I Saw What You Did, a lightweight 1965 thriller about two schoolgirls and a prank phone call that backfires with a vengeance, is far less gimmick laden ("The telephone was the star" of the film, Castle wrote in his autobiography). When the girls whisper “I saw what you did, and I know who you are” to a perfect stranger, little do they know that he has just murdered his wife and is now out to silence any witnesses. An aging John Ireland plays the homicidal husband, while Joan Crawford—despite prominent placement in the artwork—has little more than a cameo as an amorous neighbor turned blackmailer. I Saw What You Did prefigures the teen scream genre by decades, but Castle here proves to be merely competent, missing opportunities for psychological horror while preferring shocks and startles over genuine suspense. Castle is more at home as a showman than a dime-store Hitchcock, but the film does exhibit a little flair, including an inventive prologue framed in a pair of opening and closing eyes. While the presence of Crawford may interest fans of classic films and camp cinema, this is not a great film. Extras include a photo gallery. Not a necessary purchase. (S. Axmaker)