Schlock Corridor: Day Nine

ARE YOU IN THE HOUSE ALONE?!

"The terror mounts for a teenager plagued by strange phone calls when the unknown stalker begins calling her while she's out baby-sitting."

Are You In The House Alone?! is a made-for-TV movie from 1978 that follows a teenager named Gail, detailing the events in her life before and after she is beaten and raped by one of her classmates. It's not schlock. It's not campy fun. It's a well made, well acted story, albeit not particularly  entertaining to watch. But who really wants to watch an entertaining movie about rape?

Gail is an average girl in an average small town. She goes to high school and hangs out with her friends. She's dating a handsome young man named Steve, and she may be falling in love with him. She has loving parents and an active social life. Suddenly, this average girl is targeted by an unknown individual, an anonymous stalker who leaves threatening notes in her locker at school and calls her at home, breathing heavily and laughing maniacally.

Gail's principal doesn't think it's anything to worry about, because after all, "boys will be boys". Gail's mother is having a tough time juggling her personal life with her new career and isn't home to listen to her daughter's troubles. Her boyfriend Steve wants to help, but he doesn't know where to begin, considering anybody at school could just slip a note into her locker between classes, and her home phone number is listed in the yellow pages.

One night, while Gail is babysitting, a visitor stops by the house. Phil, the dashing and wealthy boyfriend of Gail's best friend Allison, reveals himself to be her stalker, attacking Gail in the living room while two young children are asleep upstairs. In the aftermath of the heinous assault, Gail tells the police everything, from the notes and phone calls to the identity of her attacker. But Phil comes from a very influential family, his father being friends with the local judge, and the authorities see it as a case of "he said/she said", calling into question Gail's own moral judgment.  Phil claims that she seduced him to hurt her best friend Allison, and that he did nothing wrong.

So Gail takes matters into her own hands after noticing another classmate has found an eerily similar note in her own locker. She puts the locker under surveillance and catches Phil in the act of slipping another note inside, but Phil finds Gail and attacks her again at school. This time, he is discovered before Gail can be hurt, and he pleads guilty to assault, escaping jail time and moving out of state to start his life over without the weight of the "serial rapist" stigma hanging over his head.

Having stood up for herself and realizing her newfound strength can't make up for the broken justice system that often blames the victim in cases of sexual assault, Gail is left to pick up the pieces, relying on her loving family and her doting boyfriend to help her move beyond this traumatic chapter of her life.

I don't really have much to say about Are You In The House Alone?!,  because there really isn't much to say. It has a good case, including Blythe Danner as Gail's mother, and Dennis Quaid in an early role as Phil, the sociopathic golden boy. I was impressed by how realistic the character interactions often were, most notably between Gail and her parents. Too often dialogue exchanges in movies like this tend to ring false, with the actors reciting patently unrealistic dialogue, serving most disappointingly as tired exposition dumps just to move the plot forward. But the conversations between Gail and her parents, and even with her boyfriend Steve, feel authentic. I believed these characters, and came to strongly empathize with Gail's plight.

The whole plot is played realistically, never veering into melodramatics, even after the climactic attack. It would have been easy for the plot to take a cue from rape revenge films of the era like I Spit On Your Grave or Wes Craven's Last House On The Left, but to the film's credit, the narrative remains very grounded, even depressingly realistic as Gail's rapist essentially gets away with his crime. There is a touching moment shared between Gail and her father as he laments that life is not always like the fairy tales he used to tell his daughter when she was a child, and that happy endings are not guaranteed. Really heart-wrenching stuff.

So Are You In The House Alone?! is good. I was surprised to find that I was watching a real movie instead of some exercise in exploitation and bad taste. But it is often difficult to watch, and I don't know if I could recommend it. Who do I recommend it to? Do you want to watch a realistic, sober portrayal of a teenager whose life is thrown into turmoil by an unprovoked sexual assault? Then I guess Are You In The House Alone?! is for you.

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