Hotline (1982 film)

Plot

After a long shift at the bar, which included serving a drunk demanding of sexual favors, art student Brianne O'Neill (Lynda Carter) returns home longing for a good night's rest. Little does she know that she is being watched by a mysterious stalker, who even breaks into her house without her knowing. Around the same time, Justin Price (Granville Van Dusen) arrives, a friendly psychiatrist from the bar who claims that he followed her home because she was being followed by the drunk. Believing that he scared away the stalker, Brianne shows her gratitude by taking on volunteer work at his hotline practice, despite her busy schedule.

She makes a good start at the hotline, helping several people with their problems, and thereby impressing Justin and her colleague Rick Hernandez (Harry Waters, Jr.). However, it does not take long before she is receiving scary phone calls from a mysterious person admitting to recent murders from the newspaper headlines and instructing her with game rules. Brianne is worried about the situation, but Justin and Rick believe that she is the victim of prank calls. Nevertheless, she follows the instructions of the psychotic caller, who calls himself 'The Barber', and tries to unravel his clues, which provides her a list of his victims.

Despite other people's claims that she is reading too much into it, Brianne becomes obsessed with solving The Barber's clues. She starts to record his calls and another hint leads her to a deranged murder suspect in Reno, Charlie Jackson (James Booth). Without gaining any information, she returns to the airport for a flight back home, and there she receives another call from The Barber. Failing to see a familiar face, Brianne returns home, where she concludes that the only ones who knew she was in Reno were Justin, bartender colleague Barnie (Frank Stallone) and her boss Kyle Durham (Monte Markham). The latter is close friends with Tom Hunter (Steve Forrest), an actor who has been in love with Brianne for a long time.

Afterwards, Brianne is fed up with The Barber's games and gets mad when he makes another call to her private number, which leads him to threatening to kill her. To prevent this from happening, she steps to the police, but The Barber informs her he knows about this and that he is not satisfied with it. Justin suspects Tom as the guilty one and collects evidence to prove it. Brianne is initially unwilling to believe Justin, until she one night at the bar concludes that Tom was on the spot during one of the murders.

Suddenly, after the shift, Kyle reveals himself as The Barber. She struggles to escape, but he easily overpowers her and tells her that he wants to kill her because of the pain she is putting Tom through by not responding to his love for her. As Kyle starts cutting her hair and preparing to murder her, Brianne is able to run away and fires at him with a harpoon, which kills him.

Cast