Directed and co-written by Sollace Mitchell (with Karyn Kay), this is the story of Anna (Patricia Charbonneau), a newspaper writer who feels a distance from her live-in author lover, Alex (Sam Freed), who is only excited about getting to writer about fast food.

One evening, she thinks she’s received a dirty phone call from him, the spice she’s looking for in her life. Instead, she’s in a dive bar waiting to meet a stranger, running away and accidentally watching two criminals, Jellybean (Stephen McHattie) and Switchblade (Steve Buscemi) too closely. They think she has their money. She has no idea who they are, much less the heavy-breathing caller who keeps dialing her almost every night.

Every man around Anna is a milquetoast that still wants to control her. So when she gets caught in the world of dead cops and someone who calls her in the middle of the night, telling her to make love to herself with an orange that gets juices all over her thighs, can you blame her when she whispers, “Push orange slices into my cunt with your tongue” and asks the caller to penetrate his own orange before realizing her lame boyfriend has been watching all along?

Anna is also pretty dumb, I must confess. Is her life so bereft of thrills that all she has are phone calls? She’s gorgeous. She doesn’t even need a boyfriend, as she has a career. Maybe she’s co-dependent, as her friend Cori (Patti D’Arbanville) calls out:

Anna: Cori, I’m not the only woman who gets obscene phone calls.

Cori: No, but you’re the only one I know who talks to them.

I wanted this to be closer to either a Giallo or a movie that let Anna finally explore her kink with someone less dull than her lame best male friend. I want her to have more. I want her to be smarter. I want her, in short, to explore her wants.

As a sad aside, co-writer Karyn Kay died way too young, at 63, killed by her 19-year-old son Henry Wachtel. After her career in Hollywood, she’d started teaching Creative Writing at LaGuardia, a New York City performing arts school. In this article on Crime Reads, the author shares her real-life experience of having Kay as a teacher. It’s worth a read.

If you’re interested, Anna gives her phone number in this movie: 212-627-2363.

You can watch this on Tubi.