Someone's Watching Me! (1978) d. Carpenter, John (USA)
First shown a month after Halloween hit theatres and made available on DVD in 2007, John Carpenter’s TV-movie about a psychopathic peeping tom preying upon female high-rise victims shows the writer/director near the top of his game. Lauren Hutton plays a sexy, funny offbeat TV director who moves to Los Angeles with her new station job, and soon is receiving strange packages and phone calls from a mystery stalker who seems to know her every move.
Calling on new boyfriend David Birney and gal pal Adrienne Barbeau for help, she proceeds to engage in a bit of Rear Window detective work, confronting her fears head on (no passive victim she!) While the dated material may not resonate as strongly today in these more cautious times – my femalien kept laughing and saying, “This would never happen! A woman would never do this...” – Carpenter still manages to wring a healthy amount of suspense, as well as some wry humor, from his high concept thriller. Perhaps not worth the long wait, but definitely worth any suspense fan and Carpenter completist’s time.
Long wait or no, I was very happy when this finally came out on DVD. As I recall, it wasn't long after that we also got Carpenter's Elvis TV movie, which had also been some time coming. Both are essential viewing.
ReplyDeleteOh, don't get me wrong - I'm always happy when long-missing stuff comes out. I'm always glad for the opportunity to fill some empty gotta-see-this slot in my viewing and/or to have others finally see what I've been gabbing about all this time.
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