Pericolo in agguato

An early TV movie by director John Carpenter about Lauren Hutton who's being stalked in her apartment, you know the sort of thing. This is pretty good actually and it still plays well today. Definately one of my favorites, Halloween was made shortly after, I think.

Leigh Michaels (Lauren Hutton) moves into a beautiful apartment building in LA. She also gets a new job, makes friends with lesbian coworker Sophie (Adrienne Barbeau) and makes a new boyfriend with charming Paul Winkless (David Birney). But she starts getting threatening phone calls and letters by a man who seems to know her every move. Sophie and Paul try to help her but they can't and it seems he's getting more and more dangerous.

A good movie for Capenter that's obviously made for TV--there are blackouts every 20 minutes or so. It's not as good as "Halloween" but how could it be? It's more like Hotchcock's "Rear Window" than anything else. It's well-directed by Carpenter with a few nicely placed scenes that will make you jump. The script is very good too with believable characters and a fairly intricate plot. Also it's unusual that Carpenter got a lesbian character in the movie. There's nothing wrong with that at all--it was just a fairly gutsy move for a 1978 TV movie. Hutton is surprisingly very good in her role. You slowly see her character crumble under the pressure. Barbeau is also excellent in her role. Only Birney is off--he seems a little uncomfortable in his role. Still this is a good suspense film from Carpenter. Well worth catching.

I never expected that a TV movie like this early work from John "Thrillmaster" Carpenter could be thrilling and excellent as this one was made. Thanks Mr Carpenter. Excellent entertainment and terrific conclusion.

An early John Carpenter film, I had never even heard of and surprisingly effective bearing in mind its 70s TV origins. So rather leisurely at first and I had bit of a problem with Lauren Hutton's character. She has a rather off putting way of 'joking about', or 'wacky' as she refers to it and also is rather blunt in her rebuttals of invitations from the opposite sex. This slightly awkward introduction to a leading lady with some baggage is compounded in the extraordinary moment when she makes the advances in a very 70s bar. but never mind, this soon gets going, everyone does a sterling job and carpenter really comes into his own as the movie progresses. The final half hour is as good as it gets and is pretty faultless. Effective music, varied and compelling camera work and increasingly believable dialogue. Well worth a watch for anyone and required for Carpenter fans who will see much that is further developed in later films.

From the get-go this is one scary film. The daytime skyline of L.A. dissolves to nighttime accompanied by spooky music. Then, inside some room, a man's hand turns on a tape recorder and dials a telephone number. He wheels around a telescope pointed toward the window of his female target, Leigh (Lauren Hutton). After a brief vocal exchange, the man tells her: "Come to the window; all those windows out there; and I'm behind one of them".

So begins "Someone's Watching Me", a suspenseful thriller about an attractive female TV broadcaster stalked by an unknown man. One of the scariest sequences has Leigh coming back to her high rise apartment and finding the front door unlocked. She calls the manager who tells her that although maintenance men were in her apartment earlier he personally locked it behind them. She sounds innocently skeptical. As the camera slowly pans around to the living room behind Leigh, a man suddenly and silently darts across the living room carpet ...

Suspense is heightened by the fact that Leigh lives alone, and by the fact that much of the plot takes place at night. There's an effective use of silence in a couple of sequences toward the end that further enhances suspense.

Despite the obvious suspense, the script has some problems, most notably the inanity of Leigh choosing to re-locate to a more secure residence that's exactly like the one wherein she was previously stalked ... a high rise apartment that looks out toward another high rise with lots of windows. Also, some of Leigh's specific actions and some dialogue are silly and unrealistic. Further, I was quite disappointed by the film's ending.

Film direction and cinematography are fine and contribute to the suspense. Casting is acceptable. Overall performances are average. I thought Adrienne Barbeau, as Leigh's friend Sophie, gave a particularly good performance.

If the viewer overlooks the script's defects and doesn't expect too much from the story's ending, this can be an absorbing film to watch. Females might not want to watch it at night while alone.