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Seeking out "A Stranger is Watching" was somewhat of a new experience for me… I'm a big movie fanatic and I hardly read any books, but in this case I was familiar with the work of novelist Mary Higgins Clark before I ever saw a movie that was based on her writings. Clark certainly isn't the greatest suspense fiction writer in the world, as her books are often clichéd and predictable, but at least everything that I read from her was easy to digest, unpretentious and occasionally very tense (like for example the novels "I heard that song before" and "Two girls in Blue"). I haven't read the novel on which "A Stranger is Watching" is based, but it sure had an interesting synopsis that fits right into her area of expertise. The film is directed by Sean S. Cunningham, whose name is irreversibly linked to the slasher pioneer "Friday the 13th". Although often also quite sick and very exploitative, "A Stranger is Watching" is totally different and incomparable to "Friday the 13th", since the story centers on just a handful of people in a devastating situation, whereas "Friday the 13th" is simply about horny teenagers getting slaughtered. 9-year-old Julie Peterson traumatically witnesses how her mother fiercely gets murdered in her own house. Two years later, when an innocent person is about to be sentenced for the crime, the real killer returns to kidnap both little Julie as well as her father's new girlfriend Sharon. The psychopath, Artie Taggart, imprisons the two ladies in a hideout place underneath New York's central station and demands a 180k$ ransom. Julie's father and the police attempt to collect the money, while Sharon – as well as a couple of observing New York homeless people – battles her repulsive kidnapper. "A Stranger is Watching" is mostly tedious and not at all suspenseful, mainly because the identity and lame motives of the kidnapper are immediately revealed. Some sequences are quite grotesque, like for example when Taggart calmly walks across the crowded train station carrying a large bag on his shoulder with his sedated victims in it, but most of the time the film is overly talkative and dull. The surprise twists in the plot come across as forced and implausible and – as a viewer – you feel very little affection or compassion for the two damsels in distress. The killing sequences are vile and nasty, though, and the underrated Rip Torn depicts an extremely sadist & menacing villain, so "A Stranger is Watching" definitely holds some interest for 80's horror fanatics.

I had recently get this on inter-loan from the library.

I I'll have to say, out of all the Mary Higgins Clark movie adaptations which my mom and I enjoy, this one feels the most serious and feels R-rated.

Since this is directed by guy who made the original Friday the 13th, this film has a little bite to it.

Rip Torn plays the mysterious kidnapper who adducts an 11 year old girl played by cute Shawn Von Schreiber and a reporter played by sexy Kate Mulgrew.

A large some of money must be met by the kidnapper or he will kill both Kate and the girl.

I love the dark claustrophobic atmosphere and the thickness of the high tension.

Rip Torn is excellent as the sleazy manic mad man, I had never seen him be a villain in anything before. I had only seen him in very little, but enjoyed him in the Men in Black movies.

Kate Mulgrew is another actress I had seen in very little, the only movie we own with her is Throw Momma from the Train, and I gained a crush on her since I was little. I do remember seeing her in the tv series Star Trek: Voyager, when I was little and loved her in that as well.

These movies in the Mary Higgins Clark films are a little corny but I really like them, guilty pleasures if you will, this movie keeps you on the edge of your seat from stat to finish.

I don't want to say more because I'll give away the twists but you will be entertained.

I give it a 6/10. Give it a look and enjoy.

Thirteen years before sitting in a Star Fleet captain's chair and going up against such alien homicidal monstrosities as the Borg, the Kazon, the Hirogen and Species 8472, Kate Mulgrew did battle with a homicidal monster of a much more mundane nature, in 1982's "A Stranger Is Watching." Based on Mary Higgins Clark's best seller of 1977 (which, to be honest, I've never read), the film shows us what happens when 11-year-old Julie Peterson (well played by Shawn von Schreiber)--who had seen her mother brutally raped and killed two years earlier--is kidnapped along with the woman (Mulgrew) who is dating her widower dad. The thuggish lout (Rip Torn) hauls the pair to the underground labyrinth beneath Grand Central Station, a hellish world unto itself, where he caches them and schemes to acquire his ransom. The film is a fairly taut thriller, into which director Sean S. Cunningham manages to generate more suspense than he had two years earlier in the overrated "Friday the 13th." A background score by the great Lalo Schifrin adds immeasurably to the tension on screen, and all four principals--including James Naughton as Julie's understandably desperate dad--turn in fine performances. Unfortunately, the story is a tad too simplistic for this viewer's taste. We never learn anything about the nutjob Artie Taggart, other than the fact that he wants to raise horses in Arizona; his background, and why he's chosen this particular moment to kidnap Julie, remain mysteries. If only the film's screenplay were as multilayered as Grand Central Station itself seems to be! Still, despite the unfleshed-out nature of the picture's most interesting character, the film does manage to keep the viewer riveted. Kate, post-"Ryan's Hope" here but still hardly a household name, is always wonderful to watch, and looks quite beautiful in this early screen role. And while Artie Taggart may not be as relentless as one of the Borg, he still manages to give the old girl a pretty tough time....

I remember when I watched this movie in the late 80's in my country on TV, many years after it got released, I was around 6 or 7, and I remembered some scenes that totally freaked me out. After that, my mother didn't let me watch the rest, and then I could not find it anywhere because I didn't remember the name. I finally found it a couple of days ago, and I stared remembering the scenes that frighten me when I was a kid. Right now that we have movies like A Serbian Movie, Hostel, The Human Centipede, and on and on, where everything is super explicit, and hardly ever any survivors, same as perfect makeup effects, so watching a vintage movie where there is no blood at all, where you see always a way to escape (I tend to do that in all the movies where someone is trapped), perhaps you won't find it really thrilling, but if you consider the time period where it was made, with the effects that were available at that time, and the time when the action happens, 1980, with no cellphones, no internet, no DNA tests, and many other details, it is scary, and still believable.

The script is way above average for a movie that is part exploitation, and part crime drama. My only complaint is that at times it seems a bit stretched, as in a few too many chases, and the acting varies from excellent,( Rip Torn), to very average,( Kate Mulgrew). The dark underground is used to great advantage, and there is genuine tension in several scenes. "A Stranger is Watching" is a must see for Rip Torn fans, as he is at his sleaziest. Obviously the "slasher" crowd has missed the whole point ,that this is a clever "suspenser", and the low IMDb rating reflects their misguided interpretation. Recommended for those who are looking for something different from the usual "slice and dice". - MERK