Look in Any Window

A teenager terrorizes his neighborhood by prowling around at night wearing a mask.

Paul Anka plays Craig the troubled teen, he also sings the title song which takes on a weird creepy feeling when played while he wanders aimlessly around town , stopping to look at romance magazines. It was not a hit though Anka had several successful songs around that time. His mother is played by Ruth Roman, a sexy and flirtatious woman and his father is a weak alcoholic (Alex Nicol). There is also an odd couple pair of cops looking into the prowling case, one a veteran who believes in beating confessions out of suspects and his young partner who is more understanding since he studied psychology.

This is a strangely effective film is made more sleazy because of the low budget and being filmed in black and white. It is almost like a David Lynch film if he were making films in the early 1960s. It is hard to find, I own it on a VHS copy made by the video company The Fang. It was transferred from a jumpy 16mm copy. This is worth seeing if you like low budget films about the darker, more lurid side of suburbia in the 1960s.

Although this movie contained some unrealistic moments, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was like a time capsule of 1961, a time I well remember! Women were expected to be only housewives, the men cheated, and the cops! The movie is an off-beat criticism of the era (which deserved criticism, believe me), and had strong performances, including by Paul Anka.....Who knew he could act? It also had a pretty good screen play with some good lines.... It captured the claustrophobic angst of the era, when women were trapped in marriages, and all of the old traditions were on the line. It was inexpensively made, I know, and this added to the gritty realism of the result. More money and technicolor would have ruined it, I'm sure.

People can comment all they want about this being low, sleazy, sensationalistic, et cetera, but I found it a very thought provoking and disturbing film. Paul Anka's character Craig Fowler seemed to be such a great symbol as the neighbor Carlo (played by George Dolenz) explains, of the evils of everyone who voyeurs hours away watching the lives of strange people the media tells us are so important. Craig is soon unmasked, and it tells the characters they are as guilty as he might be to give him bad examples that feed his endless urge to spy and pry. Citizen Kane might have given William Alland some material to use for this movie since he played a reporter there who was always watching the drama unfold with his back turned to hide what he looked like. Plus, it always gave me a tent pole in junior high school to watch Jack Cassidy kiss Ruth Roman in the car before they sped away to Las Vegas.

It's the suburbs and a peeping Tom is on the loose. He scares people with a disturbing mask. Craig Fowler (Paul Anka) is a disinterested teen and the only son of a loveless marriage.

Paul Anka may be a teenage music icon at the time but he's not a charismatic actor. Quite frankly, he would barely be cast as a supporting actor if not for his name. The problem is that he's way before my time and holds no nostalgic value for me. He's just another stiff amateur actor and he's not holding the screen. I do have to admire that a pop idol is willing to play a creepy character but nothing else.

"Look in Any Window" is a cheap, sleazy exploitation film about the shenanigans going on behind the scenes in suburban America. While it could have been well made and intelligent, the filmmakers really just wanted sensationalism. However, despite being pretty crass, it is entertaining.

The film is like a soap opera and it consists of many different vignettes involving really screwed up people. The most obviously messed up person is Craig, played by Paul Anka. He is an out of work teen who loves peeking in windows. Eventually, his behavior escalates and the police are looking to find him. His father is emotionally and physically impotent and the film is trying to say this is why the young man is a creepy sex offender...which is a bit of a stretch. As for nearly all the adults in the film, they seem to love cheating on their spouses and are too wrapped up in themselves to notice that Craig is a real head case!

The film often features very broad acting that is anything but subtle. The worst of these is played by Alex Nicol, who is Craig's alcoholic father. Subtle, he is not! But none of the characters seemed subtle...not even the cops investigating the peeping Tom case! I am a bit surprised the film didn't cast Jayne Mansfield or Mamie Van Doren as well...they would have fit right in to the story. Overall, a bad but fun movie...the type you watch if you could use a laugh or if you like over-the-top stories.