Someone's Watching Me (1978)

A woman is slowly stalked to the brink of madness by a man watching her from the opposite tower block. Her attempts to get the police to take her seriously leaves her with no option but to track him down herself.

long time favorite

"Someone's Watching Me" is a long time favorite of mine and I'm glad it can now be enjoyed on video.

This film is in the very best tradition of a great Hitchcock film. John Carpenter does a superb job with the direction. Lauren Hutton did a more than credible acting job and carries this film from the first scene to the end, as she was in almost every scene. Hutton is an under rated actress, probably because she came from the modeling world, but in this film it is obvious she has some serious acting chops. She is well supported in "Someone's Watching Me" by another very under rated actress, Adrienne Barbeau. Barbeau is excellent and very believeable in her supporting role.

If you are a fan of Hitchcock I highly recommend this film. Carpenter serves the Hitchcock tradition proudly. Another reason to enjoy this film is the fine acting of Hutton and Barbeau. This is an under rated film that deserved more recognition. The work of Carpenter, Hutton and Barbeau is superb. May 30, 2008

Interesting early Carpenter

**Mild spoilers**

I have been a huge fan of EARLY John Carpenter ever since I was a kid. From the absolute awesomeness of Halloween, the grungy thrills of Assault on Precinct 13, the intense paranoia and pessimism of The Thing to the sheer junk heaven of Big Trouble in Little China, his early films are sheer cinema bliss. So when I recently saw that Someone's Watching Me, a TV movie he made right before Halloween, had been finally released on DVD a couple of years ago, I raced out to get it. The film stars Lauren Hutton as a young woman who moves to Los Angeles and finds a job at a local TV station. She moves into a high-end, high-rise apartment building that faces another high-rise. Soon after moving in she is stalked by someone in the other apartment building, although she is initially unaware that anything is amiss. Alright, I admit that this story outline makes this sound like a lame direct-to-DVD potboiler, but the fun in the film comes from its less predictable, even bizarre elements. First off, Hutton's character is really unlike any other main character I've seen; a real goofball, she happily chatters away to herself walking down the halls of her apartment building and makes jokes that other characters don't get or that cause them to squirm. The strange way in which she is stalked, which involves a series of gifts sent by a fictional travel agency asking her to guess the destination of her prize trip so that she can win it, also adds to its unpredictability. I also adore the scene where Hutton, sitting by herself in her car, is approached by a man who leans in and says "It's a hell of a life, isn't it?" then stumbles away, never to be seen again. Sadly the plausibility starts to take a steep dive in the final scenes as the inevitable confrontation is nothing you haven't seen a million times in many other movies. Still, I found the movie highly entertaining (enough that I watched it a second time the next night, something I never do).

May 16, 2008

Someone's watching me FINALLY ON DVD !

Finally this 'lost' John Carpenter movie has been released on DVD. I already had it on VHS, which was very difficult to get hold of but after a search many years I found it in Australia !

I have seen this suspense movie many times, but I still consider it (with 'Halloween') to be one of Carpenter's best movies.

Onno
the Netherlands October 25, 2007

Watchable...

Right after his bleakly hilarious DARK STAR and the wonderfully tense ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (where even a little girl is not spared from the mayhem), John Carpenter ran head-on into man's greatest horror- Network television! Confined to a medium consisting of almost pure cheeze, Carpenter directed a decent thriller called SOMEONE'S WATCHING ME. TV director, Liegh Micheals (Lauren Hutton) is "stalked" by a creep w/ a telescope and surveillance equipment. This guy is serious about his obsession, even bugging Liegh's apartment and controlling her electricity! Liegh has tried moving, changing her number to an unlisted one, etc., but nothing works. Now, with the help of her friend Sophie (Adrienne Barbeau of The Fog, Creepshow) and her new boyfriend (David Birney), Liegh sets out to catch the bothersome freak. With some obvious (and frequent) nods to REAR WINDOW and a strong, gutsy female lead, SWM is not typical tele-junk. I enjoyed Liegh's courage and her "I'm not gonna put up with this" attitude. Especially when she begins taking it right to her tormentor's home turf! Check it out... P.S.- Watch for Charles Cyphers (Halloween 1+2, The Fog) as a cop... October 6, 2007

1.5 STARS: "Someone's Boring Me"

John Carpenter's "Someone's Watching Me" is a pretty boring and uneventful made-for-TV movie about a woman living in a high-rise apartment who is being terrorized by a man who continuously calls and harasses her. Indeed, this is nothing unique although this movie was made in 1978, so let's give it a break from that standpoint. However, "Someone's Watching Me" is a very boring movie notwithstanding a seemingly good plot. When I bought this movie, I was wondering why I had never heard of it being that the great John Carpenter wrote and directed it. Now, that I've seen it, I can understand why.

In all fairness, the first thing that should be said about "Someone's Watching Me" is that it really is not a horror movie AT ALL! The DVD cover and the "Twisted Terror" emblem all make this look like a horror movie, but do not be fooled like I was. This movie is supposed to be a suspense thriller, but the problem is that "Someone's Watching Me" is devoid of any thrills and has very little suspense. The only real suspense that is in this movie inheres in the identity of the killer, and that is about all that kept me awake. "Someone's Watching Me" clumps together an endless series of boring scenes one after the other of a rather obnoxious woman played adequately by Lauren Hutton being harassed by uneventful phone calls and strange gifts from some psycho.

Do not get me wrong about the plot as it seems like a good one for a horror movie, and the situation itself is a frightening one and that carries some weight, but this idea, situation and the plot itself are so poorly developed that the potential elements of horror are largely ineffective. The bottom line is that Carpenter, for whatever reason, clearly did not do enough with this movie to make it interesting and compelling to the viewer. Perhaps this is because "Someone's Watching Me" is a made-for-TV movie, but I've seen plenty of made-for-TV movies that are more thrilling, suspenseful, compelling and interesting than this one.

The acting is good in "Someone's Watching Me" as the savvy Carpenter fan will notice Charles Cyphers (Halloween and The Fog) and Adrienne Barbeau (The Fog), both Carpenter favorites, in this movie along with Lauren Hutton. Carpenter mistakenly assumes that the situation itself will carry this movie without much action causing a build-up in tension in the audience, but Carpenter does not do enough with the action in the movie itself to accomplish this goald. The result is a movie that really struggles to develop the tension build-up in the audience. Also, noticeably absent is Carpenter's characteristic score which Carpenter used so effectively in his truly great movies like "Halloween" and "The Thing" which was so adept at adding to the mood and theme of his great films.

Unfortunately, "Someone's Watching Me" leaves a lot to be desired as a movie of any genre. Even as a mystery or suspense movie, "Someone's Watching Me" does not have what it takes to create suspense and build tension in the audience. There really is no escalating action that the audience can get into. The result is a lackluster suspense-thriller with very little in the way of suspense and nothing in the way of thrills. 1.5 STARS for the idea and plot which I like, but this just goes to show you that you have to be able to execute the concept and develop the situation, and Carpenter clearly fails to get this done in "Someone's Watching Me", and this is most obviously why many of us have never heard of this movie. John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors which is why I purchased this movie, but I would warn the serious horror movie fan or really anyone for that matter to stay away from this movie because you will be disappointed. Quite frankly, almost any mystery movie on the Lifetime Movie Network would be a better viewing experience than this one. October 5, 2007

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