Someone’s Watching Me! **** (1978, Lauren Hutton, David Birney, Adrienne Barbeau, Charles Cyphers, James Murtaugh) – Classic Movie Review 6009

Writer-director John Carpenter 1978 classic TV movie thriller is in the best Alfred Hitchcock vein. It is suspensefully directed with a highly attractive, gutsy performance from Lauren Hutton as Leigh Michaels, a TV news director threatened by phone calls, notes and gifts from a crazed peeping Tom in the apartment opposite.

Naturally the police do not believe her story, refusing to take her seriously, and things begin to get very bumpy before, of course, she is finally forced to take the law into her own hands. With a persuasive script and really polished, ultra-smooth direction by Carpenter, it is a high anxiety exercise in sweaty tension and knife-edge suspense. Someone’s Watching Me is a winner and proves still great after repeated viewings.

David Birney, Adrienne Barbeau, Charles Cyphers and James Murtaugh are all effective in co-starring roles. Also in the cast are Grainger Hines, Len Lesser, John Mahon, J Jay Saunders, George Skaff, Robert Phalen and Robert Snively.

Carpenter also provides the score for the film, which is shot by Robert B Hauser and produced for NBC by Ann Cottle.

After meeting on this film, Barbeau became Carpenter’s wife the following year; they divorced in 1984. Carpenter wrote her roles in The Fog (1980) and Escape from New York (1981) specifically for her.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6009

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