Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

dromedormant With Dark Star being a major impressive student film that got him onto his first feature film, the critically acclaimed Assault on Precinct 13 before preceding to give us Halloween which was smashing new box office records for the horror genre, John Carpenter aired this rare gem of a film for Television. The result is a gripping and tense mystery- thriller that captivated me thanks to Carpenter's stylistic direction with an original story also written by him and an impressive character driven cast, lead by the stunningly beautiful Lauren Hutton. Hutton gave it all as a woman who seems to have everything, the confidence, the wit, the elegance and natural beauty that any guy could want from a woman. Hutton's character, Leigh Michaels, has recently moved into a new and well received apartment in Los Angeles. While she is settling in her cosy accommodation, unknown to her is a voyeur who enjoys spying on her through his telescope from an apartment across to hers but this voyeur doesn't stop there. Once he sets his sights on Leigh, he attempts to drive her insane, through various harassment calls and lots of stalking. Throughout, she struggles to keep up with his repetitive games and her patience begins to wear out, and on top of it all, she also has trouble convincing the police about this disturbing matter, where they conclude that the acts were harmless. Luckily for Leigh, she has her friend (whom she acquainted while at work) and formed a relationship with a University teacher, who trust her and believe it as being more than just a tease or harmless prank and the three set out to put a stop to this.I enjoyed this film so much, that I wish I had seen it earlier. Due to it's scarcity, I was lucky to have found it on Youtube at one time. What I found to be strikingly remarkable about this film is not only Carpenter's wonderful direction with this original plot, but also the familiarity and relation it shares with HALLOWEEN. Apparently, he made this just before he began work on Halloween, although released it after it debuted in cinemas, making it his fourth movie. These two films can be related in a lot of ways. Carpenter had paid homage to Alfred Hitchcock and Dario Argento, but unlike many copycatters who came aboard during the 80's slasher craze (When a Stranger Calls), Carpenter made it his own and used it very well to serve its purpose. Most noticeable to what he had employed in here via HALLOWEEN was the POV shots, placing us into Hutton's hysteria when circling around her apartment, toppled with fleeting and gliding camera, following her down corridors and hallways to increase suspense and paranoia around her and Carpenter brilliantly executes it. Plus we are also put into the voyeur's perspective, sometimes even drawing closer to his eyes to achieve the obsession and madness going on in his mind. Carpenter is absolutely brilliant with the way he constructed his characters in this film. Lauren Hutton's displays Carpenter's affection for Hawksian type women with their resilient attitude and sly wit superbly with Jamie Lee Curtis following into her footsteps. Adrienne Barbeau really steals the show taking on the sidekick role as her best friend with a quick witted and naughty sense of humour and David Birney plays as the concerned boyfriend who stands by defending her anyway possible. All three I find worked really well together.I enjoyed this film a lot and it's a shame it hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves because for a TV movie, it really is a rare case where it doesn't feel like one, meaning its really damn good. I find it to be certainly among his best. It is both ambitious and appealing in narrative and style, and I feel would be perfect viewing, along with Halloween as a double feature. I felt Carpenter perfectly demonstrated and familiarised himself with the techniques he successfully used for this film, he would proceed to use them to make "HALLOWEEN" the masterpiece it is and what it became infamously known for. Keep an eye out for a classic Carpenter trademark, the false startle technique, which has a figure dashing in the background. I give this rare gem a 9 out of 10.

jseger9000 I was so excited to see the 'forgotten' John Carpenter film finally getting a DVD release. He's one of my favorite directors. Unfortunately this is one of his weakest films and probably my least favorite.It's not all bad and has some genuinely tense moments, but they are few and far between. I'm not sure if John Carpenter just wasn't feeling it with this one or if it was due to the constraints of it being a T.V. movie with the constant breaks required for commercials. Whatever it is, the film is a series of peaks and valleys. The pace is off. You just don't get enough of a feeling of building tension. It's funny, because this film was preceded by Halloween and followed by The Fog and both are excellent, suspenseful films.In this movie there are a number of good scenes. The bits with the laundry room, the park at night, the penthouse, the search of a house and the last fifteen minutes are great. But in between there are plenty of dull spots.The music was kind of irritating. I wish John Carpenter had gotten to score this one like he does most of his movies. But he didn't and the music is here seems like a swipe of better music from other suspense movies and at times was just inappropriate for the scene. The best part musically was a scene where Leigh is opening a strange package that was synced to Vivaldi's 'Winter'. That part was very well done, but also pointed out how bad the rest of the music was.Also, Lauren Hutton just didn't seem right for the part. She's a good actress and the part was written well, but the two didn't seem to connect.One highlight of the movie is Adrienne Barbeau. She is terrific in her part. It's easy to see why J.C. used her in his future movies (well, aside from their marriage). I wish she were in the movie more.Also, I applaud him for writing in a positive lesbian character. It must have been scandalous for a T.V. movie from 1978. She wasn't stereotypical, never made any 'sinister' passes at our heroine and also wasn't portrayed as the 'magical gay character'. Kudos to John Carpenter.This movie is worth a rental. But compared to what John Carpenter had done before and would do in the future, this entry was weak.

ShootingShark Leigh Michaels is a young woman newly moved to Los Angeles, who starts receiving crank phone-calls and disturbing mail from some unknown stalker. Convinced he means to kill her, and with the police powerless to act, Leigh takes matters into her own hands ...This is one of the best TV-movies of the seventies (second only to Duel), a crackerjack stalker thriller which exploits all the paranoid young-woman-alone ideas it has to the hilt. What makes it so exceptional is the direction, which is sky-high above the TV standard make-it-cheap and make-it-quick. This little film has lots of dolly shots, nice time-lapse dissolves, carefully composed framing, even a triple-zoom-reverse (when Leigh realises the killer is spying on her from the building opposite). Robert B. Hauser's camera-work is superb throughout, such as in the tense scene where Leigh hides inside an air-conditioning vent and the killer unwittingly walks on top of her. Carpenter may be cribbing a little from Rear Window but he racks and racks the tension and gets a fine performance from Hutton as a woman who is both terrified of her attacker but outraged that he should make her feel that way. The leads are all nicely off-the-wall; Hutton and Birney have the usual female-male leads passive-aggressive traits neatly reversed and Barbeau is a likable, wisecracking lesbian colleague ("Smoking your dinner ?", she quips at one point). For Carpenter addicts there are a plethora of in-jokes; a reference to his birthday and his producer partner Debra Hill, the TV-station is called KJHC and an unseen character is named Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis in The Fog). This is a minor piece in Carpenter's rich back-catalogue (he shot it just prior to Halloween), but a terrific showcase of his talent and sensational work by TV standards.

Lee Eisenberg While feature films became a staple of 1970s TV - think "Brian's Song" and "Sybil" - few were like John Carpenter's "Someone's Watching Me!". The story is quite familiar: a woman (Lauren Hutton) moves into an apartment, starts getting strange phone calls, and eventually realizes that there's a peeping tom in the vicinity. As this is a TV movie, there are unfortunately some things that we don't get to see (namely Lauren Hutton naked), and the spots where they obviously had commercial breaks gives the movie a slight feeling of silliness. But the really neat factor springs from the clear homage to other kinds of horror flicks: the voyeurism scenes look like a "Psycho" reference.As for the cast, Lauren Hutton easily looks vulnerable enough, but I can't figure out why the characters in these movies take threatening phone calls in stride; I would have immediately suspected that something was amiss. You can see Adrienne Barbeau getting primed for the other kinds of between-A-and-B-movies in which she would later star.So, it's mostly your average suspense movie, but certainly one that you'll enjoy. And just be suspicious the next time that your lights start flickering.