The Worst Film Ever

The greatest movie ever made..!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

John Carpenter directed this TV(intended for cinema first) movie about a beautiful woman(played by Lauren Hutton) who finds herself harassed first by annoying phone calls, then by the realization that her stalker is watching her with a telescope from the opposite tower block from which she lives. He also sends notes, and when none of these things bring her closer to him, he escalates things... Cast also includes Adrienne Barbeau, David Birney, and Charles Cyphers.Well directed by Carpenter, but story is pretty routine and predictable, with little else to distinguish it or make it memorable. Saw this because of the DVD, which contains a good interview with John Carpenter(though no commentary track).

Nicely suspenseful television movie from the director of "Halloween" stars Lauren Hutton as Leigh Michaels, having moved from NYC (and a bad relationship) to LA, getting a job at a broadcast station, finding a nice, posh apartment in one of those swank high rises, named Arkham Tower. Leigh befriends lesbian Sophie(Adrienne Barbeau) who is a co-worker at the station as well as a professor she falls in love with, Paul (David Birney). Leigh starts receiving weird phone calls and unusual faux travel brochures, eventually realizing that a voyeur, with access it seems to her apartment and the electrical systems of Arkham Tower, is keeping a close eye on her every activity. It also seems that this bastard, the creep with a telescope and recording machine, has set a bug in Leigh's room and perhaps has preyed upon other female victims in the past. Leigh, however, is a tough chick and doesn't scare easy, but when her pleas to police (including inspector Gary Hunt, played by Carpenter regular Charles Cyphers) seem to gain less and less traction (particularly after they arrest a photographer believed to be the culprit), fear and paranoia set in and she may have to face the killer/stalker on her own. With shades of "Rear Window" (Sophie looks on from Leigh's apartment as she enters the voyeur's pad, resulting in a tragic series of events our heroine cannot prevent), Carpenter wrings as much suspense and palpable dread he can out of the familiar premise. Sure "Someone's Watching Me!" is a "safe" television thriller, but thanks to the affective use of the dark, Carpenter ably evokes foreboding because we never get an exact look of the killer's face until the very end, although the director does show the inside of his lair, the tape recorder spinning, his eye shown behind the telescope as he peeps at Hutton. Hutton is very, very good here, at first, her character doesn't take the phone calls seriously, but as events spiral out of control and the creep leaves her written messages, teasing her with an eerie writing on her bathroom mirror (this is a cool scene where the writing is on a mirror by way of moisture because the steaming shower is running, with Carpenter showing the message slowly evaporate), the poor woman's emotional state is tested. With Paul as her ally, Leigh might just get to the bottom of her predator's identity, how he's able to gain access to apartments, have such free reign to torment ladies he fixates on. A nice supporting part for future scream queen Barbeau; her fate is certainly harrowing. Hutton has a strong character, here, and a pleasant personality, not to mention, a charming wit and warm sense of humor—this is important because when she is victimized you hope she gets even with her tormentor. This film, to be a television movie, has a cinematic style and sophisticated camera-work; Carpenter buffs should check it out. I think the best scene could be early on, where Carpenter establishes the menace's threat, when Hutton finds her door open, entering reluctantly to find that someone has been there, not knowing (as she peers out her window) that the peeping tom is behind her, scurrying away really quickly ("darting past" is probably more apt), before she could get a good look at him. I think this scene is important in that it points out how easily he could be in the same room with her, with us understanding that his threat is legitimate.

Sassy TV director Leigh Michaels (an engagingly spunky and spirited performance by the lovely Lauren Hutton) arrives in Los Angeles and moves into a swanky high-rise apartment. Some peeping tom creep starts stalking her from afar, taunting her with crank phone calls and sinister letters in the mail. But Leigh refuses to play victim and becomes determined to uncover the nut's true identity. Writer/director John Carpenter ably builds plenty of tension, maintains a brisk pace throughout, and stages one doozy of a harrowing climax. Moreover, there's a pertinent and provocative central message about how advances in technology make it easier for someone to invade another person's privacy. Hutton positively shines in the lead; she gets fine support from David Birney as affable college professor Paul Winkless, Adrienne Barbeau as friendly lesbian coworker Sophie, Carpenter movie regular Charles Cyphers as unhelpful police detective Paul Hunt, Grainger Hines as smarmy technician Steve, and Len Lesser as a menacing burly man. Rober Hauser's sharp, polished cinematography and Harry Sukman's classy, rousing, shivery score are both up to par. Well worth a look.

It's John Carpenter's consummate craftsmanship that makes SOMEONE'S WATCHING ME! worth watching. Even on commercial television (which is just that: commercial after commercial after commercial), it came across as somewhat suspenseful. (Given the fact that kids with short attention span disorders can probably blame it all on too much time spent in front of the tube, Carpenter's ability to build suspense between snake oil salesmen endlessly hawking their wares is nothing less than amazing.) Lauren Hutton does a decent job in the lead (she's certainly more appealing a character than Jody Foster as Bernice Goetz in THE BRAVE ONE). Whether on television or the big screen, Carpenter has always managed to do movies that linger fondly in the memory long after the screen has gone dark.