{"id":8935,"date":"2024-11-27T12:49:01","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T17:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8935"},"modified":"2024-11-27T12:49:01","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T17:49:01","slug":"a-stranger-is-watching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/27\/a-stranger-is-watching\/","title":{"rendered":"A Stranger Is Watching"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A Stranger Is Watching<\/strong>\u00a0 (1982)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MGM\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, strong violence, child in peril)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sean S. Cunningham\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Earl Mac Rauch and Victor Miller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Lalo Schifrin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Barry Abrams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 22, 1982 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Kate Mulgrew, Rip Torn, James Naughton, Shawn von Schreiber, Barbara Baxley, Stephen Joyce, James Russo, Frank Hamilton, Maggie Task, Roy Poole, Maurice Copeland, Eleanor Phelps, Joanne Dorian, Stephen Strimpell, David Brooks, William Hickey.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0For his first post-Friday the 13th<\/sup>\u00a0gig, director Sean S. Cunningham took on\u00a0A Stranger\u00a0Is\u00a0Watching<\/strong>, a kidnap thriller based on Mary Higgins Clark\u2019s 1977 novel. While serviceable, it suffers from a screenplay that glosses over details that should be key plot points. It\u2019s also rather predictable. However, it benefits from strong performances from a talented cast, particularly Rip Torn (The Beastmaster) as the slimy villain who kidnaps a traumatized kid and holds her captive in the dark caverns beneath New York\u2019s Grand Central Station along with a newswoman working on an important story. It\u2019s genuinely suspenseful at times even if the outcome is a foregone conclusion.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At the tender age of eight, Julie (Schreiber) witnessed the rape and murder of her mother by an intruder who records the whole thing on a cassette recorder. She still has nightmares about that horrible night; otherwise, she seems okay. The deliveryman (Russo, Beverly Hills Cop) she (mistakenly) identified as the killer is now on Death Row just 72 hours away from execution. Unless new evidence comes to light exonerating him, he\u2019s dead. The aforementioned reporter, Sharon Martin (Mulgrew, Throw Momma from the Train), is covering his story and dating Julie\u2019s father Steve (Naughton, Cat\u2019s Eye).<\/p>\n

\u00a0One night, a stranger breaks into their home and abducts the girls. He\u2019s Artie, a violent psychopath with a thing for egg salad. Holding them in a dingy bunker in an abandoned underground section of Grand Central, Artie calls the father and demands $182,000 if he wants to see either of them alive again. While he makes arrangements for the money drop-off, Sharon and Julie try several times to escape. Although I\u2019m sure it\u2019s supposed to be a surprise plot twist, it doesn\u2019t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Artie is the mother\u2019s killer. It conveniently comes back to the kid during her captivity. It means an innocent man will die unless Julie gets away in time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0You\u2019d think that the race against time to stop the execution of an innocent man would be a major part of A Stranger Is Watching<\/strong>, but you\u2019d be wrong. Cunningham, working from a half-baked script by Victor Miller and Earl Mac Rauch, pays too little attention to this aspect of the story. The scenes with the condemned man\u2019s lawyer trying to speak with Julie lack the necessary urgency. That\u2019s not all. Early on, it\u2019s established that Sharon and Steve are on opposite sides of the death penalty debate. He accuses her of using his wife\u2019s story as a means of arguing against the death penalty. It\u2019s basically forgotten after she\u2019s taken. I know the kidnapping is supposed to be the central focus of A Stranger Is Watching<\/strong>, but why bring any of it up if you\u2019re not going to use it effectively.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The rest of\u00a0A Stranger Is Watching<\/strong>\u00a0works fairly well. Don\u2019t be swayed by Cunningham\u2019s name on the label. It\u2019s not a Friday the 13th<\/sup> clone. It doesn\u2019t rely on copious amounts of gore to hold the viewer\u2019s interest. Instead, it provides the viewer with a story intended to build tension around the girls\u2019 predicament. To its detriment, it\u2019s murky on a few details. SPOILER ALERT!<\/strong> Somebody close to the family is in on the scheme. I think it\u2019s supposed to be a surprise plot twist, but the movie tips its hand a little too early. By the time it\u2019s revealed, we\u2019re not the least bit shocked. The movie doesn\u2019t make a big deal of it either. We\u2019re not given any details regarding this person\u2019s involvement. For example, does this person\u2019s involvement mean somebody else is involved too? Does that somebody else even know anything? The movie doesn\u2019t bother to explain.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Mulgrew gives a decent performance as a strong female character who refuses to fold in the face of fear and terror. That\u2019s good. What\u2019s not good is how underdeveloped her character is. Other than her idealism, we know nothing about her. Young Ms. Schreiber, in her one and only acting role, is good. She\u2019s not one of those child actors who confuse cuteness with talent. She definitely has the latter. Naughton is fine as the widowed, worried father. Like all the characters in A Stranger Is Watching<\/strong>, he\u2019s fairly one-dimensional.<\/p>\n

\u00a0HOWEVER, A<\/strong> Stranger Is Watching<\/strong>\u00a0really belongs to Torn who takes the role of skin-crawl creep to a relatively high level. He\u2019s scary without being unstoppable. Take the scene where he\u2019s assaulted by a gang of thugs in a public restroom. Somebody like Jason Voorhees would have slaughtered the lot of them without breaking a sweat. Artie gets his ass kicked.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The dark underground locations lend a strong nightmarish feeling to the proceedings. It also gives the movie a suitably ugly look to match the unpleasant subject matter. It boosts the uneasy feeling already being experienced by the viewer. The score by Lalo Schifrin is a real asset in how it augments the tension. It\u2019s hardly a great movie, but\u00a0A Stranger Is Watching<\/strong>\u00a0is good enough that you don\u2019t mind investing 92 minutes of your life in it.\"\"<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Stranger Is Watching\u00a0 (1982)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MGM\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 92 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, strong violence, child in peril)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sean S. Cunningham\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Earl Mac Rauch and Victor Miller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Lalo Schifrin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Barry Abrams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 22, 1982 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Kate Mulgrew, Rip Torn, James Naughton, Shawn von Schreiber, Barbara Baxley, Stephen Joyce, James […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/A-Stranger-Is-Watching-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8935"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9260,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8935\/revisions\/9260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}