Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Coventry Seeking out "A Stranger is Watching" was somewhat of a new experience for me… I'm a big movie fanatic and I hardly read any books, but in this case I was familiar with the work of novelist Mary Higgins Clark before I ever saw a movie that was based on her writings. Clark certainly isn't the greatest suspense fiction writer in the world, as her books are often clichéd and predictable, but at least everything that I read from her was easy to digest, unpretentious and occasionally very tense (like for example the novels "I heard that song before" and "Two girls in Blue"). I haven't read the novel on which "A Stranger is Watching" is based, but it sure had an interesting synopsis that fits right into her area of expertise. The film is directed by Sean S. Cunningham, whose name is irreversibly linked to the slasher pioneer "Friday the 13th". Although often also quite sick and very exploitative, "A Stranger is Watching" is totally different and incomparable to "Friday the 13th", since the story centers on just a handful of people in a devastating situation, whereas "Friday the 13th" is simply about horny teenagers getting slaughtered. 9-year-old Julie Peterson traumatically witnesses how her mother fiercely gets murdered in her own house. Two years later, when an innocent person is about to be sentenced for the crime, the real killer returns to kidnap both little Julie as well as her father's new girlfriend Sharon. The psychopath, Artie Taggart, imprisons the two ladies in a hideout place underneath New York's central station and demands a 180k$ ransom. Julie's father and the police attempt to collect the money, while Sharon – as well as a couple of observing New York homeless people – battles her repulsive kidnapper. "A Stranger is Watching" is mostly tedious and not at all suspenseful, mainly because the identity and lame motives of the kidnapper are immediately revealed. Some sequences are quite grotesque, like for example when Taggart calmly walks across the crowded train station carrying a large bag on his shoulder with his sedated victims in it, but most of the time the film is overly talkative and dull. The surprise twists in the plot come across as forced and implausible and – as a viewer – you feel very little affection or compassion for the two damsels in distress. The killing sequences are vile and nasty, though, and the underrated Rip Torn depicts an extremely sadist & menacing villain, so "A Stranger is Watching" definitely holds some interest for 80's horror fanatics.

ferbs54 Thirteen years before sitting in a Star Fleet captain's chair and going up against such alien homicidal monstrosities as the Borg, the Kazon, the Hirogen and Species 8472, Kate Mulgrew did battle with a homicidal monster of a much more mundane nature, in 1982's "A Stranger Is Watching." Based on Mary Higgins Clark's best seller of 1977 (which, to be honest, I've never read), the film shows us what happens when 11-year-old Julie Peterson (well played by Shawn von Schreiber)--who had seen her mother brutally raped and killed two years earlier--is kidnapped along with the woman (Mulgrew) who is dating her widower dad. The thuggish lout (Rip Torn) hauls the pair to the underground labyrinth beneath Grand Central Station, a hellish world unto itself, where he caches them and schemes to acquire his ransom. The film is a fairly taut thriller, into which director Sean S. Cunningham manages to generate more suspense than he had two years earlier in the overrated "Friday the 13th." A background score by the great Lalo Schifrin adds immeasurably to the tension on screen, and all four principals--including James Naughton as Julie's understandably desperate dad--turn in fine performances. Unfortunately, the story is a tad too simplistic for this viewer's taste. We never learn anything about the nutjob Artie Taggart, other than the fact that he wants to raise horses in Arizona; his background, and why he's chosen this particular moment to kidnap Julie, remain mysteries. If only the film's screenplay were as multilayered as Grand Central Station itself seems to be! Still, despite the unfleshed-out nature of the picture's most interesting character, the film does manage to keep the viewer riveted. Kate, post-"Ryan's Hope" here but still hardly a household name, is always wonderful to watch, and looks quite beautiful in this early screen role. And while Artie Taggart may not be as relentless as one of the Borg, he still manages to give the old girl a pretty tough time....

lost-in-limbo After the hit that was "Friday the 13th", director Sean Cunningham would tackle another low-budget horror / thriller item. "A Stranger is Watching" is quite straight-forward (with its foreseeable plot turns, still it's well written), but while not as explicit (as say Friday) it nonetheless held a grimy and nasty approach and this can be attributed a lot to Rip Torn's boldly outstanding performance. He magnificently portrayed a robust, but cold and disturbing killer. The two female leads were not to be overshadowed either, as there is a stellar turn by the young girl Shawn von Schreiber and Kate Mulgrew is affably good too.After the traumatic ordeal of watching her mother brutally raped and killed, another horrific incident occurs when Julie is kidnapped along with her father's newswoman girlfriend. The kidnapper keeps the two stored deep in the underground passages of New York's Grand central station while waiting for the ransom to be paid. But Julie starts getting visions of what happened that night when her mum was murdered and it becomes clear that her kidnapper was the one who murdered her mother and not the one she accused that's shortly facing execution.Taken off a novel by Mary Higgins Clark, the material remains edgy and particularly compact with some running themes amongst its calculative structure. There's confidence in Cunningham's swift handling, as the atmospheric suspense is well timed (especially the cat and mouse sequences), the story is always on the move and the stark urban locations give it a gritty, down-to-earth vibe. Lalo Schifrin music is memorably multi-facet, never over-stating it but harvesting a chilling and racy kick that was dangerously sneaky. There's also durable support by James Naughton, Stephen Joyce, Barbara Baxley, Frank Hamilton, Roy Poole, Maggie Task, James Russo and a cameo by William Hickey.

gridoon This film is sleazy and exploitive in the extreme. That's not much of a surprise, since it was directed by the man responsible for the (inept) first "Friday the 13th" film. What I DID find mildly surprising was the director's ability to shoot some reasonably suspenseful scenes in the middle of all the sleaze, proving that, when he doesn't overuse gore, he is competent enough. For a low-budget exploitation film, this isn't too bad.