A Stranger Is Watching (1982)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Good movie but grossly overrated

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Film director Sean S. Cunningham moved on from his great success with "Friday the 13th" to this more mainstream Hollywood thriller. It's nothing special, but it's not without its moments and pluses. It's a pretty sordid story, to be sure (adapted from a novel by Mary Higgins Clark), and some viewers may find it repellent at times. Others should have some fun with it, although it's never all that credible.Kate Mulgrew stars as Sharon Martin, a glamorous, big shot news reporter romantically involved with Steve Peterson (James Naughton), who's also in the news business. Two years previous, Steves' wife Nina (Joanne Dorian) had been raped and murdered in front of their horrified daughter Julie (Shawn von Schreiber). At the time, Julie had pointed the finger of guilt at a delivery guy, Ronald Thompson (James Russo), but the REAL culprit, Artie Taggart (Rip Torn), returns to extend his crime by kidnapping the two females and holding them for ransom in the vast and dingy areas beneath Grand Central Station.Cunningham brought along some of his F13 collaborators for this show, like casting directors Julie Hughes & Barry Moss, production designer Virginia Field, and cinematographer Barry Abrams. They do their best when capturing the sinister, overwhelming atmosphere of the underground settings. Suspense is minimal, but there is some violence here and there without much in the way of gore (for which, I'm sure, "Friday the 13th" detractors were grateful). One interesting moment has us manipulated into rooting for Rip when a gang of punks attack him in a public washroom, despite the fact that he's a VERY bad bad guy. The effective music score is courtesy of reliable veteran Lalo Schifrin.Rip is typically amusing in the villain role, and Mulgrew and young von Schreiber are appealing enough to maintain rooting interest. Much of the supporting cast is rather nondescript, but Naughton is good as the father, as is Barbara Baxley as a homeless woman. William Hickey and Vincent Spano can be seen in small parts.Screenplay credited to Earl Mac Rauch and "Friday the 13th" scribe Victor Miller.Six out of 10.

I remember when I watched this movie in the late 80's in my country on TV, many years after it got released, I was around 6 or 7, and I remembered some scenes that totally freaked me out. After that, my mother didn't let me watch the rest, and then I could not find it anywhere because I didn't remember the name. I finally found it a couple of days ago, and I stared remembering the scenes that frighten me when I was a kid. Right now that we have movies like A Serbian Movie, Hostel, The Human Centipede, and on and on, where everything is super explicit, and hardly ever any survivors, same as perfect makeup effects, so watching a vintage movie where there is no blood at all, where you see always a way to escape (I tend to do that in all the movies where someone is trapped), perhaps you won't find it really thrilling, but if you consider the time period where it was made, with the effects that were available at that time, and the time when the action happens, 1980, with no cellphones, no internet, no DNA tests, and many other details, it is scary, and still believable.

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....

My class just got finished reading A Stranger is Watching. I didn't like the book. First off I think the Name is Horrible. A Stranger is Watching?! Come on how corny! I didn't really care for the characters at all or the story. Now Don't get me wrong I love reading but I just couldn't get into this book. Anyway for the past two days it has been my misfortune to watch this film. There are so many changes from the book. First there is no Julie Peterson. It's suppose to be a little boy named Neil. This is a small spoiler but NEIL'S (not Julie) mother is suppose to be killed by being strangled with her scarf not hit in the head with a hammer (it's a really bad scene). The movie leaves out important characters and keys to the plot. The movie isn't even a mystery. And some of the things that happen leave you saying "Well what the heck did you think was going to happen?!". I don't like the book but it's a whole lot better than this. 0/10