Someone's Watching Me! (1978)

March 11, 2025 12:12 PM

[TRAILER] Leigh Michaels (Lauren Hutton) rents a unit in a high-rise apartment building where the previous tenant committed suicide. She tries settling in, finding a boyfriend Paul (David Birney) and making fast friends with her lesbian co-worker Sophie (Adrienne Barbeau). Weird "prizes" from a supposed sweepstakes and strange calls begin to make her worried that someone in the neighborhood is out to get her. This TV movie was made immediately prior to Carpenter's theatrical hit Halloween and aired on NBC on November 29, 1978.

Written and directed by John Carpenter. Music by Harry Sukman. Executive produced by Richard Kobritz for Warner Bros. Cinematography by Robert B. Hauser. Edited by Jerry Taylor.

88% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

I watched this via Shout Factory's Blu ray edition. You can find streaming options via the film's JustWatch listing.

posted by DirtyOldTown (3 comments total)

This is a pretty fun little TV movie. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it's a young John Carpenter, indulging in some Hitchcockian hijinks in a way that's better than was standard for telefilms of the time. Barbeau's lesbian friend is a good touch and progressive for the era (even if she trips the Bury Your Gays tripwire).

Lauren Hutton is luminous, as you'd expect, but she's also given an idiosyncratic character, prone to weird bullshitting and odd jokes. It's fun watching her stick up for herself.

"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a proctologist."
(She is not a proctologist.)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:16 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

This feels unfortunately still very relevant in how women's experiences are discounted. Sigh.

I watched this a while back but it's probably worth a revisit. I feel like it's a good candidate for a remake (by a woman, mind you) as long as it didn't turn into "technology bad."
posted by edencosmic at 2:13 PM on March 11

I watched this a year or two ago when the Evolution of Horror podcast featured it. I too was pleasantly surprised by the Adrienne Barbeau character, even though she of course died (I mean, to be fair, it's the kind of movie where basically everybody dies). Otherwise I found it...you know, pretty good for a TV movie, not awesome. I remember anticipating some big twist that never happened. It's not quite paint by numbers, but it's not exactly unpredictable, either. I feel like it was mostly intended to be scary but not too scary for grandparents and little kids, which is fine; I kinda like that vibe.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:31 PM on March 11