A STRANGER IS WATCHING
Very creepy and well done. Go see!
Who knew Sean S. Cunningham could be this good? I mean, I enjoyed the first Friday the 13th for what it was, probably a little more than most, and I thought that Deep Star Six was the best of the spate of "underwater menace" flicks, The Abyss not included (hey, it's a different kind of movie)...but before this, I wouldn't have called the guy a particularly good director.
Anyone read the Mary Higgins Clark book upon which this is based? It's about a girl and her prospective stepmomwho are kidnapped by the thug who killed and raped the girl's mom (and, needless to say, the girl fingered the wrong guy a la Scream) and holed up in a room deep down in areas of the New York subway system that nobody dares go.
Rip Torn plays the thug, who looks an awful lot like AC/DC's Brian Johnson. I would have loved to have seen this one on the big screen. Even pan-n-scanned, one can tell it's really nicely shot, with lots of eerie underground settings and darkplaces devoid of hope. The performances are excellent, from Torn and Kate Mulgrew as the would-be stepmom (this lady hasn't aged a day in sixteen years), but the kid steals the show (two movies in one week with a really good child actor in it! Well, goddamn.). Played by Shawn von Schreiber (in apparently her only acting role ever), she's a nice, realistic mix of the spunky/gutsy and the scared kid.
Definitely recommended. And hey, it has "mole people", long before the topic became hip with Mimic, Reliquary and Extreme Measures.