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.

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.

"A Stranger is Watching" is a tale of a parent's worst nightmare, a film so angry and horrific, with graphic violence that doesn't really move the plot forward. It seems like a television movie with graphic footage thrown in to give it a movie theater release, taking it from a "parental guidance suggested" television warning to an "R". This is a shame because a few similar movies which told the human side of similar tales were able to be touching rather than exploitive. Another shame is the fact that the film is so well acted that you can't fault the stars, only the writers who took this down a road of ugliness from which it has not escaped.

Young Shawn von Schreiber is extremely memorable as the early teen who as a child witnessed the rape and murder of her mother. Now on the verge of becoming a young lady, she is forced to re-live the situation with the public exposition over the upcoming execution of the man she insisted was the killer. But, as the title says, "A Stranger is Watching", and he has no intention of letting her live in peace even though up to this point he has pretty much gotten away with murder.

Schreiber's father (James Naughton) is dating a pretty television reporter (Kate Mulgrew) who upsets him by recapping all of the details of the killing. His daughter hasn't quite accepted her as the new lady in his life, but when a mysterious stranger (Rip Torn) breaks into Naughton's home and kidnaps both Schreiber and a visiting Mulgrew, they are tossed together in a situation which can't help but make them closer, no matter how hard Schreiber resists.

If only there had been more focus on the two women bonding and less emphasis on the violence which erupts when they end up in the bowels of Grand Central where arriving trains go through a seemingly endless tunnel filled with hidden nooks and crannies where homeless mole people reside and Torn keeps them prisoner. The two make various attempts to escape, but as per usual in films like this, they are just one step towards freedom when the villain strikes again.

Mulgrew, just on the threshold of stardom, is excellent, and for "Ryan's Hope" fans, it is a thrill to see the original Mary Ryan playing a New York City reporter (just like Mary was) just a few years after that character's untimely demise. Mulgrew is unconventionally beautiful, her gorgeousness a combination of spunkiness, wisdom, a huge heart and eyes that speak volumes even without words. Schreiber is also very good too, and Torn is a horrific villain that is as scary as Freddy Krueger and Jason, even without a hockey mask or a scarred face. Some great character performances (Roy Poole, Stephen Joyce, Maggie Trask) are also worth mentioning, but when surrounded by such ugliness, that quality is lessened and you wish that they had been given a better script so this film could have been more memorable than it was.