Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

A Stranger Is Watching Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson July 23, 2021

Friday the 13th (1980) was budgeted at $500,000 and yet it went on to take in more than $70 million worldwide. That success gave Sean Cunningham the opportunity to direct his first studio picture. Producer Sidney Beckerman purchased the screen rights to Mary Higgins Clark's third literary work, A Stranger Is Watching, when it was only a manuscript and prior to its publication by Simon and Schuster in 1977, according to Tom Buckley of the New York Times. The El Paso Times reported that the book sold more than 1.5 million copies. Beckerman offered Cunningham the job of directing it, which he did. Newsday's Bill Kaufman estimated the movie's budget at $3.5 million.

A Stranger Is Watching opens at dusk in an upper middle-class suburban home in Long Island. Nine-year-old Julie Peterson (Shawn von Schreiber) is awakened by shrieks downstairs. As she slowly descends the staircase, her mother Nina (Joanne Dorian) lies on the ground. A man is beating her with a claw hammer. Nina tells her daughter to run away but she's too petrified to move. When Nina's screams end, the intruder begins taking pictures of the body and of Julie. This is a recurring dream of Julie's and as the film flash-forwards by two years, Ronald Thompson (James Russo), the grocery deliveryman whom Julie identified as the killer, awaits execution on Death Row. Julie's father, Steve Peterson (James Naughton), is covering the story for the New York magazine, News Today, which he edits. Sharon Martin (Kate Mulgrew), Steve's girlfriend, is also covering it as a TV anchor. The couple have opposing views on capital punishment. Steve favors the death penalty while Sharon's against it. One evening when Sharon is scheduled to babysit Julie, an intruder sneaks into the house and nabs the now 11-year-old girl. Shortly thereafter, Sharon enters and she's also seized by the same man. Cunningham doesn't refrain from any secrets about the abductor's identity. He's Artie Taggart (Rip Torn), a local suburbanite who takes the two females via his van to New York's Grand Central Station. Artie carries Julie in a gunny sack and then brings Sharon by his side into the bowels of the subway rails, which lie directly beneath the Oyster Bar where Artie has a hideout. Artie is demanding $182,000 in ransom for Steve to get them back. That's precisely the same amount as heiress Julie received for her mother's estate. Artie stipulates that no cops will accompany Steve for the transaction and exchange. Is there a connection between Taggart and Thompson? Do they know each other well?

The stranger in his van watching the kids.

Cunningham impresses with the way he directs some very dark scenes. There's one where an intruder is in a bedroom but he's being watched by someone outside the door and the frame is masked along both sides so the viewer basically looks through a keyhole. Another is where Cunningham places the camera in the catacombs and along an abandoned dumbwaiter where Sharon helps Julie ascend a rope where they're hoping to find an opening through the subway system.

I was unaware watching A Stranger Is Watching the first time of Artie's motive for taking the two captive but Kathleen Carroll, then the film critic for the Daily (NY) News, mentioned in her review that his future as an Arizona rancher was in imminent jeopardy. Carroll perhaps purloined this nugget from the synopsis in MGM's press kit? The timeliness of Artie kidnapping Sharon is tactical on his part because she's one of the most prominent voices in the city against the death penalty and muffling her would help expedite Russell Thompson's trip to the electric chair. However, I'm not going to reveal to those who haven't seen the film whether or not Taggart was Nina's murderer or if Thompson directly played a role in her death.

A Stranger Is Watching received mixed reviews with more unfavorable than positive critiques. The Baltimore Sun's Stephen Hunter raises a few valid points about Cunningham's style but his rebuke of it comes across as way too harsh: "He can’t cross-cut to build suspense to save his life; he overuses the device of the subjective camera, using it to represent three separate points of view, resulting in utter chaos; he never bothers to use an establishing shot, so that things always happen with a jumpy, stupefying abruptness; when, in moments of high stress, he dollies in on his characters—or, once, a telephone—his compositions fall stupidly out of focus....the film is constantly destroyed by moments of awkward­ness and incoherence where he loses control of his characters and their actions." The Atlanta Constitution's Eleanor Ringel sat with a local audience which "didn't buy for an instant that Torn could carry Julia through Grand Central in a none-too-subtle duffel bag. Nor were they impressed by the repeated escape attempts which had about as much tension as a McDonald’s com­mercial."

Inevitably, other reviewers compared the movie to Friday the 13th, preferring ASIW over it. Jim Ridley of The Morning Press (Murfreesboro, TN) proclaimed "the best thing that may be said about it is that it is much better than Cunn­ingham’s last picture." Janet Maslin of the New York Times called it "a lot better" and "a big improvement" over Friday the 13th. "It’s also less bloody and...more of a thriller than an exercise in viciousness and gore....fast and trim. The story offers a few sur­prises, and the bowels of the railway station are scenic, in their grubby way. The characters are adequately drawn, and they’re played with con­viction." The Ontario-based Windsor Star's John Laycock viewed it as "a good deal more efficient, effective and plausible" than Friday the 13th. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Marylynn Uricchio deemed it "above average for a schlock horror film." The Louisville Courier Journal's Owen Hardy admired its atmosphere: The film "is brought vividly to the screen by Barry Abrams’ excellent photography....Cunningham’s intelligent use of location trans­forms this film from merely run-of- the-mill horror to relatively high-class fright." Because Friday the 13th was universally panned when it first premiered, it may be faint praise that critics ranked ASIW higher but it needs to be emphasized that there was an oversaturation of horror films in just about every sub-genre during this period and ASIW clearly stood out as superior to many of those.

A Stranger Is Watching Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Scream Factory brings A Stranger Is Watching to Blu-ray for the first time worldwide on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50 (disc size: 31.69 GB). The DI is sourced from a new 2K scan of the interpositive. The film appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1. It's important to point out that a bulk of ASIW is set in Artie's subterranean domain so the image can look extremely dark with pitch blacks, steam, and smoke beneath the Grand Central Terminal. There's only occasional white speckling, which do not pop up large in number. I thought that colors looked pretty vibrant in daytime interiors (e.g., Screenshot #3) and exteriors (#8 of Roger Perry's front lawn). Scream has encoded the feature at a mean video bitrate of 34000 kbps.

The 92-minute movie is accompanied by twelve scene selections.

A Stranger Is Watching Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Scream has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (1679 kbps, 24-bit). The monaural mix sounds appropriately flat and authentic. It's bereft of any annoying background hiss, scratches, or dropouts. I could hear all dialogue clearly enough without switching on the optional English SDH. While Lalo Schifrin's score is heavy on strings at times, he also employs woodwinds that remind me of some of his jazzier scores. The music is by no means a copycat of Harry Manfredini's Friday the 13th. Schifrin does take a similar approach to creating a deliberate vocal effect for Artie that Manfredini did so masterfully and successively for Jason. Peter Bracke describes it as a whistle in his audio commentary while I discern it more as a whisper (perhaps an audio signifier that the kidnapper wants Julie and Sharon to remain shushed?).

A Stranger Is Watching Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• NEW Audio Commentary by Author/Historian Peter M. Bracke - the soft-spoken founder of DVD File describes A Stranger Is Watching as "a more expensive version of Friday the 13th" with similar lighting and vibes as the 1980 classic in this feature-length track. He begins by laying out how producer Sidney Beckerman optioned Mary Higgins Clark's eponymous novel and also discusses (generally) the stories and prose style of Clark's fifty-one novels. Bracke is pretty big fan of the film and blames MGM's mismarketing and January release date as contributors to its commercial failure. He examines the theme of urban paranoia at considerable length. Bracke compares Cunningham to his contemporaries Wes Craven and George Romero, and also discusses Cunningham's friend and understudy, Steve Miner. Bracke gets less screen-specific during the film's second half where he delves into similar genre titles of the early '80s. In English, not subtitled.

• NEW Introduction by Director Sean S. Cunningham (0:34, 1080p) - Cunningham delivers a warm and inviting (albeit brief) introduction to his fifth solo feature as director. In English, not subtitled.

• NEW A Captive Audience – An Interview with Director Sean S. Cunningham (21:36, 1080p) - Cunningham is interviewed in-person at his home and addresses Mary Higgins Clark's 1977 novel as well as the casting of Rip Torn, Kate Mulgrew, and Shawn von Schreiber. He also discusses the New York locations, Lalo Schifrin's score, and MGM/UA's ad campaign. In English, not subtitled.

• Theatrical Trailer (2:22, 1080p) - MGM's official cinema trailer (partially restored) for A Stranger Is Watching that's shown in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. The trailer boasts nice, thick grain but also has light scratches and artifacts.

• TV Spot (0:32, upconverted to 1080i) - a pretty imaginative TV spot promoting A Stranger Is Watching that aired in the early winter of 1982. Video is mediocre quality with VHS tracking lines.

• Poster and Lobby Card Gallery (4:03, 1080i) - a moving slide show consisting of forty-eight images that show marketing campaign and home video releases of A Stranger Is Watching. The first twenty-seven comprise both black-and-white and color production snapshots from the MGM/United Artists press kit (including one newspaper-only still). The last twenty-one stills display poster sheets, lobby cards, and box artwork from the VHS and DVD editions (US and international releases).

A Stranger Is Watching Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I knew very little about A Stranger Is Watching before popping in this BD and it's a pleasant surprise. Repeat viewings of Friday the 13th have improved for me since initially watching it on VHS and cable. I'm optimistic that the same will hold true for ASIW. If F13 is Cunningham's slasher classic, then ASIW may represent his horror sleeper. Scream Factory's HD transfer and uncompressed mono track are each very solid presentations. I was quite glad to hear Peter Bracke sit down for a relaxed yet thoroughgoing chat about the film. Cunningham's interview covered the essential topics related to the production. I'd love to see two more Rip Torn films reach Blu-ray: Payday (1973) and Heartland (1981). DEFINITELY RECOMMENDED to all of Cunningham's fans.