The invisible eye

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Movie
German title The invisible eye
Original title Someone's Watching Me!
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1978
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director John Carpenter
script John Carpenter
production Richard Kobritz ,
Anna Cottle
music Harry Sukman
camera Robert B. Hauser
cut Jerry Taylor
occupation

The invisible eye (Original title: Someone's Watching Me! ) Is a television film by John Carpenter . It was produced by Warner Brothers at Burbank Studios and first broadcast on NBC on November 29, 1978 . The leading role is played by Lauren Hutton ; in the German version spoken by Kerstin de Ahna .

action

The television director Leigh Michaels gets a new job in Los Angeles and moves into an apartment in a high-rise, the "Arkham Tower". Shortly afterwards, a stranger begins to shadow her. He sets up a telescope in the skyscraper opposite , follows her in the car and bugs her apartment. In addition, he gives her strange gifts: First, the alleged win of a bogus competition, then a telescope and a bikini. She also receives anonymous calls from the stalker several times. He penetrates more and more into her life and also observes her when she meets the young philosophy professor Paul, who is interested in her. She tells Paul about the calls and the gifts, and Paul wants to help her. He says of the stranger: "He wants to hurt you without touching you."

One evening she comes home with Paul and her friend Sophie and sees a man with a telescope in the house opposite. The police, called immediately, arrested the man who, it turns out, is a former electrician who now works as a gardener. He cannot be proven to have committed a crime and has to be let go again, but he is expelled from the city.

Leigh continues to feel threatened and finally, armed with a knife, breaks into the penthouse in the opposite skyscraper, into which she has not been able to see with her telescope because it is covered with dark curtains. Meanwhile, Sophie stays in Leigh's apartment and observes Leigh with the telescope. Suddenly, Leigh sees a person break into her apartment and strangle Sophie. When she rushes back to her apartment there is no one there, not even Sophie's body. The hastily called police tried to explain to her that nothing had happened. In truth, Sophie traveled to Fort Worth for two weeks .

Back in her apartment, Leigh finds the shower running in the bathroom and writing on her bathroom mirror: "No one believes you" (Nobody believes you). After another call from the stranger, she tears the telephone table over in a panic and finds a bug under the table top . Together with Paul, she finds out who the culprit is: It must be a man who belongs to the maintenance department of the two high-rise buildings. In the city administration they finally get a name: Herbert Styles. Both find out his address and Leigh breaks into his apartment, where the suspicion is confirmed. When she comes back to her own apartment, she finds a fake suicide note there. Styles' goal is apparently to drive her insane until she can see no other way out than to kill herself. Finally Styles shows up and tries to throw her out the window of her apartment. She can stab him with a piece of glass, he loses his balance and falls himself into the depths. Leigh concludes: "You came too close to me."

Parallels

The film shows some references to Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Das Fenster zum Hof ​​(1954) , in which observation through a telescope (or the telephoto lens of a camera) also plays a central role.

Trivia

  • The film represents Carpenter's first collaboration with Adrienne Barbeau, whom he married in 1979. She later starred in the Carpenter films The Fog (1980) and The Rattlesnake (1981).
  • Carpenter received a 1979 Edgar Award nomination for the film in the "Best Television Feature or Miniseries" category.
  • The skyscrapers "Arkham Tower" and "Blake Tower" shown in the film are actually called "The Shores" and are located in Santa Monica .

Reviews

The lexicon of international films described the film as an "[e] effectively staged, very exciting suspense thriller", which "takes over some of the main motifs from Alfred Hitchcock's films", but does not achieve "their depth".

DVD

The film was released on DVD on October 12, 2007.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The invisible eye. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 9, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 

Web links