Eyes of a Stranger (1981) review

9. Eyes of a Stranger (1981)

Directed by: Ken Widerhorn

Produced by: Ronald Zerra

Screenplay by: Mark Jackson

Starring: Lauren Tewes, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John DiSanti, Peter DuPre

“Eyes of a Stranger” isn’t a movie that has much of a place in horror history; I just feel like talking about it because it’s a low-budget slasher that just happens to have Jennifer Jason Leigh in her first major film role, and I’ve always been a fan of her work so here we are. Released in 1981 and following the trend of recent “Halloween” and “Friday the 13th” copycats, it’s about a newscaster in Miami who suspects that a neighbor may be a local rapist and serial killer; so it’s actually similar plot-wise to something like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” but incorporates bloodshed and vulgarity like those aforementioned slasher rip-offs. Regardless, this is a mostly competent film, although slightly awkward and clumsy at times.

Leigh plays Tracy, a teenager who is blind, deaf and mute due to a disorder stemming from being kidnapped and raped as a child; her older sister Jane (Lauren Tewes) is reporting on a local string of murders committed by a serial killer. The killer is a bespectacled, pudgy man named Stanley (John DiSanti) who first leaves obscene phone calls before making his move; he also happens to live in the same apartment complex as Jane and Tracy. Jane, who’s always harbored feelings of guilt for leaving Tracy alone before her abduction, frequently goes off-script in her warnings to the public; then when she spots Stanley returning home with his shirt covered in blood, she becomes suspicious and does her own investigation, against the advice of her lawyer boyfriend David (Peter DuPre). But in her eagerness to find justice, she may just be putting herself and Tracy in harm’s way.

Even though I opened this review mentioning Leigh, she’s only in a handful of scenes, essentially a plot device for most of the film; Jane is the one with the character arc. Played by Lauren Tewes—that’s right, Julie the cruise director from “The Love Boat”—Jane is someone with interesting motivations, but the film doesn’t really explore them well, instead giving her a journalistic eagerness that feels more like dangerous naivety. Upon seeing Stanley’s tires covered in mud and learning three victims were found in a gravel pit, she takes it upon herself to sneak into Stanley’s apartment while he’s gone, steal his mud-covered shoes, and then just expects David to be on board just because he’s a lawyer. I like the idea that she’s tormented by the memory of Tracy in the hospital and is therefore overzealous about making sure it doesn't happen to anyone else, but the film doesn’t take enough advantage of that, although it does capture that sort of tension and paranoia associated with depictions of untrustworthy neighbors.

As for Leigh, despite what little screen time she has, she turns in a fine and believable performance; this came out before “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” put her on the map, and knowing her reputation as someone who typically plays characters with excessive baggage, it’s no wonder how she got her start. Tracy is a very self-sufficient young woman despite her disability, and has some welcomed nuances in her body language, which really shine through in the film’s climax, where Stanley stalks her while Jane is out investigating again. Rather than go straight for the attack, he toys with her by moving objects out of her field of touch, disrupting her well-practiced routines until she realizes what’s happening; so in addition to “Rear Window,” the story also resembles “Wait Until Dark.”

Stanley himself isn’t a very imposing bad guy; he’s kind of a schlubby mook who really isn’t efficient in his work. For example, the gravel pit he tries to dump a body in has another car of witnesses close by, leaving to more victims; I don’t think Jane even needed to do anything, this guy would’ve been his own downfall. But the meek, twitchy, everyman look kind of makes him a little more realistic, like he’s the sort of incel who finds himself so unattractive that he ends up hating women as a result. The climactic scene in the apartment is rather nerve-racking, and the film is pretty good with its suspense and use of camera angles. However, it also suffers from an identity crisis as it shifts erratically from a tense thriller to an exploitative grindhouse flick; it’s not good at the latter, as the editing is kind of a mess and the bloody special effects—done by veteran Tom Savini—were heavily toned down by the MPAA.

Overall, this is a movie that’s somehow both as simple and as complex as it looks, if that makes any sense. It has all the dumb, senseless carnage you’d get in this scenario, yet it manages to be somewhat grim and clever about it. Even Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who by reputation hated derivative, low-rent slashers like this, acknowledged that it was well-made. I think it’s at its best when it fully leans into the Hitchcockian elements, even though there are frustrating moments ingrained in there too, and some of the acting from the supporting cast is quite poor. But if you keep your expectations tempered, “Eyes of a Stranger” may surprise you for how much it actually gets right.

My rating: 6.5/10