 Welcome to today's edition of Frightfully Forgotten, but to get things started, what are we drinking? Le Marchand's East India Porter. Today we are going to be featuring 1981's Eyes of a Stranger. This movie was directed by Ken Widerhorn. He did a couple of notable horror movies, Shock Waves, Return to the Living Dead 2. Yeah, the only good thing about this movie is really the poster. Ron Kurtz wrote this movie, and he also wrote Friday the 13th, part two. This movie stars Lauren Tewes, and she's mostly been in TV, lots and lots of TV. Jennifer Jason Lee is in this, and she had quite the 80s career, let's say, as well as into the 90s, but she was in Fast Times at Richmont High. John DeSantis also in this, and he was in another 80s classic, classic, batteries not included. This movie starts out with a photographer, and he's walking around getting shots. He comes upon this woman's body, finds her through the viewfinder of his camera. Yeah, it's cool, and that'd be fucking scary for real. It cuts to news footage, a couple of news anchors talking about a killer that's on the loose. He's still on the loose! We see a waitress, and she's getting off work. There's all these shadows, right? It's the dead of night, and somebody's following her. She gets into a department, the phone rings. It's a guy on the other end, Debbie. Then he phones her again. I'm gonna kill you, Debbie. You bitch! Yeah, damn bitch! She gets her boyfriend to come over. There is somebody in the fucking apartment, and he takes a meat cleaver and just takes the guy's head right off, and she ends up seeing his head in the fish tank. It's all floating with all those bubbles coming through. From here we get introduced to Jane, and she's one of the news anchors that I mentioned earlier. Jane is living with her sister, and she's kind of taking care of her. She can't hear, speak, or see. She's like this because she was kind of terrorized as a kid. She was abducted. One day, when Jane's coming home from work, she notices a black car and a guy coming out of it, and he's kind of changing his clothes. So, hmm, that's a little weird. We see a woman working in an office late at night, and she's the only one. She ends up getting a phone call, and it's that same fucking guy. So she gets freaked out, she takes off, she gets into the elevator, and he phones her in the elevator. I don't know how he got the number for that. He gets out of the elevator, and she gets into her car, and you think everything's safe, and ding! Right from behind. If Halloween has taught you anything, fucking check your back seat. It's night time out in some remote area, and you see the car of the killer dumping the body, which he just killed. And there's a couple nearby, and the killer, like in real life, gets stuck after dumping the body. You can see the tire. He's probably all, uh, fuck. The guy's trying to get all with the lady in the other car, and ah, he can't get his mind on it because all he can hear is this guy trying to get out of this. Hey buddy, you need any help? The guy stumbles back to his car, and then from behind she... Oh man. Jane is in her parking spot again. She sees this car again. She's been reporting on the murders, and she knows all the details, and I was like, this guy was out in the mud for some reason. I just saw him changing his bloody clothes the other day, and mmm. Yeah, it's a little weird. She starts rummaging through his apartment. This guy comes home. Yeah, from grocery shopping too. He's got his minute made and able to make her way onto the balcony without him seeing her. Goes out to the balcony and while no one's there. Then you see her hanging on the side of the balcony. Show the far shot. It's like, holy shit. Looks over the edge and she quickly like whips into the next balcony. Like, oh my god. Like, if you don't do that perfectly, you're fucking toast. Yeah. So she decides to phone this guy and stalk him the way he stalked the other women. She calls him a phone freak. Someone being on his tail doesn't stop him. He goes to the strip club where there's this dancer doing this shit. Just dance with these legs. He follows her home and she's taking a shower. Turns around and through that glass sees the face. Yeah. Right there. It's like, holy shit. Jane is on the news reporting these murders. And she lets it slip. Yeah. She calls him a phone freak. She's the one that called me. So she's still on his tail and she goes to his place to kind of try to find some evidence. And he goes to her place. Sister is there like making a sandwich or whatever and she can't hear or more see him. Yeah. And he's just standing there. He can do whatever he wants. Yeah. And we're going to end the plot there. So if you want to see what happens at the end of Eyes of a Stranger, finish watching the movie. The characters, right? We've got two strong female leads. It's quite a twist because she's not running from him screaming. Yeah. It's she's pursuing him. Yeah. You know, it's other way around. He's not stalking her. She is stalking him. Towards the end, he doesn't even want anything to do with her. Yeah. He has his eyes on the sister. Yeah. Yeah. Which is kind of neat, right? Even though she's the main character, he's never after her. Yeah. You know, which is kind of neat. She has strong female leads. You have another one which is perceived to be a very weak character because of her disability. In reality, she's very strong. Right. And you'll notice that when you finish watching the movie, when it comes down to him and her at the end, like, no, she's not a weak character. Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, throughout the movie, you see women who have older senses that can't fight or shit. Yeah. So yeah, it's an interesting dynamic. This movie bridges the gap, I find, between the 70s and 80s quite well. More of a 70s feel for the character development and more of the plot. Then it kind of ramps up to more 80s slasher for the kills and for, like, the pursuits. It's not a who-done-it style slasher. You know who the killer is pretty early in the movie. Where are they going to take this now? Because obviously that's not the payoff. You know that she's pursuing the right person. Yeah. And it's not a red herring like it usually is. Then for me, it gets really interesting. It's like, okay, well, how is she going to get this guy? Because she's got no evidence. Just all a hunch that happens to be right. Yeah, yeah. None of the points in this movie are necessarily original. You've got the phone calls like in Black Christmas. The high-rise apartment buildings like someone's watching me and rear window. Yeah. So it's not exactly original, but it's how they use all those concepts to make this movie, which is really cool, right? Yeah. They put their own spin on everything. The killing scenes are pretty good too. Like, there's some good 80s style slasher type kills. Very Jason Bourdie style before that was a thing, you know? That's right. Yeah. On top of the kills, we have to mention that this is probably one of the movies that Tom Savini is not well known for. That's right. Because he did do the effects on it. Yeah. And for me, it came out of nowhere like looking at the movie like, what? Tom Savini did this? It does show, because the effects are fucking great. Yeah. The suspense in this movie, I think, is really good. As soon as she's on his tail and pursuing him, the suspense kicks right up. And there's a couple of those scenes, man. Like, when she's hanging off that balcony, you're like, oh my God! Like, because it's either up or down. Right. And up you're... Caught. Caught. And down you're... Dead. Dead, right? It's either way you're dead, you know? Where her sister is alone with the killer and she's unaware he's there and he can do whatever he wants. That... Yeah. That scene, man. That's like, oh, it just gives you the creeps. And that's the cool thing about this movie is that everything feels natural, because this is like a real killer. It's not, you know, it's not like Jason or anything like that, right? It's just a dude. It's just a man. And the movie kind of plays out sort of realistic too. So, that's it. If you're in the mood for a good, like, hot pursuit type thriller, you know? Yeah. Definitely check out Eyes of a Stranger. It kind of takes a lot of the slasher tropes and flips it. It does a lot of familiar things a bit of a different way. Exactly, and very well. Yeah. Too. So until next time... Keep drinking. And dancing. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.