User reviews

A series of gruesome sex murders is plaguing a coastal community of Miami and the police seem to be well behind the eight ball. Jane, a local TV news reader urges viewers each time a murder happens to ring up with any sort of information to catch this killer. This really strikes a nerve with her, as her blind and deaf sister Tracy who she lives with was raped and left for dead when she was a child. Causing this traumatic condition. After some unusual coincidences, Jane starts to suspect her neighbour Stanley Herbert might be behind the murders.

After making the sorely underrated 70s horror gem "Shock Waves" (which appears in the film in a couple of shots focusing on a TV), director Ken Wiederhorn returns back to the genre with an low-budget Hitchcock inspired thriller, which to fit the trend of the times it also threw in many 80s slasher traits. While derivatively clichéd and filled with some implausible scenarios, it's still well made and actually can be creepy, suspenseful and at times a clever exercise in familiarity. The voyeuristic plot, yep it's got one. Rings true to "Rear Window (1954)" and even "Wait Until Dark (1967)". The killer's identity is brought up quite early, so there's no surprise there and through flashbacks we actually see what happened to Tracy. Which goes a long way to show how hard it hit Jane and the guilt that plagues her with her involvement in getting this predator. The characters here are capable of looking after themselves and have good judgement of common sense.

After a strong opening half and being realistically staged in parts, it then it falls away gradually and becomes the run-of-the-mill stalk and slash vehicle that simply leaves you waiting for it cracking conclusion. What little substance it generates is broken up by the ridiculously nonthreatening phone calls taunting his victims and its random acts of unpleasant violence. Make-up artist Tom Savini is the master behind the death-sequences and crafts some good effects. While, one or two moments stand out, sadly most of the scenes were off camera or were cut out. The suspenseful situation really does lose out to the basic slasher set-ups and seedy intentions of its material. Wiederhorn's tight direction is sturdily achieved and he doesn't go at a cracking pace. The grimly washed-out look of the film enhances the eerily sordid atmosphere. The moody lighting, Richard Einhorn and Red Neinkirchen's ominously alarming electronic music score and leering camera-work by Mini Rojas simply soaked up the encroaching menace of a city plagued by a vicious killer. The cast provide spot-on performances. An effectively worthy Lauren Tewes (Love Boat fame) gives it her all as the gusty TV news reader Jane and the delightfully stunning Jennifer Jason Leigh in her first major screen role plays it accordingly assured as the blind/death Tracy. Looking the part, John DiSanti's lumbering physic and unnerving attitude is rather convincing as the murderer.

It's nothing out of the ordinary and it can get contrived, but it's well-made and provides potently active lead performances.

EYES OF A STRANGER is an effective thriller. It unfortunately does have a TV movie feel/look to it and the slight story takes place only in a couple of apartments and parking lots. But even if there's nothing remotely original or spectacular about it, in the end, I thought it was effective nonetheless. There are a couple of standout scenes, like the head in the fish tank and the scene when the woman is taking a shower and the killer is staring at her with his face pressed against the glass door. Creepy!!! And the scene when Lauren calls the killer is full of tension. The acting by Jennifer Jason Leigh was very good, and to my surprise, even Lauren Tewes was good and nothing like the annoying saccharine character she played on THE LOVE BOAT. I recommend EYES OF A STRANGER to fans of thrillers, slashers or horror films.

Surprisingly decent entry in the slasher-flick genre has attractive, spunky Lauren Tewes (here on loan from TV's "The Love Boat", and doing excellent work besides) playing crack reporter hunting down a serial killer of women. Jennifer Jason Leigh, with her thick crop of hair and pale skin, is luminous in her film-debut as Tewes' deaf-mute-and-blind sister (her sequence in the kitchen with the killer is incredibly well-staged). The movie's first priority is to be a bloodfest, and some of the violence is predictably disgusting; however, of its type, "Eyes" isn't half bad! I found the grainy production quite eerie, John DiSanti gives a brave performance as the hefty psycho, and, as noted, Tewes is terrific. Who knew?? ** from ****

"Eyes of a Stranger" is a decent, overlooked slasher that takes place in sunny Miami. A depraved sex murderer is hard at work eliminating the female population, and a hard- driving TV news anchor, Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes of 'The Love Boat' fame) is determined to do something about it, especially when she comes to believe that the killer is actually one of her own neighbours, the bespectacled, corpulent Stanley Herbert (John DiSanti). He's been phoning his victims as a prelude to his crimes, but he soon has the tables turned on him as *she* harasses him with calls. But Stanley soon has another victim in mind, Janes' own sister Tracy (Jennifer Jason Leigh, making her film debut), who's deaf, dumb, and blind because she's *already* had a traumatic past encounter with a predator.

Admittedly, this *is* trashy stuff, but should prove to be adequate entertainment for slasher aficionados. Not that it stands out in the genre in terms of style or content, because it doesn't, but it's still reasonably well done. Director Ken Wiederhorn establishes a respectably creepy atmosphere and gets some great use out of the various locations.

In one twist, Stanley dumps a victim at the beach, where he promptly gets his car stuck, and when an annoyed lovebird who happens to be nearby shows up to give the car a push, it provides Stanley with another handy two victims. An early scene is also amusing for containing a "severed head in the fishtank" gag, just as "He Knows You're Alone", another slasher from the same period, did. Late in the movie, there's one very sinister sequence when Stanley is in the Harris apartment and toys with Tracy by moving objects in and out of her reach.

Tom Savini supplies the makeup effects, which are good but for the most part not among his best work (the final blood soaked sequence is pretty nice, though). For the voyeurs, there are some choice breast shots. One very effective element is the excellent music score by the under-rated composer Richard Einhorn; it's quite scary. The acting is fine from the principals: Tewes is convincing as the impassioned older sister, Leigh is appealing as the younger one, DiSanti is incredibly effective as the murdering cretin, and Peter DuPre does a decent job as Janes' attorney boyfriend. Look for 'Flipper' star Luke Halpin in a bit as a tape editor, and watch out for scenes from Wiederhorns' spooky low budget flick "Shock Waves" (which had co-starred Halpin) playing on TV.

This was one of only three productions for the short lived company Georgetown, whose other credits were the first two "Friday the 13th" pictures.

Seven out of 10.

It's not bad at all but it has some flaws. What killer leaves his muddy shoes in the closet to be found there by a lady who's living in the same building? Only a stupid killer. What killer throw a shirt dirty with blood in the garbage bin from the garage at the base of the block where he lives? The same stupid killer. But they're all stupid, the killers, since they commit crimes. I wanted to watch this because of Jennifer Jason Leigh. But she has a small role of a deaf-mute almost blind. She's very young, one of her first roles. OK, let's accept that she has a very strong shock, being almost raped by the killer-psychopath and that helps returning her sight and speech. The interesting idea of the movie is the killer watched by the neighbor, tortured by phone, as he watched and tortured his victims. Lauren Tewes looks like Agnetha Fältskog, the blonde of ABBA, and John DiSanti, the killer, looks like Rod Steiger. They are both very good, specially DiSanti.

**A FEW SPOILERS**

I'd recommend "Eyes of a Stranger", a nearly forgotten slasher-style suspense thriller from 1980 that has the distinction of being the film debut of Jennifer Jason Leigh (who gives a terrific performance as a blind, deaf and mute teenager who must fight off an assailant inside her apartment like Audrey Hepburn in "Wait Until Dark"), and which also features gore effects by the legendary Tom Savini.

Set in and around Miami (just like director Ken Wiederhorn's earlier Nazi zombie feature "Shock Waves" -- clips of which appear on the television set during the first murder scene), "Eyes of a Stranger" is basically an update of "Rear Window" embellished with references to a number of other suspense thrillers. The opening scene, in which the nude body of a murder victim is discovered immersed in a mangrove swamp, is a direct nod to the opening of Hitchcock's "Frenzy"; and a much later scene, in which the killer furtively watches a striptease dancer undress before (it is implied) he attacks her in a shower stall, is a clear homage to "Psycho".

"Eyes of a Stranger" starts off with the classic slasher premise established by "Black Christmas": the creepy serial killer who stalks and terrorizes young women with harassing phone calls before he finishes them off in person. Despite a trail of bodies with a common M. O., there is no hint of any police investigation in the movie. Likewise, none of the women have any male protectors who can save them from the killer, and the ones who try just end up as hapless collateral damage -- including one particularly memorable (and gruesomely funny) image of a severed head in a fish tank, which is itself a direct steal from the then-contemporary 1980 slasher thriller "He Knows You're Alone".

In terms of its storytelling, "Eyes of a Stranger" is split into two distinct halves: in latter part, the movie deliberately alters and undermines its earlier narrative focus and becomes a different sort of genre picture than the standard slasher exploitation fare, as the killer becomes the person who is spied upon and harassed in his apartment by an inquisitive neighbor (again, think "Rear Window"). By this point, we see that the killer, as ruthless and determined as he is, is not some indestructible bogeyman like Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, or the later Freddy Krueger. Instead, he is revealed to be quite fallible and vulnerable, especially when confronted by the female protagonist (played by Lauren Tewes), who, earlier in the movie, is seen risking her life by breaking into his apartment to search for clues (just like Grace Kelly did in "Rear Window"). For this reason, "Eyes of a Stranger" has been considered a quasi-feminist "rape-revenge" vigilante film (in his book, "Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan ...and Beyond", the late British critic Robin Wood wrote an especially spirited defense of this movie along those particular lines).

The first half of "Eyes of a Stranger" generally conforms to all the familiar narrative clichés of the slasher genre by presenting us with the image of a serial murderer who appears to be endowed with the superhuman powers of an omniscient and ubiquitous bogeyman. This hackneyed "invincible killer" trope is an unmistakable feature of the first two murder scenes, where the killer's presence is only hinted at metonymically -- as a disembodied voice on the phone, as a masked silhouette lurking in the darkness, or in closeup shots of his feet following his prey or his hands brandishing a weapon. Here, we see the killer stalking and entrapping his victims with all the practiced stealth and finesse of a ninja assassin -- an extraordinary ability which the movie doesn't bother to explain or justify in any plausible way. As we watch these scenes play out, our suspension of disbelief waxes and wanes and we are left wondering to ourselves: how did he get inside that apartment or sneak into the back of that woman's car, or obtain the emergency phone number for that elevator?

However, about halfway through "Eyes of a Stranger", the movie's contrived illusion of an omnipotent killer endowed with superhuman competence is quickly and permanently abolished. This demystification first occurs during a scene where his tires get stuck in the mud while disposing of his latest victim, and he is forced to dispatch two potential witnesses who are making out in the car next to him. Here we begin to see that this killer is hardly very subtle or discreet in the way he goes about his business. Careless and impulsive, he doesn't seem to have that much common sense, let alone any sophisticated forensic awareness, about escaping detection or (literally) covering his tracks. All throughout the movie, we see him repeatedly stalk and attack women in apartment complexes and car parks -- semi-public spaces where his suspicious comings and goings could easily be noticed (and eventually are). In fact, he is so sloppy and disorganized that it seems the temporary success of his killing spree can only be attributed to dumb luck and a curious absence of any police vigilance and deterrence. By this point, we come to realize that under normal circumstances, he could be caught in the act at any time.

It doesn't take long before the killer's luck finally does run out, and when we at last see him as he really is, his pale expressionless face, portly frame and slouching gait expose him as the very image of a rather depressing ungainliness and ordinariness (much like Raymond Burr's pitifully inept and desperate uxoricide in "Rear Window"). In the end, there is nothing the least bit impressive, clever, seductive, mysterious or otherworldly about this killer. If anything, he appears dull, clumsy, slovenly, unattractive and very, very common. Indeed, it is in this way that the more fanciful and dubious conceits of the genre are deliberately undermined, and any semblance of the sadistic relish and artfully evinced horror atmosphere that slasher movie enthusiasts may have once admired about the killer during the staging of his earlier murders is rapidly and purposefully dissipated.

This undermining of the "invincible killer" trope is most clearly demonstrated during a brief scene toward the end of the movie in which no physical violence occurs at all. Here, we see the killer stripped of any theatrical pretense of devilish glamour or mystery -- his pudgy plain face and flabby middle-aged physique now fully visible in clear light -- as he casually torments a blind teenager by removing familiar objects from her reach on a kitchen counter. I imagine that the banal viciousness and petty psychological cruelty of this otherwise harmless act was more upsetting and disturbing for most viewers than any of the physically gruesome murder scenes in this movie (which are, of course, standard for the genre and are, alas, to be expected).

As the late Robin Wood astutely observed, the culmination of this studied demystification of the mad-slasher bogeyman occurs in the last reel of "Eyes of a Stranger", when the killer suddenly meets his violent and ignominious end in a shower stall (an inversion of the earlier "Psycho" reference), and the final lingering image of his broken glasses perched crookedly on his bloated lifeless face, with eyes now permanently shut from a fatal bullet wound in his forehead, seems not only a stunning reversal of fortune but a moralistic indictment of anyone in the audience who took a portion of vicarious pleasure in the movie's preceding mayhem.

Set in Miami, Florida, the film follows Jane (Lauren Tewes) a TV news reporter who covers the murders of a serial murderer/rapist. Jane lives with her sister, Tracy (Jennifer Jason Leigh in her first film role), who after an encounter with an abductor as a child renders her blind, deaf and mute leaving Jane with survivor's guilt. Jane sees suspicious behavior from a neighbor in the adjacent apartment block, Stanley Herbert (John DiSanti), and suspects he may be the killer. Jane's suspicions are confirmed and Jane uses her skills and resources to turn the tables on the killer.

Released in 1981, Eyes of a Stranger marked director Ken Wiederhorn's third feature film following the cult zombie film Shock Waves and forgotten Animal House rip-off King Frat. The film was unique among most slasher films having come from a major studio, Warner Brothers, and forgoing the isolated country sides or suburban settings that defined the ambiance of Friday the 13th, Halloween, and the subsequent films they inspired and went for a more urban environment. Eyes of a Stranger doesn't follow the typical slasher formula wherein we focus on a group as slowly one by one the characters are killed in various fashions, but instead the movie is told from the point of view of Jane as she investigates her suspicions in an almost Noir-ish approach to the material there's a decent story idea at the core of Eyes of a Stranger, but it feels like it's rather unsure of itself as it wavers between traditional thriller tropes and slasher tropes with both ends feeling rather underdeveloped.

I think the biggest mistake the movie makes is in letting us the audience know that Stanley Herbert is a killer from the get go. While initially Stanley's face is obscured in shadow or off camera during the initial kills, the movie eventually drops this and it's made clear he is the killer. The fact we already know who the killer is robs much of Jane's investigative story of its tension as conversations with her lawyer boyfriend where they debate whether he is the killer feel pointless since we already know Jane is right and it's just the movie spinning its wheels until the inevitable climax. The kills are very much inspired by slasher trends and the gore work (in the uncut version I saw) by Tom Savini is par for the course well done and carries weight and impact, but we know so little about the people being killed because they're not main characters and you feel nothing when they die because there's no investment. It's not to say that this kind of framework can't work as there's been a number of Giallo films from the likes of Mario Bava or Dario Argento that cover material in this fashion, but those films usually try to have a sense of moral ambiguity to them with time taken to establish intrigue or character. We do get an idea of the impetus as to what motivates Jane's plan against Stanley, but it isn't all that fleshed out and feels like a footnote. Stanley himself isn't all that interesting and basically plays a standard quiet loner but even with that we don't get much of an idea as to who Stanley is outside his kills. His apartment is spotless and bland with only a Cuckoo clock that serves as a plot point standing out and we have no idea what he's like outside of the killings so he's basically just a murder machine for Jane to fight against.

Eyes of a Stranger is technically superior and has a more interesting story core than most of its contemporaries of the 1980s Slasher Glut, but it doesn't fully commit to being a thriller or a slasher and wobbles un easily between the two not really satisfying the standards for one or the other. The movie does have an intriguing noir-ish style that made the film more visually interesting in comparison to other films of similar ilk and the effects work by Savini is good as usual, but at the end it feels a hodgepodge of ideas from Rear Window, Wait Until Dark, and Peeping Tom with some contemporary gore work added that doesn't give the film much of its own identity. It's serviceable, but I can't give it much more than that.

Made back in the early 1980's, on the heels of the horror resurgence, Eyes of a Stranger did it's best to break away from the endless Halloween clones, while still keeping up a level of tension.

It stars the attractive Lauren Tewes (from Love Boat) as a reporter trying to track down and verify the identity of a ruthless killer, played by John DiSanti. Where this movie differs so much from other horror of the era is that DiSanti's identity, and face, are never hidden. You know who he is, and that he did it, from the get-go. Tewes is convinced he's the killer, but no one will believe her (duh, of course not) and there is a confrontation between she and her blind sister (well played by a very young Jennifer Jason Leigh), and DiSanti. Ken Wiederhorn had worked on PBS before this film, and apparently used this film and genre, like so many others tried, to try to break into Hollywood. In all, there are some strong moments of tension, the FX are good, especially for the day (FX master Savini), and Tewes surprised a lot of people with her character (not nearly as sweet and pure as Julie on the Love Boat), but in the end the film never generated much interest and flopped. Hopefully at some point horror fans will make enough of a stir to get it released on DVD.

"Eyes of a Stranger" is really more of a thriller than a slasher and as such it ain't too bad. It does look like someone watched "Rear Window" and John Carpenter's "Someone's Watching Me" too often, so the originality factor is pretty much out the window. Other than that, the flick does establish a fair amount of mood and atmosphere, particularly in the well handled opening scene.

Overall the set pieces here are well done. The film isn't all that gory but it does have it's moments. The end conclusion is a bit too predictable and stretched but up until then it's a decent thriller.

Acting isn't great, only Leigh comes off credible as the deaf and blind sister of the protagonist. But I gotta admit, there's something very creepy about the dude who plays the psycho.

As a horror-film fan who likes certain types of chillers, I would say this bit of work is solid in atmosphere and fairly gripping at times.The musical score is out of this world, and John DiSanti was brilliant.The directing by Mr.Weiderhorn was very creative and was at the near peak of perfection in capturing the mood and atmosphere of the stalk scenes.I found the conclusion somewhat anti-climatic, but most all else was captivating.This film arrived on the scene right at the high water-mark for slasher-chiller flicks,and it is easily lost in the clutter of all the other famous and even not-so famous films of this genre.Once again the music was delightfully scary.

(**1/2 out of *****)

"The Love Boat"'s Lauren Tewes and Jennifer Jason Leigh (in one of her first roles) star in this derivative, unpleasant, but not-too-bad movie about a serial rapist-killer who makes obscene and threatening phone calls to his potential victims before murdering them (like in "Black Christmas"). One male victim is decapitated and his head is stuffed in a fish tank (like in "He Knows You're Alone"). Tewes plays a local news anchorwoman who suspects that the tenant in the apartment across the yard from hers is the killer, so she spies on him and conducts her own investigation (like in "Rear Window" and "Sisters"). In spite of the obvious influences from better films and the near-misogynistic depictions of women being stalked, raped and murdered, this movie does manage to generate some genuine suspense here and there, particularly in the frightening climax. Tom Savini did the make-up effects, but it looks like a lot of the potentially bloodier stuff was cut out. Wiederhorn also directed the much-better ‘77 underwater-Nazi-zombie thriller "Shock Waves," which, in this film, is shown playing on television in two different scenes (and, curiously, also features one victim being stuffed in a fish tank -- does this recurring motiff make Wiederhorn some kind of an auteur?)

HIGHLIGHT: Alone in the apartment with Leigh, who plays Tewes' deaf, mute, and blind younger sister, the killer toys with her by moving plates and knives out of her reach while she tries to cut a piece of cake.

Jennifer Jason Leigh would go on to bigger and better things, but she's great here in her first major feature film role as the blind and mute sister of Lauren Tewes' pushy reporter who believes their neighbor is the one responsible for a series of sleazy murders. Some good attempts at suspense keep things classy.

**SPOILERS** Since Jane's, Lauren Tewes, younger sister Tracy, Jennifer Jason-Leigh,was abducted and traumatized when she was a little girl she lost her ability to see speak or hear. This made Jane very protective of Tracy to the point where it interfered with her personal and professional life, Jane is a Miami TV news reporter.

There's this serial murder on the loose in Miami Beach and what terrified Jane is not herself becoming a victim of the killer but her defenseless kid sister Tracy ending up dead because of him. We get to see the killer in action early in the movie when he stalks, on foot and by phone, nightclub dancer Debbie,Gwen Lewis. After getting himself into her apartment the killer decapitates Debbie's boyfriend Jeff, Thimothy Hawkins, and then strangles Debbie with his belt. Within minutes we, the audience, as well as Jane get to see the killer and realize who he his: Stanley Hurbert, John DiSanti, Debbie's and Tracy's next door neighbor.

since we already know who the killer is there's no surprise to his identity but there is a a lot of terror and suspense in the fact that Jane in trying to get the proof that Herbert is the serial killer puts herself, as well as young Tracy, in his sights as his next two victims.

Getting enough evidence on Hubert by breaking into his apartment and getting one of his shoes that from the scene of a triple-murder that he committed. Debbie later gives it to her boyfriend David, Peter DePre, to get checked out by the police lab was enough to get Herbert on Jane tail. When she starts to make annoying and threatening telephone calls Herbert finally realized who she was,by later seeing and hearing Jane on her TV news show, that made him home in on her and her sister like a heat-seeking missile.

Even though both Lauren Tewes and young 19 year-old Jennifer Jason-Leigh were very good, as two of psycho-killer Herbert intended victims, in the movie it was John DiSanti as Stanley Herbert who stole the show as the creepy and at the same time, if you didn't realize who he really was, unsuspecting killer. It wasn't until the last ten or so minutes of the movie when Herbert went wild trying to murder Tracy that he really showed how crazy and murderous he was. Better then you would expect from a B-murder TV-type film even though it wasn't a made for TV the movie,"Eyes of a Stranger" delivers and delivers big.

Heralding from the golden age of the slasher, and featuring the lovely Jennifer Jason Leigh in her movie debut, plus gore by make-up effects legend Tom Savini, this one already ticks several boxes. The well-executed opening murder sequence is also very promising, director Ken Wiederhorn achieving maximum tension with what is essentially a routine slasher set-up: a waitress at a titty bar walks home alone, but is followed by an ominous figure. Once indoors, she locks the door, but is menaced by several creepy phone calls, the caller threatening to rape and kill her. After calling the police, the woman's boyfriend turns up (wearing a plastic mask for a cheap scare) and suggests that she stays at his place. However, the psycho has already made his way into the apartment (via an open window). While the waitress packs a bag, the killer hacks off the boyfriend's head with a meat cleaver, dropping the severed noggin into a fish tank. When the woman re-enters the room, she sees her man's body gushing blood from his neck stump and fish swimming around his head. The murderer appears and assaults her before strangling her with his belt. It's a mean-spirited, gory, suspenseful way to kick things off, which makes it all the more disappointing that almost nothing that follows is as good.

The heroine of the film is TV newsreader Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes), who lives in a high rise apartment building with her sister Tracy, who was left blind and deaf after a sexual assault when she was a child. When Jane sees neighbour Stanley Herbert (John DiSanti) changing his clothes in an underground car park, she begins to suspect that he is the Miami Strangler who she has been reporting on in her news programme. The messy double murder of a courting couple only convinces her further. Being an intrepid reporter, she doesn't go to the police with her suspicions, but instead tries to gather evidence of his guilt. In a scene inspired by Rear Window, she breaks into Herbert's home (in the apartment block opposite hers) to look for proof that he is the killer, which is a pretty risky and ill-advised move since she tells no-one of her plan. Of course, Wiedrehorn is no Hitchcock, and in perhaps the film's most ridiculous moment, the man arrives back sooner than expected, forcing Jane to dangle from his balcony by her fingertips, hundreds of feet up. Fortunately, Miami clearly doesn't abide by the usual rules of physics, and rather than falling to her death, she is able to swing herself onto the balcony below.

Having successfully half-inched a muddy shoe that could place the man at the site of the last murders, what does Jane do? No, not send it to the police anonymously, with an explanatory note suggesting they check the man out. What she actually does is give the shoe to her lawyer boyfriend in the hope that he can get someone to examine it, and then phones the killer to tell him that she knows what he did. All credibility goes out the window when sicko Stanley sees Jane on TV and he recognises her voice, and then sees Tracy out on the balcony opposite and decides to make her his next victim. The killer breaks into the sisters' apartment and menaces the poor blind girl; meanwhile, Jane has broken into Stanley's place AGAIN (having not been put off by her previous near-death experience), and sees Tracy being attacked in her apartment opposite. In one final contrivance, this event kick starts Tracy's dormant senses and she is able to see enough to grab a gun and shoot at her assailant. In time honoured slasher tradition, the girl wrongly believes Stanley to be dead and drops the gun, giving the maniac the opportunity for one more attack. Big sis Jane arrives just in time to pick up the pistol and blow Herbert's brains out, a splatterific effect by Savini that ends the film in fine style, just like it began. Shame about some of the not so great stuff in between.

You can't call this a good movie. It doesn't get the slack you might give to a slasher movie, because while it has some elements of that, it aims higher, and misses. There was some decent acting going on in places. Lauren Tewes was pretty, but never really inhabited her character. John Di Santi was creepy enough, while passing as normal. But the writers never fleshed out his character, a missed opportunity, I'd say. Jennifer Jason Liegh did surprisingly well as the deaf-mute, blind sister-victim. She looked so young, and I guess she was. Gwen Lewis had a fairly long scene with a fair number of lines, and did very well. I was surprised to see that she never appeared as an actress in anything else before or since. In spite of the good things, there was too much bad (stilted dialog, plot holes, characters behaving in inexplicable ways) to recommend this one.

"Eyes of a Stranger" follows a Miami television news anchor (Lauren Tewes) who grows increasingly disturbed by a series of brutal sex killings in the area. Her paranoia leads to an ardent protectiveness of her vulnerable blind-deaf sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and she becomes convinced a male neighbor is responsible for the murders.

For an early-eighties slasher entry, "Eyes of a Stranger" has a pretty darn good opening that seems to promise a nasty, unrelenting horror flick. As much as it seems to be borrowing from its contemporaries (it shares many things in common with other entries, such as "Don't Answer the Phone," and "He Knows You're Alone," as well as 1974's "Black Christmas"), the film's opening scene and first murder sequence are startlingly effective and brutal. The first half remains compelling, with an ambiguous subplot concerning the sisters making sparse entries into the narrative—but as it reaches its halfway point, the film begins to slightly devolve.

It's not a fatal devolution by any means—this is still a very watchable film—but the tightfistedness and intrigue begins to dissipate as the audience becomes familiarized with the villain. The flip side is that the exposure allows John DiSanti's performance some room to breathe, and he manages to evoke a fairly frightening antagonist. Lauren Hewes is solid as the feminist lead, and Jennifer Jason Leigh makes her first major screen role in the film as Hewes's disabled sister, a role that also flourishes in the second act. The film's conclusion is a bit anticlimactic by most accounts, and this also detracts a bit from the picture, but it's not enough to cause a serious implosion.

Overall, "Eyes of a Stranger" is a mixed bag. It is conceptually unoriginal, and there is a sense of unevenness between its first and second acts, but it's also relatively well-shot and the performances from all are above the standard. It also boasts some unexpectedly disturbing, effective murder sequences that are likely to catch the audience off guard. 6/10.

A serial killer is on the loose in Miami. Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes) is a local TV anchor. Her sister Tracy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a deaf mute. Jane suspects her neighbor as the killer but few are willing to believe her.

This is mostly in the slice and dice killer genre. It tries to be a little bit of Rear Window and a little bit of Dressed to Kill. Director Ken Wiederhorn is no De Palma nor Hitchcock. The man made Meatballs Part II. The draw in this movie is Tewes from The Love Boat and a very new Jennifer Jason Leigh. Both do solid work especially Leigh. The final confrontation is the most compelling section. The rest of the kills are strictly slice and dice.

Really good film. I totally recommend this. It was well acted and the makeup effects was spot on by the legendary Tom Savivi