Someone's Watching Me (1978)

Relocating from New York to Los Angeles, a TV director (Lauren Hutton) moves into a luxury high rise apartment complex. But she's barely moved in when she starts getting anonymous calls and gifts from a stalker. Things get progressively worse until she realizes that not only is he watching her, he intends to kill her. Written and directed by John Carpenter (HALLOWEEN), this is a homage to Alfred Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW with a nod to NORTH BY NORTHWEST's main titles with Harry Sukman's Herrmannesque underscore. Carpenter gives us a strong heroine rather than the usual hysterical lady in distress heroines of the genre (think MIDNIGHT LACE). Although terrorized and driven to the brink, she doesn't scream once and she fights back with everything at her disposal and it's not a man that saves her. The film's only downside is the supremely uninteresting David Birney as Hutton's love interest. Their scenes together drag the movie down. A minor thriller to be sure but Carpenter keeps it tight. With Adrienne Barbeau and Charles Cyphers.