John Carpenter's 'Lost' TV Movie Starring Lauren Hutton Is Streaming For Free

Before horror legend John Carpenter saw his career blow up with the genre-altering slasher "Halloween" in 1978, he made a slick little TV thriller for Warner Bros. that barely anybody saw. Not because it wasn't any good, but simply because Carpenter's name wasn't that known to viewers just yet. However, 1978's "Someone's Watching Me!" — now streaming for free on Tubi — neatly showcased Carpenter's burgeoning talent as a devotee of suspense whose trademark style of filmmaking was still developing and working itself out. He could do that since after Warner Bros. commissioned his script, the studio also offered him the opportunity to direct, and he was more than up to the task to prove himself as a filmmaker and storyteller, even if on a smaller scale.

"Someone's Watching Me!" follows Leigh Michaels (Lauren Hutton at her most vivacious), an ambitious and determined live television director at the end of her 20s, who relocates from New York to Los Angeles to pursue a career. She rents a fancy apartment in a high-rise building and throws herself into work immediately, while dipping her toes in the local dating pool. But her new life in a different city quickly turns sour due to constant, disturbing phone calls, weird gifts, and a growing paranoia that makes her fear for her safety. It doesn't take long until she realizes she's got herself a relentless stalker whose methods are thorough, virtually untraceable, and eerily frightening. The police don't take her seriously, claiming they can't do anything until something actually happens. The only people she can rely on for help are her colleague Sophie (Adrienne Barbeau) and new beau Paul (David Birney). They do what they can, but ultimately, it's up to Leigh to outsmart her skulker, who might be closer than she thinks.

Despite "Someone's Watching Me!" clocking in under 97 minutes, Carpenter takes his time to set the scene, aptly introduce the characters, and plant the seeds of terror that will only reach full growth in the third act. He builds the atmosphere smoothly and dynamically through visually arresting flourishes supported by a typical yet viscerally disturbing horror score that worked for him so many times throughout his career ("Halloween's" main musical theme is unforgettable for a reason). Yet he doesn't want to scare you as much as he wants you to empathize with his protagonist, to put yourself in her shoes and imagine what a situation like that would truly feel like. That, of course, wouldn't be half as effective without Hutton's full body-and-mind commitment to the role of Leigh. She's the star here, no question, and there's no scene whatsoever that would suggest otherwise. Carpenter makes you care about her as a person and not just another female victim becoming the target of a deviant psychopath.

That said, there's a point about halfway through when the picture loses momentum and gets bogged down by typical clichés we've seen plenty of times in this genre before. It's not that they aren't accurate — and Hutton perfectly captures the deterioration of her mental and emotional well-being under mounting stress and trepidation — but, by nature, they do feel a little tedious and overused from today's perspective. Back in the late '70s, however, they surely struck the viewer as breathlessly gripping and intense. And thanks to Carpenter's creative POV shots and often claustrophobic compositions, "Someone's Watching Me!" can still pack a punch today, even if it can't necessarily maintain an overwrought suspense throughout its entire runtime.

For a long time, "Someone's Watching Me!" has been called "the lost Carpenter film," since, after its initial airing on NBC as part of the "Tales of the Unexpected" special, it was quite challenging to find the movie anywhere. That's before considering that it was so scarcely advertised at the time that most viewers and early Carpenter fans might not even have known about its existence in the first place. Now, it kind of serves as a trivia piece, or a forgotten treasure, in the writer-director's filmography that's absolutely worth digging up whether you're a longtime admirer or someone who's just getting familiar with the horror master's work.

In addition to showcasing the auteur's trademark directorial style in its early stages, "Someone's Watching Me!" is also among Carpenter's more coherent and realistic screenplays, grounded and gritty, delivering some genuinely solid twists despite its fairly limited setting. If you're looking to add something nostalgic yet quite niche to your Halloween horror movie list in October, you could do a lot worse than this, that's for sure. Given the movie is now free to access, you certainly have nothing to lose by giving it a chance — and if you're a Carpenter completist, you simply can't skip it.