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.
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.