Darren Stockford

Meanwhile, 30 months later…

DVD sleeve for Someone's Watching Me!Oh, my daily postal delivery… how I’ve missed thee. With the Royal Mail strike, for the past week the familiar sound of mail hitting carpet has been, well, not quite so familiar. For now, though, there’s some respite, and my joy at receiving a package just 30 minutes ago is overwhelming. A padded envelope from Play.com could only mean one thing: a region 1 DVD of Someone’s Watching Me* was in my mitts at last.

Someone’s Watching Me is a 1978 TV movie written and directed by John Carpenter. It’s not one of his better-known films as it never made it to video, but its reputation is strong. It’s the penultimate piece in my Carpenter-directed DVD collection (only his 1979 Elvis biopic has yet to hit an official shiny disc), and I’m particularly pleased to get it since the bootleg I bought two and a half years ago is missing the ending.

Though I’m pretty sure I saw the movie as a kid as certain scenes rang bells, I had no recollection of that final reel (or the TV equivalent) to fall back on. Talk about a cliffhanger. I’ve been dangling over the precipice so long that my knuckles have turned whiter than a snowman’s dandruff. The back of the (brand new, official) DVD calls Someone’s Watching Me a “suspense classic”. It ain’t kiddin’.

* I’ll omit the exclamation mark from the film’s title, as it mucks up my punctuation - more than an asterisk does, anyway.

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