Impressively made low budget shocker

Rating: 6/10 (29 October 2000)

John Carpenter's canny little exploitation film suffers some from its reputation; nothing makes a rickety shocker made on the cheap less potent than the complicated analysis of its characters' motivations.
As a shock machine, it leaves no stone unturned; it comes across as an enthusiastic low-budget film whose maker had just seen a couple of Dario Argento movies (the comparison in some scenes, such as the eerily lit driving-in-the-rain sequence early on, is striking). Many of what would be determined as the slasher film's worst excesses are here, as in, for example the topless-girl-getting-strangled scene, but the main problems with the movie are its intrusive soundtrack (telegraphs more than its share of scares) and the fact that Carpenter goes to the well too many times with scenes where a group of people have a conversation, and a cut reveals the killer observing them, stripping this ploy of its effect early on. The Steadicam work was influential but somewhat amateurish. However, effective use of sets and lighting work wonders for increasing the on-screen tension.
It isn't one of the great horror films of the 70's (its lack of anything but the crudest and most forced subtext makes it seem small-time in comparison to more challenging movies), but it's great for its genre, even if its phenomenal success helped doom the horror film.