Someone’s Watching Me! 1978

Leigh Michaels relocates from New York City to Los Angeles, where she lands a job directing live television for a local station. She rents a spacious apartment in a downtown high-rise and quickly befriends Sophie, a lesbian co-director with whom she will be working, while Steve aggressively pursues her. On her first day, Leigh receives an anonymous phone call from an unknown man, and when she returns to her apartment, she finds the door unlocked. She assumes a maintenance worker forgot to lock up, but, unseen by Leigh, the caller—a stalker who lives in a building across from hers—has already infiltrated the unit and placed recording devices to monitor her every move.

One day, Leigh is drawn into a strange invitation from a company called Excursions Unlimited, informing her that she has won a free vacation to Europe. At a bar, she meets Paul Winkless, a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California, and a mutual attraction forms between them. Soon afterward, Leigh begins receiving gifts in the mail, including a telescope and a swimsuit, sent by an anonymous source. The sense of danger intensifies as the anonymous calls persist and odd phenomena creep into her apartment—lights dim on their own, and Leigh grows increasingly unsettled by the idea that someone is watching her.

A late-night letter arrives, again from someone claiming to be from Excursions Unlimited, offering to discuss the vacation reward. Leigh, though skeptical, decides to follow the trail. Armed with a knife, she trails the letter’s sender into the basement laundry room and, in a tense moment, drops the knife into a large floor drain. She removes the grate to retrieve it and hides beneath the grate when she hears someone approaching. She watches from below as a man stands over the drain, then crawls out and escapes back to her apartment.

A later phone call reveals the stalker’s knowledge of Leigh’s life, prompting her to realize that the man she saw across the way is the one spying on her through a telescope. Leigh, Sophie, and Paul set up a stakeout from Leigh’s apartment, using the telescope to try to identify the stalker by peering into the opposite buildings. A meeting with Gary Hunt, a police officer, proves unhelpful—he explains that, at that moment, the man has not committed a crime. Back at Leigh’s place, the stalker calls again and Leigh sees the man she observed earlier, now seemingly looking back at her through a second telescope. The police ultimately arrest the wrong man for harassment, and he leaves California to return to his native Iowa.

The situation grows even more alarming when Leigh receives another letter and spots a different man spying on her from his balcony, making it clear that the wrong suspect was apprehended. Determined, Leigh arms herself with a walkie-talkie and a knife and confronts her stalker with Sophie watching from Leigh’s apartment. When Leigh manages to enter the stalker’s flat, she discovers Sophie being attacked in her own space. She rushes back to Leigh’s apartment to help, only to learn that Sophie has vanished. Police later report that Sophie had a flight to Fort Worth that night, and they also explain that the apartment Leigh suspected the stalker inhabited is temporarily empty because the resident is away on work.

Alone again in the dim apartment, Leigh uncovers a hidden microphone the stalker used to surveil her. Through further investigation, Leigh and Paul uncover evidence that the building inspector, Herbert Stiles, has access to numerous other buildings in the city and may be connected to the intrusion. Leigh tracks down Stiles’s address and breaks into his house, where she finds a collection of microphones and other surveillance devices that suggest he has been bugging her place. After calling Paul, Leigh returns to her own apartment, but the lights are out. On the coffee table lies a typewritten suicide note signed with Leigh’s name. In the dark, Leigh is suddenly attacked by Stiles, who attempts to throw her over the balcony; she fights back and stabs him with a shard of glass, and he plummets to his death.