He Knows You're Alone

October is generally the month for horror on TCM, what with it being Halloween and all. But a horror movie that I recorded some months back is reaching the top of my queue of watched but not posted about movies and, since it doesn't seem to be on the October schedule, it's getting a post now, in September: He Knows You're Alone.

The movie opens up with a scene that made me think of The Town That Dreaded Sundown: two young lovers go off to a secluded Lover's Lane somewhere and, in the back seat of the car, proceed to try to make out. But the two think they hear something outside the car, so as a result, the boyfriend gets out of the car to investigate. The girlfriend gets nervous considering how long her boyfriend is outside the car, so she too gets out, and.... At this point, we see somebody get up, to be revealed that this is actually a movie-within-a-movie, and two female friends are watching together in a theater balcony. The one girl, being a bit too scared, goes down for a bathroom break. But in the bathroom, she thinks she hears somebody else! She gets back to her seat, at which point we see a man proceed to sit down behind the two girls, and stab one of them to death through the seat!

Fast forward to Staten Island. The murderer from the theater has gotten on a bus to get away from the murder location, and headed west from Long Island to Staten Island, where he presumably lived. A police detective, Gamble, investigating the murder on Long Island hears from the victim's friend that the victim was scheduled to be married soon, which horrifies Gamble. Apparently there was a serial killer some years back who killed brides-to-be, and one of those victims was Gamble's fiancée. So he's got a personal stake in this case, which is why he's at both that murder scene and trying to run the investigation in Staten Island once murders start happening there.

Oh, yeah, I suppose that's technically giving away a plot point, but it wasn't if if you didn't know there were going to be more murders. It's not as if the movie is trying to hide what it's going to be doing. On Staten Island, Amy is a college student studing psychology under Prof. Carl Mason (James Rebhorn, one of the few recognizable names in the cast) together with friends Joyce and Nancy. Amy is engaged to be married to Phil, although she's got an ex-boyfriend in Marvin who still likes her although she didn't like his working in a morgue.

The killer starts stalking Amy, while also killing a whole bunch of people around her. Gamble keeps investigating, taking the law into his own hands by stealing evidence from a crime scene (although to be fair, it's shocking the other police didn't find it on the murder victim's body). With He Knows You're Alone being an early 1980s slasher film, it's not surprising how this all plays out and leads to the finale.

He Knows You're Alone was unsurprisingly savaged by the critics, which is unsurprising partly because of the divide between critical reception and the views of the general public. However, part of the poor critical perception is that the movie really is generally pedestrian. It was done on a very low budget; Tom Hanks (as a college student jogger Nancy keeps meeting) and Paul Gleason as a police detective are the other two recognizable names in the cast. That low budget shows. Also, He Knows You're Alone has a ton of plot holes. As an example, for the finale, Amy makes a 911 call before the finale, but Det. Gamble shows up before the regular police do and is there a long time before the police show up. There's also one exceedingly obvious bit of foreshadowing. Well, multiple involving musical cues, but one not doing so.

He Knows You're Alone is probably the sort of movie it's more fun to watch with a bunch of friends and have a laugh over than it is a movie with any real frights. But it's still worth a watch.