He Knows You're Alone

A jilted man named Ray (Tom Rolfing, who favors Russ Thorne killer in Slumber Party Massacre) preys on brides-to-be because he himself was left by one, using his knife on her, leaving a cop  (who was to marry her...)haunted by her murder. Ray sets his psychotic eye on Amy Jensen (Caitlin O'Heaney), set to marry Phil, out for the bachelory party weekend on a "fishing trip". Meanwhile, Amy is having second thoughts about Phil, as her former flame, a wise-cracking employee at a nearby morgue (who often jokes about the dead and continues to come around hoping she'll reconsider giving him a second chance), Marvin (Don Scardino; I know him from Squirm). Ray doesn't stop with just tormenting Amy, always near yet at a distance, his very presence a hinderance of fear that has her looking over her shoulder and conscientiously worried for her safety, but targets her friends, taking them out one at a time until the only once left is his ultimate prize.

Perhaps, He Knows You're Alone will be best remembered as *that movie that gave Tom Hanks his first movie gig* or *Hey, that's Paul Gleason as the cop's boss!* Both roles establish their distinctive acting styles, but neither have roles sizable enough to gauge future success. Hanks is a psyche major with a romantic interest for Amy's house roomie, Nancy (Elizabeth Kemp), while Gleason is frustrated with his detective, Len Gamble (Lewis Arit, hard to find sympathy for because he's such an asshole) who is on a one-man crusade to catch (and kill, if necessary) Ray for stabbing his fiance.

Some decent performances and likable characters in this film, particularly the two leads, but the model of Halloween is evident all the way through He Knows You're Alone. Ray's demeanor, how he's framed and often shot by the director, and the minimalist violence reeks of Halloween. I guess you could use a worse inspiration for a movie than Halloween, but by this point, the slasher genre had an audience desiring more gratuitous violence and characters that were more sexually driven and willing to get naked. Perhaps He Knows You're Alone is a holdover from the 70s and in that regard the audience of that particular brand of slasher will like this movie. But the general consensus is that He Knows You're Alone is just too underwhelming, too PG, too familiar and thus has gained a reputation as being a middle-of-the-pack, not-that-extraordinary slasher that doesn't have enough pizazz or pop to stick out of the ever-growing crop prevalent over the decade.

Director Armand Mastroianni likes scenes with eventual victims to have length, characters not aware of the sharp blade that will eventually either stab or slice them. There's an early performance from character actor James Rebhorn as a philandering professor husband cheating with his frisky, naughty student (played by future Days of Our Lives star, Patsy Pease). Both have a night to fool around while the wife is gone for the weekend, but Ray passes by to ruin the festivities. Another of Amy's friends is listening to a pop song on a record through her headphones when Ray leaves her head in a goldfish aquarium.

What I responded to, personally, was the seasonal autumn period of the movie. I was particularly fond of one influence from Halloween: the heroine walk through her town, the director establishing that Ray is close by (my favorite scene in the whole film has Ray poking out from behind a rack of bridal dresses, surprising the store employee, sticking a pair of scissors in his belly a couple times), always somewhere in the vicinity. The actor portraying the killer just looks like some middle-aged crazy, nothing better to do it seems but skulk about in the shadows, in the bushes, at the windows of houses at night. He has "mad eyes" like a ton of killers featured in slasher movies, but this was early on during the craze so this can't really be held against the filmmakers. I have read such criticisms as "boring" and "tedious" and "retrained" in relation to this movie, so see it if you have enough patience to tolerate its lulls and lack of on screen grue.