History Film / EyesOfAStranger

Various women are being attacked by a serial rapist and killer in Miami. News anchor Jane Harris (''Series/TheLoveBoat''[='=]s Lauren Tewes) starts to suspect that a man living across from her and her sister Tracy (Creator/JenniferJasonLeigh, in her feature film debut) is the culprit, and starts snooping around. Jane is right in her suspicions, but will she be able to stop him, especially after he starts realizing that she's after him?

* AutoErotica: Driving at a beach, Stanley's car gets stuck in the sand, and his attempts to get out disturbs a couple making love in their car nearby.

** The beginning of the film introduces the idea that Tracy can make coffee by herself (to the amazement of Jane's boyfriend, given Tracy's blindness) to show her as not totally helpless. Alone in the apartment [[spoiler:or so she thinks]] just before the final action Tracy makes herself a pot of coffee even though it is after dark. This comes in handy when [[spoiler:the [[AntagonistTitle titular]] SerialKiller attacks Tracy and she [[ImprovisedWeapon throws the coffee on him.]]]]

* InvisibleParents: Jane and Tracy's parents never appear in the film even though there's no evidence they do not exist or have abandoned the family, because their presence in the film would take away from Jane's role as ParentalSubstitute to Tracy.

* TheLoad: Tracy's [[DesignatedVictim only role in the film]] is to be a burden on her big sister, Jane, and to be sexually assaulted when Jane fails at protecting her. Her only characterization is that [[ChekhovsGun she likes coffee]]. Rendered blind, deaf and dumb by her first sexual assault in childhood, Tracy is left in the care of her sister who feels she must put her life plans on hold as a result. Fortunately this trope is finally subverted at the end, as Tracy is able to [[spoiler:fend off her final rapist with a [[ImprovisedWeapon thrown pot of coffee]] long enough for Jane to save her.]]

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Jane makes harassing phone calls of her own to Stanley to unnerve him, but since she's a well known news anchor, he quickly learns her identity by recognizing her voice and starts targeting her sister.

* OffWithHisHead: Stanley kills one his victims' boyfriend by chopping his head off with a meatcleaver. Afterwards, he places the head into a fish tank.
* OminousMusicBoxTune: Some of Stanley's calls to his would-be victims has him playing a music box tune to them. The tune comes from his cuckoo clock.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Stanley is so perturbed by Jane's harrassing phone calls that he goes out carries out an impulse kill on an exotic dancer without his usual building-up period of stalking and harrassing phone calls.
* ParentalSubstitute: Jane looks after Tracy as a child, and becomes her caretaker once grown up - poorly. Her failures allow her little sister to be sexually assaulted in the prologue and in the film's climax.

* RevealShot: the film uses two in quick succession at the beginning of the climax to reveal the danger Tracy is in: the first, revealing Tracy's dead dog, shows the killer has been inside her apartment; the next reveals the killer himself, right next to the oblivous Tracy (who, being deaf and blind, cannot sense him).

* TheCallsAreComingFromInsideTheHouse: Stanley, in the habit of placing harrassing calls to his victims before killing them, calls one victim from the phone in her elevator (thus, presumably, he must be in the same building to make the call and, indeed, he attacks her in the parking garage).

* NotQuiteDead: Tracy manages shoot Stanley with a revolver, but he soon attacks her again.

* GroinAttack: when Stanley has Tracy pinned down on the bed, sexually assaulting her, she knees him in the groin and gains enough time to grab her sister's gun.

** The beginning of the film introduces the idea that Tracy can make coffee by herself (to the amazement of Jane's boyfriend, given Tracy's blindness) to show her as not totally helpless. Alone in the apartment [[spoiler:or so she thinks]] just before the final action Tracy makes herself a pot of coffee even though it appears to be midday. This comes in handy when [[spoiler:the [[AntagonistTitle titular]] SerialKiller attacks Tracy and she [[ImprovisedWeapon throws the coffee on him.]]]]