Fear Stalk: Even the Title is Stupid

Fear Stalk (1989), an irredeemably awful telefilm as generic and stupid as its title, follows Alexandra ‘Ally’ Maynard (Jill Clayburgh), a soap opera producer known as “the blood and gore queen of daytime,” as she’s stalked by… a purse thief?! The gimmick here, explained by security expert and former Beverly Hills detective Barbara (Lynne Thigpen, in the film’s best performance), is that the contents of women’s purses make us uniquely vulnerable to bad actors. To demonstrate, she has volunteers empty their bags, which contain ID cards, checkbooks and insurance information.

“What does the average man carry with him?” she asks. “A wallet, driver’s license, a few credit cards. Men travel lighter than women. In essence they live more defensively. Not stuff. See, we love stuff. It makes us feel secure to carry everything with us. Then our purse is stolen. Then all that security, all that power, is in someone else’s hands.” These days, of course, the most sensitive details of our lives are often stored in the cloud. But Barb’s argument isn’t unduly persuasive even to those of us who remember the clunky, bottomless purses our mothers carried pre-smartphones.

For one thing, a man’s wallet contains much of the same identifying information as a woman’s. (If your mom had possession of the checkbook, your dad probably kept a folded check or two tucked inside his wallet.) Many of the items stashed in purses to make us feel “secure,” like toiletries—or, in my case, a pocket multitool and a thumb drive full of every episode of The Golden Girls—are of little interest to thieves. More importantly, while Ally’s stalker is happy to empty a victim’s bank accounts, his motivations aren’t solely financial. He’s a rapist and murderer who targets notable women after they were profiled in newspapers or magazines.

Once her purse is stolen, Fear Stalk’s phone harassment begins. Ally’s teenage son and her closest friends (including Lorna Luft and Cheryl Anderson) receive disturbing calls about her safety. She herself is called both at work and in the car. She’s even stalked online, through the modem the studio uses each night to transmit the next day’s script. At first, she’s maddeningly resistant to admitting something’s wrong—a consummate control freak professionally and personally, she’s afraid of seeming afraid.

When Tom (Stephen Macht), a colleague turned lover, pushes for a deeper commitment, she says “I’m enjoying my independence. I’m not going to let this situation scare me into becoming dependent.” But as the stalking continues she grows increasingly hysterical and reliant on Barbara and her pals. Tom’s minimization of her concerns (shades of the clueless dad in Stalked by My Doctor) mirrors that of male law enforcement officers. One of the strongest scenes in an otherwise truly abysmal screenplay (credited to Ellen Weston of Holiday in Your Heart) comes when Ally pushes back against Tom’s dismissal of the harassment as a prank.

Tom: The whole thing is sick, but it isn’t dangerous. Please, don’t do this to yourself.

Ally: I’m not doing this to myself. He’s doing it to me.

Tom: But you’re letting him.

Ally: Why is the burden on me not to react when someone is attacking me? Don’t make this my fault. There is nothing wrong with me. There’s something wrong with him. You know, my girlfriends understand exactly what’s going on. I don’t have to explain it to them.

Fear stalk (1989)

Eventually, Ally’s son receives another phone call, so “disgusting” and “filthy” it leaves him in tears. (As in The Secret Night Caller, we don’t hear the worst of what is said.) In a strange but not unprecedented twist, her best friend, Jennifer (Mary Ellen Trainor), is raped by the mystery madman. Ally confesses she’s spent her life “pretending not to be afraid” of everything from school and boys to other women and work. She rattles off a list of suppressed fears that includes crying, something she does incessantly in the second half of the film. “God. Just doesn’t stop,” she concludes of her fears.

Calling this latest ordeal “the most personal battle of my life,” she begins carrying a gun, which she accidentally pulls on visiting mom Pearl (Sada Thompson, whose role is entirely disposable). As Fear Stalk plods toward an inexplicably confusing denouement (the killer’s identity will leave you scratching your head, and maybe even rewinding to see if you missed something), you’re repeatedly left baffled by Ally’s decisions. Her reckless interference when a call is finally traced, and the eager enabling of her buddies, is as bizarre as Tom’s lack of interest in protecting his girlfriend.

The group’s plan of attack for Ally’s final showdown with her tormentor plays like a less sophisticated version of Macaulay Culkin’s schemes in Home Alone, but with a gaggle of menopausal and post-menopausal women facing off against a homicidal maniac with a penchant for arson. On the bright side, that spares us another scene of Tom and Ally having mechanical rich person sex on expensive sheets in their silk pajamas after eating sushi in bed.

Directed by Larry Shaw, whose Ultimate Lie was a waste of time but whose Mother Knows Best is a hidden gem, Fear Stalk is a film I strenuously encourage avoiding at all costs. It was originally slated to star Kate Jackson, who was replaced by Clayburgh following a cancer diagnosis. Jackson, no stranger to insipid material, might’ve brought more warmth and humor to the table than Clayburgh, so tightly wound here you almost expect her to launch into outer space. But no casting could’ve salvaged a screenplay so terrible. Everyone involved in this disaster deserved hazard pay.

Additional screen caps available on Instagram.

Streaming and DVD availability

Fear Stalk hasn’t been released on DVD but you can stream it at Amazon and Tubi. It’s free (with ads) on each site. Amazon also has a number of better Clayburgh films available for streaming.

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