Help me identify this movie?

October 1, 2012 5:06 PM

I've had this vague memory of a 1970s-80s crime movie in the back of my brain. Can you help identify it?

It's a cop drama, and one of the characters that the movie follows is a male who is some kind of stalker. The one scene that shocked my young mind when I saw it is of this character somehow getting locked outside a car in an isolated spot at night. Inside the car is a woman, who is his victim and who owns the car. She somehow tricked him to go outside, and locked him out, and so he goes absolutely crazy, stomping on the windshield, trying to kick it in. The scene I remember is taken from the vantage point of the woman in the car. Scared me quite a bit. I think that's the climax of the film and the cops show up pretty soon thereafter.

One of the two other scenes from this movie (I think) are of the guy starting to tail a victim by striding up to her station wagon on some isolated road during the day, and plopping himself on her bumper and hitching a ride. I remember thinking that was a really weird thing to do.

And the final scene is of two cop-like characters walking through a busy night-market, bazaar type scene, chatting. (I realize almost every cop movie has a scene like this.)

Do these scenes ring a bell for anyone? Was I just imagining this movie, or has my memory pieced together scenes from different films? Just idly curious. Thanks!

posted by Borborygmus to media & arts (7 answers total)

You're not by any chance thinking of Maniac? It was a grindhouse movie where a key scene has the killer jumping up on a hood and killing people through the window.
posted by steinsaltz at 5:13 PM on October 1, 2012

I thought of Maniac too (which has just been remade with Elijah Wood in the title role, FWIW). There's a tiny bit of the windscreen scene at the beginning of the trailer.
posted by hot soup girl at 8:24 PM on October 1, 2012

Thanks for the suggestion, guys -- but no, that's not it. The era is about right, but I wasn't old enough to see such a movie in the theaters then. I feel like I saw it at home. And the windshield scene I remember didn't involve any death or firearms. It was one woman, locked inside a car, with a crazy guy stomping on the windshield outside.
posted by Borborygmus at 2:41 AM on October 2, 2012

any chance the the killer cant die or something? Like invincible. (not Halloween and Friday the thirteenth style (more cop crime movie)
posted by couchdive at 1:52 PM on October 2, 2012

Maybe -- I don't remember that aspect.
posted by Borborygmus at 11:40 AM on October 3, 2012

I have been scouring for some film I saw, probably 1979 or 1980ish. Seems similar. It was a serial killer, stalked victims, was not easily killed. I seem to remember very first personish scary scenes, Featured cops pursuing the killer.
posted by couchdive at 12:24 PM on October 3, 2012

I hope it is the same movie! Because I've been curious about this memory forever. The fact that the mystery is solved for two people would make it even better.

This is the first time I've seen an AskMeFi question not be answered.

Come on, hivemind -- you disappoint me!
posted by Borborygmus at 2:46 AM on October 6, 2012