Graham Harris (Lee Horsley) is at a dinner where he is the recipient of a prestigious award when he suddenly has a vision of a woman being murdered. Graham is a publisher and a former mountain climber who, five years ago, had a climbing injury that left him with both a limp and a severe fear of heights. Oh, and the ability to tell the future. His psychic gift allows him to see the mutilation and murders of several young women. Murders that have been happening in New York City by someone the press has dubbed The Butcher.
The latest victim is Edna Mowry (Donna Theodore), a singer at a nightclub. Graham has a vision of seeing her dead. He also sees that the killer is someone close to the police, but he can’t see his face. Graham has been working with the police so he and his girlfriend, Connie Weaver (Pam Dawber), a forensic psychologist, go to Mowry’s apartment to see the detective in charge, Ira Preduski (Bob Balaban). Ira is skeptical of Graham’s abilities and has no problem making his views known.
Watching Graham is Frank Dwight Bollinger (Kevin Conroy), a policeman and one half of a killing duo who is responsible for several of the murders. Frank contacts his partner, a man he calls Billy. They decide that Graham is getting too close for comfort, and he needs to go. He finds out that Graham is up against a deadline and needs to complete a project for his magazine before the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Frank plans on killing Graham while he is working late at his office, a penthouse suite on the 40th floor of a high-rise building. Frank kills the security guards and takes the keys that operate the elevators. Since it is the last workday before a long holiday, Frank has plenty of time to search out his prey.
What do you do when you are trapped in a 40-story high-rise with a brutal killer and you have a crippling fear of heights? You overcome your fear.
“The Face of Fear” was released in 1990 and was directed by Farhad Mann. It is an American made-for-television psychological thriller. The film was based on the 1977 novel by Dean Koontz. Koontz also co-wrote the teleplay with Alan Jay Glueckman. The actual book was originally released under the pseudonym Brian Coffey and not Dean Koontz.
I’m a Dean Koontz fan so I’ll watch anything of his. I read the book, and the movie follows it rather well. Mostly because of Koontz being so involved in it. It is your standard 90’s made-for-television thriller with some minor plot holes and, considering it is mostly a chase movie, is a bit longer than it really needed to be. Characters are not as filled out as they were in the book but there is enough action, although somewhat repetitious, to keep you engaged.
Near the end there is a bit of a twist, or turn, depending on how you look at it, which adds some needed dimension to the plot. All in all, not a bad offering in the psychological thriller genre.