The Stranger Within (1974)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Dreadfully Boring

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Barbara Eden stars in this popular, well-regarded TV-movie written by Richard Matheson, expanding his own short story, about a well-heeled professor's wife who announces to her stunned husband that she's two months pregnant--this despite the fact her spouse had a vasectomy three years prior after she suffered a traumatic miscarriage. Eden admirably throws herself into this dramatic role (with its "Exorcist" underpinnings), but it isn't an attractive part for her. The pregnancy makes her disagreeable, uncontrollable, often on the verge of hysteria; she's also speaking in a foreign language, has become addicted to salt and coffee, and reads medical journals at an alarming rate. Director Lee Philips attempts to invest the movie with visual personality (chiming clocks, billowing curtains, a hand-held camera), but he cannot make up for the faults in Matheson's teleplay, which is exceedingly thin (not to mention derivative and anticlimactic). Technically, this is one of the better-made television movies of the 1970s, and the story is certainly involving, but it's eventually depressing and pointless instead of eerie.

TV-movies from the 70's are generally fantastic. Whenever I spot the "archive collection" label, or recognize certain names of contemporary writers/directors, I immediately associate the film with intelligent and absorbing plots, atmospheric tension, genuine frights and devoted performances from often underrated but talented actors and actresses. There's something inexplicably magical about these movies and not coincidentally I regularly encounter user comments around here from fellow film freaks that remember and honor certain 70 TV-titles as movies that haunted their dreams ever since childhood. "The Stranger Within" is such a modest but highly efficient and memorable little gem from that era. Perhaps the film owes its existence solely to the tremendous success of "Rosemary's Baby", but it nevertheless it still stands as a solid independent thriller about a handful of touchy subjects like pregnancy issues, marriage and faithfulness. Painter Ann Collins is overjoyed and optimistic when she finds out she's pregnant, even though she had to process a severe trauma 3 years earlier and her loving husband David underwent a vasectomy as a result of it. He can't be the father, but Ann swears she wasn't unfaithful, so they decide to keep the baby. Ann's condition rapidly turns out to be a very unusual, abnormal and even dangerous pregnancy. She puts tons of salt on her food and slurps down gallons of steaming hot black coffee. Even more disturbing is that Ann constantly seeks for cold, sneaks out for long and mysterious nightly excursions and that her body miraculously heals itself from every type of illness. David and his friends desperately look for a medical explanation while Ann isolates herself and increasingly becomes influenced by the unborn baby whose origin remains an enigma. "The Stranger Within" benefices from a powerful first half, with a strong emphasis on marital defiance. The tense interactions between Ann and David after finding out he couldn't have conceived the child are honest and realistic. The second half is more Sci-Fi orientated, but the atmosphere nonetheless remains vulnerable and serene. The movie doesn't feature and bloody massacres or monstrous creatures, but it's definitely unsettling and grim. The basic story comes from the multi-talented veteran author Richard Matheson, so there aren't many better references in the horror industry. I hugely appreciated the climax and the (very) open ending and caught myself still gazing at the screen even long after the end credits were finished.

My wife and I were talking a few years back and we got to talking about movies that freaked us out as kids. Well, it turned out that two made for TV films in particular were scary--and we both remembered them decades later. One was "Crowhaven Farm" and the other was this film, "The Stranger Within". So, I was thrilled to find out that both are finally on DVD and I picked up copies. I was interested to find out that whether or not they really were as weird and scary as I'd remembered. Regardless, the movie sure had an impact on us! The film begins with a wife (Barbara Eden) telling her husband (George Grizzard) that she was pregnant. Normally this isn't a bad thing, but the husband had gotten a vasectomy three years earlier! And, after he goes to the doctor, the doctor tells him conclusively that he cannot be the father! So who is the father? Is sweet Barbara cheating on him? And if not, HOW?! And, why is she beginning to behave so weirdly?! The answers are freaky....and I don't want to say more as it would clearly spoil the film.Now seeing the movie several decades later, my impressions of the thing have changed considerably. While I still think it's worth seeing, I noticed three things I never saw as a kid. First, it really wasn't a scary film at all but a weird one. Second, the plot is pretty thin and could have been told better in an hour or less. Third, it's pretty obvious what's going on relatively early in the film and the surprise ending isn't all that surprising. Still, as I just said, it's well worth seeing and is one of the more diverting made for TV films I have seen--even with all its cheesy faults.

Barbara is abducted and is now pregnant. Husband realizes that it could not be his child. Wife knows nothing about it except something wrong has happened. A frightful tale about a woman and the baby to come. Is it alien? or human?