Die Saat des Alien

It's pretty obvious that "The Stranger Within" is sort of a "Rosemary's Baby" knockoff with a few tweaks here and there. The big surprise to us viewers is that sweet, cute Barbara Eden CAN look terrifying (check out some of the faces that she makes). The movie itself was mostly what I expected.

Now here's something else. This marks the second time that an "I Dream of Jeannie" cast member has had a brush with a mysterious pregnancy in a movie. Emmaline Henry, who played Amanda Bellows on the show, played a supporting role in "Rosemary's Baby". In fact, the men on the show also appeared in apocalyptic movies: Larry Hagman (Maj. Nelson) co-starred in "Fail-Safe" (a weaker version of "Dr. Strangelove"), and Hayden Rorke (Dr. Bellows) co-starred in "When Worlds Collide" (about an object on a collision course with Earth).

So, it's not a great movie, but I liked it.

If you go to www.warnerarchive.com you can order "The Stranger Within" which is an official release and not a bootleg copy. Note they include a disclaimer that says "not re-mastered for the purposes of this release but taken from the best possible print." Anyway, it would be great for all of us to see our beloved "Jeannie" in a movie where she is clearly a totally different person. David Doyle as the couple's friend is a treat as he puts Eden into a trance so they can find out how she got pregnant. At first, she says nothing but on the second try, she tells them it was an alien. Great fun for the '70's--may be dated today.

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.

Interesting made for TV ROSEMARY'S BABY/EXORCIST type flick, with Barbara Eden in fine form as the expectant mother who begins committing some very bizarre acts after she discovers she's pregnant. This is not at all new territory, though horror/sci-fi author Richard Matheson has managed to add some fairly effective offbeat touches.

Back in the '70s a lot of good made for TV movies came out, including sci-fi/horror and mysteries. "Brotherhood of the Bell," "Something Evil," and "Deadly Dream," to name a few.