The Perfect Husband

The reporter Lisa (Tracy Nelson) meets the famous writer Ty Kellington (Michael Riley) in an interview, and sooner they get married. Their common life is perfect, almost a dream, until Lisa is invited by her old friend Matt Thompson (Thomas Calabro) to work with him in a radio show. The paranoid hidden side of the personality of Ty is unfolded, showing a deranged man capable of killing and threatening the life of Lisa, her sister Beverly (Andrea Roth) and close friends. "The Perfect Husband" is a forgettable and predictable festival of clichés, a low budget movie where is possible to guess the next scene. The performance of Tracy Nelson is horrible, in the lead female role, but Michael Riley and Andrea Roth have a good acting and at least I did not sleep along this foretold plot. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "O Perigo Dorme ao Lado" ("The Danger Sleeps SidebySide")

Caught this one late at night after a long day of work and couldn't sleep. This one didn't disappoint as it was slower and the spouse didn't loose his sh- until mid-way through the movie allowing for character development. Tracy Nelson is sympathetic as the ensnared wife and the husband wasn't just the one-dimensional psychopath. The actor who played him's performance was nuanced and you genuinely see that crazy-evil thing going on in his head. I'm actually going to go a step further and actually recommend this one (I don't normally do that with LMNs) but only if you have nerves of steel. The second half of the movie is very nerve-wracking and you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat when as the wife becomes injured and is seeminly rendered helpless.

I loved this movie, To say Tracy Nelson is not a good actress is nuts. I think she's totally believable and a great actress. The movie had me on the edge of my seat. Tracy did the part like it was written,maybe she could of gotten out of the situation as some other reviewer said but that's not how the writers wrote her character. The actor who played the husband was absolutely nuts but played the part terrific. I was totally for Tracys character, she loved her husband and loved the child they were having together. He even killed their child making her have a miscarriage. This is the type of movie that gets you nuts but is fun to watch. I definitely want to add it to my collection!

We have seen the cliché plot (woman marries perfect husband but turns out to be a psychopath) many times.

In the 70s, 80s and 90s we were inundated with this theme in the true stories category, in which the story was almost always told one-sidedly from the female perspective and in which the perpetrator was usually portrayed in a very two-dimensional way without a satisfactory backstory.

This was of course to demonize the perpetrator as much as possible and to portray the victim character as sympathetically as possible.

But why not some more backstory for the perpetrator? That could give the story a lot more depth and make for a much interesting film.

Here too it is actually very cliché. The fact that the couple gets married after 4 months does not make it much more believable.

Of course this is a 13 in a dozen thriller, but still, there were moments in the film where I thought: boy, is this all you could come up with in terms of text dialogue? Such as in the dinner scene in which TY shows up uninvited and they ask him how he comes up with his characters in his books.

Funny that Michael Riley plays this role, I had seen him play alongside Brian Dennehy in To Catch a Killer and he played really well in it, even though Dennhy was superior as gacy.

This movie had two big strikes against it from the get-go.

First of all, whoever thought of putting Michael Riley and Tracy Nelson together ought to have their head examined. They are the most mismatched pair I've ever seen. On-screen chemistry was zero, and the disbelief that they would ever fall in love kept me from getting into the story.

Secondly, Sophie Gendron was just horrible. Not only is her acting completely wooden, but her lips take up half the screen. She unfortunately shows the consequences of cosmetic surgery addiction, and has done it to the point of not looking normal anymore. Granted, she's not as bad as Joan Rivers, but she's lost any natural look. (And after her last scene, I felt so guilty thinking oh good, she won't be in any more shots!)

On the up-side, Michael Riley was creepy enough to believe he could play Ty. And Thomas Calabro was the only actor worth his salt. I enjoyed every scene he was in.

My suggestion: tape it, and watch only the Thomas Calabro scenes. Then go out and rent a movie where he has more camera time.