Uno straniero con noi

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.

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 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.

This movie has many things going for it. All the best ingredients are here: a great story with a fine cast and writers. I was amazed to find that nearly all of these actors--as well as the director and writer who created the story--were veterans of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. I was lead to expect the finest in performing art from this movie.

Unfortunately, the acting in this movie is its most glaring weakness. Barbara Eden is probably miscast in the leading role. She captures all the moodiness and unpredictability that one would expect of a pregnant woman. The key to understanding what is happening to her character is the explanation of what happened to produce this strange pregnancy. All we get is her strange behavior and a few hints from the actors that point us in the right direction. Those hints, when provided by the actors themselves, are usually a bad sign. But even they are not as bad as the acting itself. Barbara Eden says too little in the leading role and the other actors compensate by overacting their parts--all presumably in an attempt to produce suspense. They would have done well to take a page from Rod Serling's school of acting: namely, that it is what is left unsaid and undone that holds the audience in suspense. The more words that are put in the actors' mouths, the more actions there are for them to perform, the more tedious and incredible the story seems.

This is nowhere better illustrated than in a scene where Barbara Eden's character is behaving especially irrationally. All of the other characters are behaving equally irrationally, and this only amplifies the confusion and suspense produced by Ms. Eden's character. David Doyle, who plays a hypnotist, shouts above the din, "Just let her act out what she feels compelled to do and maybe we can find out what's going on here!" Amen to that!! His is the voice of rationality in the picture.

Bad acting aside, on a positive note, "The Stranger Within" is a compelling story that seeing the movie compels me to read. The movie's and I'm sure the story's presentation hearken back to a time before special effects and sardonic humor: a time when much was left to the viewer's and reader's imagination. Imagination produces the most creative kind of viewing and reading. It's just too bad that in this case the director felt that he needed to supply so many details that were unnecessary to his purpose. A great concept here, but Mr. Serling would no doubt be disappointed.

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.