L'ombre d'une rivale

In Kansas City, the deranged middle-age Donna Germaine (Barbara Niven) stabs and kills her lover, when he calls off their relationship to stay with his wife. Donna uses an excuse to move to the house of her aunt, and she becomes obsessed in their neighbor, the executive William Costigan (Perry King). The sick Donna plots an evil scheme to take William from his wife Jeannie Costigan (Susan Bakely).

This awful rip-off of "Fatal Attraction" is a simplistic and predictable festival of clichés, a typical broadcast TV flick. The flawed screenplay is absolutely silly, the grimaces of Barbara Niven are terrible, and the horrible accent and tune of voice of Perry King are laughable. This is the type of movie that the viewer knows exactly the next step of the script. This film is a pure waste of time and money, better off taking a nap instead. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "O Vizinho Perfeito" ("The Perfect Neighbor")

This movie looks like it's from 1995. The floppy disk sent me flying.

It's getting to be that the name Perry King is synonymous with bad Lifetime-type movies, which is a shame.

This is a Fatal Attraction ripoff with no attraction - it's all in her head - but lots of fatal. Barbara Niven plays a woman with a daddy complex - her father left when she was 8 and she blamed her mother - who goes from married man to married man seeking fulfillment. I guess she never watched Lifetime herself or she would know this is a dead end. The last guy who told her he wasn't leaving his wife got a knife in his stomach. Niven then flees to her aunt's and within five seconds is in love with Perry King, who lives next door and is married to Susan Blakeley. Mentally she's hot and heavy with him by the first commercial. There are some other people to get out of the way first, though, and a marriage to drive in the final coffin nails.

The only impressive thing about this movie was that Barbara Niven was 52 when she made it and Susan Blakeley, playing a woman with a very young daughter, was a whopping 57. I can only say, I'll have what they're having. They both look absolutely amazing in this movie. I thought I must be wrong that I saw Blakeley in Rich Man, Poor Man in the '70s, but of course I wasn't. I started to suspect the Dorian Gray syndrome with the hideous portraits in the closets. Good for them - but both actresses deserve much better. Perry King was his usual handsome, affable, clueless self.

I'd say don't watch it but if you catch it on Lifetime, just watch the first 15 minutes to catch a gander at what the fifties look like today for women and remember a time when a woman hit 30 and Hollywood stuck gray in actress' hair and made them play maiden aunts.

I must say that when I picked the box up the cover and the description of the movie almost made me feel a bit uncomfortable, because it seemed to be able to give me quite a fright. Now the only thing which made me feel uncomfortable was how bad the actors were. Perry King who played William Costigan was the one who I found to make the best of this movie and his part wasn't big enough to lift it up a lot. Maybe from a two to a three but no more than that. Barbara Niven who played the main character Donna Germaine was quite a disappointment, the character was well written and did somethings which a person in that state might actually do if this had been for real. Barabara Niven who was very... good at overplaying the part where she was "The Perfect Neighbor" should probably not be offered similar roles. The day I watched this I had, had a good night's sleep but after the movie was to an end I was almost about to have another one and this was in the middle of the day mind you. Usually after watching a movie of this class I'd recommend it as a sleeping pill, but since the story is quite disturbing (it really was a nice thought) and the acting is so terrible, you might, if you are in that mood laugh until you cry. I'd recommend this movie for someone who has a nice boy or girl over and doesn't want to focus all of their energy on a movie to rent this one. That might actually have been it's purpose.

Contrary to the title, there is only a scant "neighborly" theme to this movie. The psycho woman (Barbera Niven) just conveniently happens to be a neighbor, and I guess you could say this is her point of entry into the lives of the couple next door.

At the heart of this movie is basically a psycho assistant who fantasizes about her new boss and does everything possible to drive the man's (Perry King) doting wife out of the picture.

The movie is very similar to another Lifetime movie The Perfect Assistant which frankly is far superior- if that's even a compliment.

I will credit the movie for not having stupid people do stupid things or ignore glaring red flags. But in the end, it's basically the same ole thing where there's a final confrontation when the psycho lady just loses it and confronts someone with a gun. To be honest, I find this resolution to be quite lazy. I prefer when the psycho is confronted with lie after lie and is caught "dead to rights."

Nothing really new here.