The Stranger Within

1974 "Her unborn baby orders her to ignore her doctor...Forces her to abandon her husband...And compels her to do what no woman has ever done before...Who Is This Child?"
6.1| 1h14m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 01 October 1974 Released
Producted By: Lorimar Productions
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Who is the father of Ann Collins’ baby? Her husband had a vasectomy years ago. And Ann hasn’t been with another man. Even more mysterious: as the baby grows inside her, Ann begins to change. She is beset by strange illnesses, pours tablespoons of salt on her food, turns the thermostat to 50 degrees, speed-reads academic tomes. But much bigger shocks are yet to come. Barbara Eden stars in this hypnotic, swiftly paced blend of horror and sci-fi from Richard Matheson, the popular and prolific writer who also penned the novel I AM LEGEND and several notable THE TWILIGHT ZONE scripts.

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Director

Lee Philips

Production Companies

Lorimar Productions

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The Stranger Within Audience Reviews

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
moonspinner55 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.
bribabylk *** spoiler signal! *** ... that is presumably coming from the alien fetus inside her, speaking through her mouth. I don't remember it verbatim, but the alien fetus explains its origin and speaks of Earth as a "...hot, heavy land..." It was a nice, little haunting bit of writing, and the makers of the TV movie knew it was the best part of the whole production, because they use it TWICE. The rest of the move is rather flat and lethargic; it's not really scary or even all that suspenseful. I saw this when I was a little kid, when it originally aired on TV in '74, and I remember I was looking forward to it and hoped it would be good because I liked (and still like!) spooky movies and because it starred Barbara Eden who was still pretty fresh from Jeannie at the time, but even as an indiscriminate 7-yr old viewer I was bored and disappointed.
Woodyanders Although her sweet, caring schoolteacher husband David (the fine George Grizzard) had a vasectomy three years ago, successful painter Ann Collins (marvelously played with meticulous focus by the lovely Barbara Eden of "I Dream of Jeannie" fame) has somehow managed to become pregnant. Even weirder than Ann miraculously having a bun in the oven is the radical shift in her once normal, now increasingly flipped-out behavior: Ann starts putting way too much salt on her food, gulps down steaming hot black coffee by the gallon, develops a peculiar predilection for freezing cold temperatures, reads sociology books by the dozens, starts talking in an odd unidentifiable foreign tongue, and becomes cranky to the point of being downright hostile. Is Ann going crazy? Or, more disturbing, is the rapidly developing fetus she's carrying some kind of alien creature with potentially malevolent intentions? This frightfully effective and absorbing made-for-TV domestic sci-fi/horror hybrid mixes elements of "Rosemary's Baby," "The Exorcist" and "The Stepford Wives" into a highly creepy and compelling synthesis, cleverly mining a fine line in flesh-crawling thrills from its quietly unnerving central theme: The placid tranquility of a bland, everyday, affluent upper middle-class suburbanite setting gets totally ripped asunder by inexplicable otherworldly occurrences which defy logical categorization and hence can be neither controlled nor comprehended through ordinary means. Lee Philips' low-key, rather pedestrian direction inadvertently works in the film's favor; his lack of flashy cinematic flourishes and pretty mundane style greatly enhance the movie's vivid and convincing evocation of a plain, average, nothing fancy or unusual environment. Richard ("Duel," "The Night Stalker") Matheson's script is typically sound: intelligent, insightful, mature (e.g., when David first finds out about Ann's condition he accuses her of being unfaithful), mysterious and paranoid, with the fantastic premise made believable and intriguing by grounding it with acutely observed, true-to-life, three-dimensional characters and an uneasy tone which remains pleasingly enigmatic and ambiguous to the very end. Eden and Grizzard are excellent in the leads, making for a thoroughly plausible and appealing middle-aged couple. David Doyle as a kindly, helpful amateur hypnotist, Nehemiah Persoff as a bewildered doctor, and Joyce Van Patten as Ann's concerned, sympathetic best friend contribute sturdy supporting performances. The surprise conclusion with the baby's actual origins finally being revealed packs a socko startling punch. Eerie, understated and above all proficiently done, this nifty chiller diller rates as a serenely unsettling little scarefest.
Jerry-9 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?