The Stranger Beside Me (1995)

Best movie of this year hands down!

best movie i've ever seen.

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.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This movie is based on the book "Evil Beside Her" by Kathryn Casey. It is the true story of a Texas woman's marriage to a dangerous Psychopath. Most everything in the movie really did happen, although a few small things are fictional (names and some fictional characters etc...)and of course the more graphic things and other details were left out of the script. I myself thought this was a very good movie and Tiffany Amber Thiessen did a great job, as did Eric Close. Casey is a very good crime writer and this book is a good one. I watch this movie every chance I get because I did read the book. Most movies you watch on the Lifetime Movie Network are true stories and a lot of them did not make the news nation wide.

Eric Close was the only good actor in this. Playing the rapist husband of Tiffani Thiessen, a not so good actress. She bothered me with her vacant looks, her boring expressions, always pouting and whimpering like a loser. It's obvious in this clinker, that he'll get caught and you don't want him to. That's how likable Close is in this. A good looking guy with personality, you wonder why he needs to be a rapist. Also good to see another good actor, Gerald McRaney in this as the girl's father. Not much he can do in a ridiculous script. Her phony crying at the end didn't impress me.There are no surprises and again you route for Close to win. But that's show business. And once more the women in these LMN movies come off worse than the men do. And Thiessen should get out of the acting business.

Surprisingly good made for T.V. Thriller. I wasn't expecting too much from this one but I'm glad to say that this is one of the best of it's kind. It's fast paced and features solid acting and interesting events. The story gets you hooked on since the beginning and with many hits, you can't help but find the movie very interesting.The background story of Thiessen's character is hard but it turns into a nightmare when her husband is something much worse than her childhood friend's step father.The "stranger" concept and his actions are disturbing if you consider that it is a common disease in society. A serial rapist does not respect society or even his own family and this movie displays the sickness and crime in a perfect way. My beef with the movie was the non sense situation when Thiessen's character returns home with her deranged husband after he's released on bail. By that moment she knew what he did to his young relative (played by the cute Allyson Hannigan). But that's just the typical Hollywood scene that provokes more trouble. The climax scene shows Thiessen following her husband when he's about to commit another rape, then she calls the cops who come in time just to capture him. The ending tells us that the husband was sentenced for 99 years in prison in real life. The acting is also pretty good, and Tiffany is great and gorgeous as always. The direction is also very good.

The characters do ridiculous things that no one in real life would ever do, but if it saves me from a boring second act, realism shmealism. This one is about a woman who has been raped, who marries a guy who is peeping tom! (He is also briefly a gorilla.) When he is arrested for peeping, he and Tiffani start keeping a journal together of where he should be every day, to keep him on track so that he won't peep again, but instead he turns into a rapist, as they all do on Lifetime. While I was a little disappointed to lose the unique peeping plot, I was thrilled when he basically kisses her on the cheek and tells her he's dashing out for a jog and a rape. Be back in a jiff, hon! She knows he's the rapist, he knows she knows, and he keeps rubbing her face in it by, for instance, laying his gun and rope on the table in front of her. It got a little dark when Alyson Hannigan confesses that he molested her when she was a kid and warns Tiffani to protect her new-born daughter from him (!), but it was played for suspense instead of misery. Gerald McRaney is quite likable as a paraplegic, and country music singer Lorrie Morgan plays one of the navy-men's wives. If you want a true-story message Lifetime movie, this one won't butter your bread, but if you like 'em fluffy like I do, give this one a shot.