The Stranger Beside Me

1995 "It's what you don't know that can kill you."
6| 1h32m| PG-13| en
Details

When Jennifer marries Chris, it seems she can finally let go of her tragic past. But behind the perfect facade lies a violent, possessive dark side--and a past filled with secrets. As she begins to suspect his involvement with a string of rapes, Jennifer sets out to expose the horrifying truth about her husband...before he strikes again.

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Reviews

Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story
Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Donald Seymour 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.
Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
sassysweethart64 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.
sol **SPOILERS** You begin to wonder just how true the events that inspired this movie were within the first ten minutes. We get to see this kooky but nice guy wearing a guerrilla suit, when he's first unreduced in the film, Chris Gallagher (Eric Close) making a monkey out of himself as he goes completely ape sh*t over Jenniffer or Jen, Tiffani Thiasen, whom he met at a Memorial Day picnic.Not wasting any time Chris gets in tight with Jen's crippled landlord Dave Morgan, Gerald McRaney, who set both him and Jen's up on a date. Moving at breakneck speed Chris get Jen to quickly fall in love with and then marry him in what looks like less then 24 hours. It's at her wedding reception that Jen's get some disturbing vibes from Chris 17 year-old cousin Dana, ALyson Harrigan, that there's something very screwy about him that has to do with his very overactive libido. That fact about Chris should have been very obvious to Jen from his very strange and unorthodox, to say th least, love making habits!It also turns out that Chris a nut about being in the Navy washes out of the service in his fear of being in an atomic sub for three months at a time without shore leave as well as without his gorgeous wife Jen. What really comes to the surface about the boyish and lovable, when his manic depression doesn't set in, Chris is that he's a triple "A" sickola in his behavior when he comes in contact with beautiful but unsuspecting, in what he has in store for them, women. Chris is not only suspected by the cops of spending his free time, when he's not with his wife Jen, snooping around the neighborhood spying, through their bedroom windows, on women undressing but even at times breaking into their homes and raping them! When these mental aberrations about Chris become known to Jen she's already pregnant with his, and her, child and leaving him isn't an option! Especially when the guy, who's also a hyped up control freak, threatens to murder her if she does. It's hard to take the action that Jen at first does, which is next to nothing, in her knowing that she's living and sleeping with a man who's at least four cans short of a six pack upstairs in his head. When the couples, Jen & Chris, child is born Dana lays it on Jen about how her older cousin Chris molested her as a young girl and what he's now capable of doing to their new born daughter, when she grows out of her diapers, Molly. Meanwhile there's this rapist running around town attacking women at gun point that not only fits the description of Chris but does his "thing", raping and robing women, when Chris is not at work or at home making him, in Jen's mind, the number #1 suspect.With no one believing Jen that her husband is a psycho rapist and can very well graduate to murdering his victims Jen's has no choice but turn him over to the police and let justice, in the fact that he's is the "Woolcap Rapist", decide his fate. Having no evidence to have her sick but very clever, in knowing how to cover his tracks, husband brought to justice Jen plans to catch him in the act and then get the cops to put the pinch on him. That was very brave on Jen's part but the big question is what if her suspicions about Chris are wrong and backfire on her! That would not only break up her marriage but have Chris get custody of Molly with Jen being, by the court, declared an unfit mother! But if in fact Jen is right about Chris how could she not be sure that he'll turn on her, before the cops can come to her rescue, knowing that he's not only a danger to all the young women in town but also to her and her infant daughter Molly as well!
insomniac_rod 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.
Nilblogette nilblog.typepad.com/nilblogette 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.