Sleeping With The Enemy (1991)

Fatal Attraction (1987) is turned on its head, with the obsessive here being a violent husband who just won’t let his wife go.

Julia Roberts – she of the dark eyes and 800 teeth – plays abused spouse Laura Burney who stages her own death to escape a marriage from hell with her charming, well-to-do and totally demented husband Martin (Patrick Bergin).

Martin is a control freak and a pathological perfectionist who insists that the hand towels in the bathroom are neatly aligned and the canned food stacked precisely in the kitchen cabinets. If things aren’t just right, Laura gets slapped around.

After one beating too many she fakes her own death by drowning and takes off for Iowa where she assumes a new identity and meets a nice guy named Ben (Kevin Anderson).

Things are going well until – after a night of fun with Ben at a local carnival – Laura comes home one night and notices that the kitchen towels are lined up all too neatly . . .

This was Roberts’s bid for grittier material and she acquits herself rather well while Bergin relishes his role as the bad guy.

Director Joseph Ruben established his reputation with this sort of thriller, and, although he never attains the scare factor of his earlier The Stepfather, he still manages some chilling sequences, but too few to really sustain the interest throughout.

Laura Burney/Sara Waters
Julia Roberts
Martin Burney
Patrick Bergin
Ben Woodward
Kevin Anderson
Chloe
Elizabeth Lawrence
Fleishman
Kyle Secor
Dr Rissner
Claudette Nevins
Locke
Tony Abatemarco
Julie
Marita Geraghty
Garber
Harley Venton
Edna
Sandi Shackelford
Mrs Nepper
Bonnie Cook
Minister
Graham Harrington
Sharon
Sharon J Robinson

Director
Joseph Ruben