Here's The Story Behind Lifetime Original Movie 'Suburban Swingers Club'

A super sudsy new Lifetime Original Movie premieres on Saturday, Mar. 8 and, given its ripped from the headlines feel, viewers may be wondering whether Suburban Swingers Club is based on a true story. The thriller follows a young married woman named Lori who has just suffered a miscarriage. Thinking that she needs to try something new to get out of her grief rut, Lori's husband pitches the genius idea to attend a neighborhood swingers party together. And like, everybody definitely grieves differently, but this maybe doesn't seem like a good faith effort to cheer up your wife, my dude. Anyway, the party guest who takes an interest in Lori turns out to be a little too interested and not great at the fundamentals of polyamory: he winds up going on a jealousy-fueled homicidal rampage. While never directly addressed, "no murdering" seems like an implicit boundary this sexy mystery neighbor, — who spends a lot of time in the 30-second trailer not wearing a shirt — is crossing.

The script was penned by Mark Sanderson, a screenwriter behind a slew of other Lifetime Original Movies, including Family Vanished, A Night To Regret, Stalked By My Ex, One Small Indiscretion, and many more, per his iMDB profile. In fact, that list solely encompasses his titles of the past two years alone. To say he's a connoisseur of the genre would be an understatement. And while there are elements of Suburban Swingers Club that echo real-life news stories, the plot and storyline are completely fictional.

For example, in 2017, 28-year-old Amber Schomaker pleaded guilty to domestic violence and operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated after using her minivan to try running over her husband and another couple at a swingers party, according to the New York Post. As MLive originally reported, she and her husband, 33, were invited to a Bay City, Michigan swingers party hosted in another couple's home. While Schomaker was downstairs with the homeowner's fiancé, her husband went upstairs with the woman. When he came back down, Schomaker attacked him, went outside (where she was followed by the other three), got into her minivan, and drove toward them.

The homeowner told police that Schomaker's husband and the other man had to jump out of the way to avoid being struck by the vehicle. While Schomaker initially drove away from the scene, she eventually came back and resumed attacking her husband. By the time police arrived, the couple were both bloodied and Schomaker was apparently trying to break back into the house using a screwdriver. Questioned by police, Schomaker's husband claimed she became violent because she was jealous.

As you can tell, the trope of a homicidally jealous swinger isn't without real-life inspiration, but the content of the Lifetime movie is largely made up. Suburban swingers clubs themselves are a well-documented phenomenon (minus the murder), and Lifetime's parent network A&E is actually set to premiere a reality series later this month called Neighbors With Benefits. The show aims to shine a light on the swinger community in an unnamed Ohio suburb, according to the New York Post. Meanwhile, if you miss Suburban Swingers Club when it premieres on Lifetime, you can catch encore airings on Sunday, Mar. 10 and Monday, Mar. 11.