Another Man's Poison (1952)

Nice effects though.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The cleverness of a best-selling mystery writer gets her to see if she can get away with murder, but you know it's going to catch up with her. Bette Davis is the calculating American author, living in seclusion on the Moors and determined to let no man get in her way. It's very apparent that she loves her prized horse Fury more than any other man.The visit by a stranger (Gary Merrill) exposes at least one of her crimes as he is there to find her estranged husband whom she calmly tells him is lying in the other room....dead. Certain he will end up being made an accessory, Merrill arranges to get rid of the body for her, but when the local veterinarian (Emlyn Williams) keeps stopping by, Davis and Merrill pretend (reluctantly on Davis's part) to be husband and wife. The doctor had made a compound for the ailing Fury which taken in large doses can be fatal, and Davis pretends she used it all up, hanging on to it just in case she needs it again. She's in love with her secretary's fiancée, and even though it is apparent that she's obviously a decade older than him (at least), has managed to seduce him. As the game between Davis and Merrill gets more dangerous, each of them uses a one-upmanship on the other, but it is very apparent that nobody will be the winner in this deliciously wicked game.While Davis referred to herself as a character actress who happened to play leads, she hadn't really begun to play character parts at this point even though she was past the age where most leading players turn to character or supporting parts. She still has the Margo Channing/Tallulah hairstyle, and is even a bit portly, but it is obvious that she is still using her sexual wiles to keep the men in her life under her thumb. Like a female spider, she uses those desires to lure men to their doom, and even with much subtlety in her performance, it is obvious to the audience that she is quite deadly. Only on a few occasions does she allow those typically famous Bette Davis theatrics to take over her performance. She has met her devious match, however, in Merrill, and intellectual match in Williams. It's surprising that the writers did not have any of the characters playing chess together, because the plot is exactly like that, and when certain characters get "checked", you know that it will take only one move for them to get "mated".While certainly a fascinating melodrama (and Davis is always fascinating even in the most outlandish of stories), this suffers from too many implausibilities and even some tediously slow moving dialog scenes to be totally successful. But once it does get off the ground, it really becomes mesmerizing, and like a bad car accident, it is difficult to turn away from it. Davis's final moments on screen are fraught with tension as it becomes more and more obvious that her sins have obviously driven her mad. After having been so noble as her lover in "All About Eve", it's nice to see Merrill step up to the plate to toss her a curve ball. Anthony Steel and Barbara Murray's characters are nowhere nearly as interesting as Davis, Merrill and Williams', and as a result come off as rather bland.

Bette Davis, as usual, is compelling in this 1951 film. However, after she and Merrill were in the far superior "All About Eve," the year before, nothing could top that and this film certainly doesn't.Even with Davis pulling out all her murderous treachery, this doesn't save the film. The problem is that it is confined to one scenic view and rather becomes difficult as Davis, who has killed her husband, is visited by Merrill, who helped the dead man rob a bank. Merrill assumes the role of Davis's husband as no one supposedly has ever seen the latter.People just go in and out of the house providing no intrigue whatsoever. Davis even tries to make it with Anthony Steel, a much younger man who is the fiancé of her secretary.Emlyn Williams has his moments as the suspecting vet. By the way, just don't drink to anything the picture offers, both Merrill and Davis did and look how they wound up.

This movie resembles very much a live play... All the action takes place basically in one or two rooms of the same house.Davis is a detective novelist whose long estranged shady husband suddenly reappears--on the lam from a botched bank robbery. He wants Davis to help him escape. Instead, Davis murders him with poison (medicine for her horse)..The action starts when the husband's cohort in the bank robbery (Merrill) appears. Will he help Davis get rid of the body; will she help him or fall for him??? All these things swirl around in the plot.Of note Davis and Merrill were married in real life at this time.I have 2 overriding criteria for movies...do they entertain?...and (death for my reviews) do they have an excessive amount of PC or some social message etc...?==with the director holding up sign boards on how we are supposed to feel or think about situations.Cinematography and directing acting and everything else is mentioned as needed.This film passes both primary tests. The only flaw in it is the ending which I was not anticipating but which was gimmicky none the less--thank heavens it was short. The denouement where the body is discovered due to Merril's accident was also too pat and unbelievable---the part about the hat---what were the writers thinking a red herring?? Davis later said that after she and Merrill started the film there were lots of problems with the script that were never adequately addressed by rewrites.Davis at 43 is showing her age.... a bit unbelievable that she would be a seductress of a much younger man...but Davis was meant to play these twisted roles. In any case she is a murderess and the plot moves fast enough with enough twists that you don't anticipate most of it.Yes, it is entertaining. It is a formula plot that has been used several times Christopher Reeves and Michael Caine in Death Trap...etc.. This is the best version.

I awarded this film 6/10 and you can see how Bette Davis is gradually moving to her later horror style which she reached her apogee in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?".It is so obviously a filmed stage play with 95% of the action filmed in Betty's Yorkshire country house but there are a few token scenes of her and her co-male actors riding over the Yorkshire moors however.An irritating continuity problem is when actors open and come through the front door seemingly without keys and suddenly appear inside your living room this still happens in stupid "soaps" like "Eastenders" especially when the home-help has not started her duties!I only saw this film because someone uploaded it onto "Youtube.com".Gary Merrill plays a less sympathetic character than he played in "All About Eve".A slightly above average film.