Another Man's Poison (1951)
Directed by Irving Rapper

Film Review

Just when her film career had all but been written off after a string of disappointments in the late 1940s, Bette Davis bounced back with All About Eve (1950), with the force of a tornado.  Professional success came with personal happiness as she embarked on her fourth marriage, with the actor Gary Merrill.  It was in this state of happy delirium that Davis agreed to appear in a film which, had her critical faculties been a little shaper, she would have rejected in an instant.  The lure of an expenses-paid trip to England and the chance to star in a prestige British film alongside her new husband must have been irresistible.  Davis was even allowed to choose who would direct the film, and she opted for Irving Rapper, someone she knew would not intimidate her.  Rapper had directed Davis in three of her best films - Now, Voyager (1942), The Corn Is Green (1945) and Deception (1946) - and there was no reason to think they wouldn't strike lucky again.

Unfortunately, there was one major obstacle to overcome: the script.  Adapted from a play by Leslie Sands, Another Man's Poison suffered from being located in one setting, the main protagonist's living room.  Attempts to broaden out the narrative and make it less theatrical resulted in the plot becoming even more uneven and far-fetched, to the point that the storyline and characters in it scarcely had any credibility at all.  Even though endless rewrites to the script were undertaken whilst filming was underway, the film never came together in the way that Davis had hoped.  It was ludicrously contrived B-movie fare that not even a twice Oscar-winning star could salvage, although she gave it a damn good try.  Cinema needs its Bette noir.

To see Another Man's Poison at its best you have to pretend it is a black comedy and not a straight noir thriller.  Davis probably had this in mind when she realised how dire the script was - how else can we account for her wild, eye-rolling bouts of self-parody?  Davis was never happier than when playing the bad girl and here she seems to be having the time of her life, snatching a handsome young thing from her pretty secretary one minute, engineering a cold-blooded murder the next.  Lines that would have been unbearable had they been spoken by any other actress have a delicious malevolence when uttered by Davis playing the homicidal vamp.  For once in her career, Bette Davis was able to throw herself into a character with absolutely no redeeming features (apart from an obsessive devotion to her horse) and she appears to love every moment of it.  It is a foretaste of the evil harridans the actress would go on to play so brilliantly in the twilight of her career, beginning with the unforgettable What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).  One man's third rate thriller is another man's Bette fest.

Film Synopsis

Janet Frobisher is a successful crime writer who lives in a remote manor house on the Yorkshire moors.  When her estranged husband shows up unexpectedly having robbed a bank Janet poisons him with medicine intended for her horse.  She is wondering what to do next when her husband's accomplice, George Bates, barges in, looking for a hideout.  Once Bates has helped her to dispose of her husband's corpse, Janet reluctantly allows him to stay, although she is unimpressed when he passes himself off as her husband.  Tensions are further strained when Janet's secretary Chris turns up with her fiancé Larry to spend the weekend at Janet's house.  When Janet reveals that she and Larry have been having an affair, Chris makes a hasty exit, providing Janet with a heaven-sent opportunity to rid herself of the loathsome Mr Bates...