Mystery novelist Bette Davis has taken a house on the Yorkshire Moors, an inhospitable mausoleum that puzzlingly draws a number of unexpected visitors. One evening she returns home to find a stranger (Gary Merrill) ensconced in an easy chair. He has come to settle accounts with her ne'er-do-well husband, with whom he pulled off a robbery in London that ended with a policeman's being shot. Unfortunately, Davis has just poisoned said husband, whose body stiffens in the library. A quick shift in circumstances has Merrill posing as the husband, an inconvenience since Davis is also having an affair with the fiancé of her young secretary....
Another Man's Poison started out as a stage play, with the result that it's talky and contrived. Hardly a scene goes by without interruption from one or another of those visitors crashing in through various doors. Among them is snoopy veterinarian Emlyn Williams, whose lucky patients are generally dumb. Davis and Merrill plot against each other with all the ingenuity of Elizabethan revenge tragedy even Davis' pet steed falls victim to the murderous ploys.
Between Davis' spectacular comeback in All About Eve and her startling second comeback in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, she had some lean years with poor parts. When she lacked a full-blooded character to play, her acting became sharply mannered and elocutionary, as here. Fans of thrillers written for the British footlights, like The Mousetrap or Williams' own Night Must Fall, may find Another Man's Poison reasonably satisfying; it's a contraption, and once it's over there's no need to think back on it. But it is decidedly lesser Bette Davis.
Another Man's Poison started out as a stage play, with the result that it's talky and contrived. Hardly a scene goes by without interruption from one or another of those visitors crashing in through various doors. Among them is snoopy veterinarian Emlyn Williams, whose lucky patients are generally dumb. Davis and Merrill plot against each other with all the ingenuity of Elizabethan revenge tragedy even Davis' pet steed falls victim to the murderous ploys.
Between Davis' spectacular comeback in All About Eve and her startling second comeback in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, she had some lean years with poor parts. When she lacked a full-blooded character to play, her acting became sharply mannered and elocutionary, as here. Fans of thrillers written for the British footlights, like The Mousetrap or Williams' own Night Must Fall, may find Another Man's Poison reasonably satisfying; it's a contraption, and once it's over there's no need to think back on it. But it is decidedly lesser Bette Davis.