Another Man's Poison (1951)

Synopsis: Bette Davis crossed the Atlantic with her Now, Voyager director Irving Rapper and her husband Gary Merrill for this tale of a lady novelist residing on the Yorkshire moors. Engaged in an affair with her secretary's fiancé (Anthony Steel), she is provoked by her husband's return into murdering him.

She then dispatches Merrill with a dose of horse serum. It defies belief that Davis, even in villainess mode, could appear in such drivel. Somehow she copes with the material by pulling out her entire bag of histrionic tricks on a scale that leaves us either gasping in shock or laughing hysterically — rather like Bette herself during her climactic death scene.

A friend of ours, John New, worked on this film at Walton-On-Thames. He said he was very surprised at the time such a great actress came to work in such an awful studio!

Cast: John Phillip Law, Marisa Mell
Runtime: 105 min