Veneno para tus labios

Okay, it's not an Oscar-winner, but this movie is a lot of fun, especially if you're a Bette Davis fan. The setting, a spooky, isolated British mansion, is strongly portrayed; by the end, you really feel like you've spent time some time within the oak-paneled walls. Bette looks just like she did in "All About Eve" -- same hairstyle and similar wardrobe, so it's easy to imagine that this could have been a Margo Channing movie. And of course her costar is Garry Merrill, with whom she also starred in "Eve." This was adapted from a stage play, so I think it's interesting to pay attention to the structure and limited changes of location, which are an indicator of its stage pedigree. This one shows up on TCM once in a while; sit back and enjoy.

Janet Frobisher (Bette Davis) is home when a strange man bursts into her home. George Bates (Gary Merrill) demands to know where Mr. Frobisher is but Janet is evasive. So, George explains that he and her husband were involved in a robbery and the husband killed someone...and he wants to get a hold of him in order to prove he didn't do the killing. But, it's too late, and Janet introduces George to her husband....and he's quite dead! It seems she was sick of the jerk and after slapping her around, she poisoned him! What an interesting pair we meet at the beginning of the picture!

As for George, he's not about to just leave and decides to stick around...telling folks he's Mr. Frobisher. Considering that none of the neighbors ever met the man, it's an easy ruse. And, he knows Janet won't betray him because he knows about that pesky dead body sitting in the study!

While I really enjoyed Merrill's and Davis' characters (both were deliciously evil) and I do recommend the film, it is not perfect. It was originally a play and it's pretty obvious since the film is very talky and a bit claustrophobic. But the ending...well...that makes up for a lot!

Whisked away to make this murder-mystery with her newly hitched fourth husband Gary Merrill in Britain, a follow-up of her "all-time best performance" in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), Ms. Davis recruits the director of NOW, VOYAGER (1942), Irving Rapper to take the helm, but overall, the final product is a secondary offering in every aspect.

ANOTHER MAN'S POISON, takes place in a Podunk Northern England town, mostly, sets in an isolated mansion inhabited by mystery novelist Janet Frobisher (Davis), who has no qualms about poisoning her long-absent husband when the latter gets rough, and soon is pressed into playing wife and husband with George Bates (Merrill), her husband's bank-robbing accomplice, on the contingency to cover for her crime and grant George a haven to stay, one stone two birds? Hardly so.

The imposter game is played out with barbs and ploys duly leveling at each other, while Merrill is fierce enough to be alternately menacing, callous and wanton, winning an upper hand for him is a forlorn hope from the very start in the face of Davis' characteristic wide-eyed fearlessness and insidious fickleness. Firing on all cylinders, her madness and vile calculation completely overshadows the danger befalling on a woman mired in a precarious situation, thus not for one second, audience dreads for Janet's safety, which makes her a less all-around character for the sake of characterization. She is no man's fortune and all man's poison, yet, Janet still enjoys a last laugh before ironically hoisted by her own petard.

Also enmeshed in the fix (though unwittingly) is Janet's secretary Chris Dale (a comely Murray, calmly nerves herself to confront Davis in a poorly designed role) and her fiancé Larry (a blandly handsome Steel), who actually is Janet's paramour for almost a year. While the bloom is clearly off the rose, Davis (at the age of 43) pluckily knuckles down the cougar town and as this reviewer sees it, takes more pleasure in the scenes where a youthful Chris concedes defeat to her and implores her to give Larry back, lines like "you are a charming woman who can have any man you want." appear many time to reassure Davis that her appeal still prevail (over her much younger competitors), but in hindsight, a self-defeating whiff of deep-rooted insecurity is all one can sniff.

British actor Emlyn Williams, third-billed as the nosey-parker, smart-aleck veterinarian-turned-amateur-sleuth Dr. Henderson, has never bedded in felicitously in his somewhat vexing and often unaccountable blow-ins, a better script can offer more coherence, and one thing is for sure, this film-noir does pull out all its stops to suffix poetic justice in its cockamamie plot.

I appreciate this terse movie's smart script, staging, and tight editing, especially upon second viewing. Of course the nosy neighbor veterinarian serves mainly as a plot vehicle, but the role is well acted. Gary Merrill's George Bates seems lacking some refinement of expression. He plays it like an open book, and makes Bates a totally sympathetic character. The story hinges on the power plays between Bates and devious Janet as, chained together by their crimes, they struggle for the upper hand via her scheming and his brute force. Their tortured relationship could have a plausible chance for success, given the plot circumstances, but the secretary's fiancé Larry is in the way, creating a tension that draws the characters to the unhappy climax. Davis is in good form, and this is an entertaining film.

Since there is a finite number of Bette Davis films available for viewing in 2006, one has to value each for what it is. Although "Poison" may not be in her top 10, Davis is the master, and it is infinitely preferable to experience it than not.

Overblown melodrama with Bette pulling out all the stops and putting any idea of subtlety aside. If you enjoy films where she turns in that sort of performance as opposed to her quieter work in films like Dark Victory or Watch on the Rhine than this is for you. Reunited with her Now, Voyager director but certainly not on a script of that calibre he seems unable to rein her in, everybody else tries to compete and while the rest of the cast turn in decent performances when Bette struts into view blowing smoke and popping her eyes no one else stands a chance. Filmed directly after one of her best performances in All About Eve and with new husband Gary Merrill in tow she apparently didn't think much of the script and as she sometimes did when faced with less than stellar material she plays to the balconies. Deliciously grand and over the top.