ANOTHER MAN'S POISON (1951)

The title’s something of a spoiler in this soggy, stage-bound thriller that’s more fun than it has any right to be. Bette Davis, just out of ALL ABOUT EVE/’50, looking ravaged & ravished at 43*, is a British-based pulp mystery writer with an estranged husband and a hot affair with her secretary’s fiancé. But one dark & stormy night, after evening tête-à-tête with beloved horse Fury, Gary Merrill (her real-life husband-at-the-time) pays an unwelcome call. He’s just robbed a bank with the missing husband! Turns out, Bette knows all about it; hell, she’s just murdered the guy with an overdose of horse medicine; he’s lying dead in the drawing-room now. Yikes! Well, guess there’s nothing for it but for Merrill to impersonate said dead husband. Heck, no one in town has ever seen the guy and the only picture of him in the big country estate is none too clear. (Hmm, like this plot?) Now if only nosy horse doctor Emlyn Williams* wasn’t constantly butting in to ask leading questions. Nonsense, of course, but wonderfully shot with cobblestoned film noir trimmings by Robert (THIRD MAN) Krasker, and energetically helmed by Bette’s old Warner Bros. mate Irving Rapper. It’s something of an off-beat find.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Davis’s looks alter alarmingly all thru the pic. But whether looking at her worst or best, it’s hard to think of a more ‘interesting’ face in the movies.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Bette Davis starred in the film version of Emlyn Williams’ great stage success THE CORN IS GREEN/’45, as the spinster schoolteacher who mentors a fictionalized version of . . . Emlyn Williams (played in the film by John Dall).