Another Man's Poison Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Another Man's Poison Blu-ray Movie Review

All About Janet.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 16, 2017

The drama surrounding the backstage turmoil during the making of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has provided fodder for the kind of camptastic new FX series Feud, which this season bears the sobriquet Feud: Bette and Joan. (I have to say as an aside, after having only caught the premiere episode, I think Susan Sarandon should really be playing Tallulah Bankhead instead of Bette Davis—the similarity in appearance between Sarandon in Feud and Bankhead is pretty amazing.) One of the sidebars to the main rivalry between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in Feud is Davis’ tempestuous but obviously passionate relationship with Gary Merrill, to whom she was married from 1950 to 1960 (though Feud stretches that just a bit, or at least suggests their relationship continued beyond their divorce). Davis and Merrill met on the set of All About Eve, and sparks must have flown pretty instantaneously, since they ended up marrying even before the film was released and only very shortly after their divorces to their previous spouses had been finalized. (Kind of ironically considering my statement about Sarandon above, many people thought Davis had based her performance of Margo Channing on Tallulah Bankhead.) Davis and Merrill made two more films together after All About Eve, with the first of them being a British production from 1951 entitled Another Man’s Poison. Their final film collaboration followed in 1952, Phone Call from a Stranger, but again kind of ironically Another Man’s Poison begins with a “phone call from a stranger” of sorts, as Janet Frobisher (Bette Davis) makes a surreptitious call to an obviously much younger man named Larry Stevens (Anthony Steel), urging him to pretend she’s a stranger since Larry’s girlfriend Chris Dale (Barbara Murray) is with him. The fact that Chris turns out to be Janet’s secretary is one of the first clues that Janet may be a woman of somewhat questionable morality. It won’t be the last.

Already director Irving Rapper (who helmed one of Davis’ best remembered films from the 1940s, Now, Voyager) has resorted to several high angle shots with deep chiaroscuro lighting techniques that suggest this may be a film noir, or at least a film noir wannabe, though Davis doesn’t exactly fall into the traditional blonde bombshell femme fatale category, especially at this point in her career. That noir ambience continues to inform the film, though it’s questionable who is exactly leading whom to their demise. After Janet makes her phone call from the local train station, she's accosted by kindly if obviously very nosy neighbor Dr. Henderson (Emlyn Williams), who is ultimately revealed to be a veterinarian who has helped Janet with some undisclosed problem with her beloved horse Fury.

When Janet returns to her rather luxe mansion, the framings Rapper and cinematographer Robert Krasker (not so coincidentally a noir standout and Oscar winner for The Third Man) choose suggest something untoward is about to happen, but it’s still a bit of a surprise when a man jumps out of a chair to scare Janet (it’s a decidedly odd sight—and sound—to witness the usually preternaturally composed Davis emit a horrified scream of terror). That turns out to be a ne’er-do-well named George Bates (Gary Merrill), who is on the hunt for Janet’s estranged husband whom George suspects is hiding out at Janet’s home after he and George have badly bungled a bank robbery, leading to the death of a policeman. Without spoiling one of the film’s kind of delicious acting moments for Davis, suffice it to say that Janet’s husband may be around, but he’s not overly “active”.

That then leads to George deciding he should be Janet’s new “husband”, something she’s not exactly thrilled about but which she’s more or less forced into when the kindly (if nosy) Dr. Henderson shows back up at her house. It’s even more necessary when Janet’s secretary Chris and her boyfriend Larry also descend upon the place. There’s all sorts of almost farce laden door slamming going on, as Janet attempts to maintain control of the situation, but there are a couple of looming questions that undercut some of the suspense of the film, including what exactly George thinks he’s going to achieve by masquerading as Janet’s husband. It’s of course a ludicrous plot point to begin with, but with an almost hyperbolically committed performance by Davis, it almost works most of the time.

Another Man’s Poison was based on a play entitled Deadlock, and its theatrical roots are more than evident in what is in essence a one set outing (despite Rapper’s attempts to at least minimally open up things with a few visits outside). While the whole foundation of the plot is a bit unstable, there’s actually considerable tension that builds up, leading to one of those wonderful (if predictable) twists that suggests kindly (if nosy) doctors may not be as naive as they appear. Speaking of kindly (if nosy) doctors, while Emlyn Williams portrays one in the film, he reportedly did doctoring of another kind—namely script doctoring—on the film when Davis and Merrill weren’t satisfied with Val Guest’s screenplay. While Guest’s name will probably be familiar to at least some niche science fiction fans as director of films like The Quatermass Xperiment, Williams may be remembered these days more for his acting than for his writing, though it’s interesting to note he provided the source play for one of Davis’ other 1940s films, The Corn Is Green (also directed by Rapper).

Another Man's Poison Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Poison is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of ClassicFlix with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. This is the first Blu-ray release from this label, founded by David Kawas, who started the company to try to help fill in the gaps of available classic films and television on home video, something he thought services like Netflix weren't meeting. Mr. Kawas shared that this nicely done restoration came courtesy of Cohen Media Group, and may have been done in conjunction with the British Film Institute (and just to prove that independent labels can all get along, evidently Shout! Factory facilitated the deal). The results here are largely excellent, featuring elements devoid of even any minor damage, with a nicely resolved grain field and excellent contrast. Detail levels are generally very high, offering some great fine detail like the little hairs that fly away from Davis' mohair sweater. Some occasional slight deficits in shadow detail accrue in some of the many dark scenes (as can be seen in a couple of screenshots included in this review), and there's also just a bit of wobble during the British Censor card and the opening titles. There's also what looks like an optical zoom toward the end of the film where grain gets just a little overly gritty looking (as should be expected - see screenshot 9), but otherwise this is a great beginning for ClassicFlix that the label will hopefully be able to continue as they release more Blu-rays.

Another Man's Poison Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Another Man's Poison features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track that offers the expected slight boxiness of that era's sound recording technologies, but which has no appreciable damage or even overly noticeable hiss to mention. The film's occasional underscore is slightly thin sounding, but dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly, as are the occasional sound effects.

Another Man's Poison Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplementary material is offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Another Man's Poison Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Another Man's Poison offers a wonderful showcase for Bette Davis' best conniving sensibilities, and she has a field day with a character who is kind of an unapologetic rhymes with witch. The supporting cast is at least competent, with Merrill and Williams doing good work in maintaining what at times is a strained suspension of disbelief. The film's style is also quite interesting, obviously benefiting from established noir approaches without really going totally in that direction. ClassicFlix has offered a disc with solid technical merits, but no supplementary material. Recommended.