The cleverness of a best-selling mystery writer gets her to see if she can get away with murder, but you know it's going to catch up with her. Bette Davis is the calculating American author, living in seclusion on the Moors and determined to let no man get in her way. It's very apparent that she loves her prized horse Fury more than any other man.
The visit by a stranger (Gary Merrill) exposes at least one of her crimes as he is there to find her estranged husband whom she calmly tells him is lying in the other room....dead. Certain he will end up being made an accessory, Merrill arranges to get rid of the body for her, but when the local veterinarian (Emlyn Williams) keeps stopping by, Davis and Merrill pretend (reluctantly on Davis's part) to be husband and wife. The doctor had made a compound for the ailing Fury which taken in large doses can be fatal, and Davis pretends she used it all up, hanging on to it just in case she needs it again. She's in love with her secretary's fiancée, and even though it is apparent that she's obviously a decade older than him (at least), has managed to seduce him. As the game between Davis and Merrill gets more dangerous, each of them uses a one-upmanship on the other, but it is very apparent that nobody will be the winner in this deliciously wicked game.
While Davis referred to herself as a character actress who happened to play leads, she hadn't really begun to play character parts at this point even though she was past the age where most leading players turn to character or supporting parts. She still has the Margo Channing/Tallulah hairstyle, and is even a bit portly, but it is obvious that she is still using her sexual wiles to keep the men in her life under her thumb. Like a female spider, she uses those desires to lure men to their doom, and even with much subtlety in her performance, it is obvious to the audience that she is quite deadly. Only on a few occasions does she allow those typically famous Bette Davis theatrics to take over her performance. She has met her devious match, however, in Merrill, and intellectual match in Williams. It's surprising that the writers did not have any of the characters playing chess together, because the plot is exactly like that, and when certain characters get "checked", you know that it will take only one move for them to get "mated".
While certainly a fascinating melodrama (and Davis is always fascinating even in the most outlandish of stories), this suffers from too many implausibilities and even some tediously slow moving dialog scenes to be totally successful. But once it does get off the ground, it really becomes mesmerizing, and like a bad car accident, it is difficult to turn away from it. Davis's final moments on screen are fraught with tension as it becomes more and more obvious that her sins have obviously driven her mad. After having been so noble as her lover in "All About Eve", it's nice to see Merrill step up to the plate to toss her a curve ball. Anthony Steel and Barbara Murray's characters are nowhere nearly as interesting as Davis, Merrill and Williams', and as a result come off as rather bland.
The visit by a stranger (Gary Merrill) exposes at least one of her crimes as he is there to find her estranged husband whom she calmly tells him is lying in the other room....dead. Certain he will end up being made an accessory, Merrill arranges to get rid of the body for her, but when the local veterinarian (Emlyn Williams) keeps stopping by, Davis and Merrill pretend (reluctantly on Davis's part) to be husband and wife. The doctor had made a compound for the ailing Fury which taken in large doses can be fatal, and Davis pretends she used it all up, hanging on to it just in case she needs it again. She's in love with her secretary's fiancée, and even though it is apparent that she's obviously a decade older than him (at least), has managed to seduce him. As the game between Davis and Merrill gets more dangerous, each of them uses a one-upmanship on the other, but it is very apparent that nobody will be the winner in this deliciously wicked game.
While Davis referred to herself as a character actress who happened to play leads, she hadn't really begun to play character parts at this point even though she was past the age where most leading players turn to character or supporting parts. She still has the Margo Channing/Tallulah hairstyle, and is even a bit portly, but it is obvious that she is still using her sexual wiles to keep the men in her life under her thumb. Like a female spider, she uses those desires to lure men to their doom, and even with much subtlety in her performance, it is obvious to the audience that she is quite deadly. Only on a few occasions does she allow those typically famous Bette Davis theatrics to take over her performance. She has met her devious match, however, in Merrill, and intellectual match in Williams. It's surprising that the writers did not have any of the characters playing chess together, because the plot is exactly like that, and when certain characters get "checked", you know that it will take only one move for them to get "mated".
While certainly a fascinating melodrama (and Davis is always fascinating even in the most outlandish of stories), this suffers from too many implausibilities and even some tediously slow moving dialog scenes to be totally successful. But once it does get off the ground, it really becomes mesmerizing, and like a bad car accident, it is difficult to turn away from it. Davis's final moments on screen are fraught with tension as it becomes more and more obvious that her sins have obviously driven her mad. After having been so noble as her lover in "All About Eve", it's nice to see Merrill step up to the plate to toss her a curve ball. Anthony Steel and Barbara Murray's characters are nowhere nearly as interesting as Davis, Merrill and Williams', and as a result come off as rather bland.