Poison (2001 Video) User Reviews

Thy Neighbor's Wife: Boobies!

[Platypuschow · 4/10 · 18 September 2018]

Thy Neighbor's Wife otherwise known as Poison, otherwise known as Midnight Vendetta, otherwise known as Sex Attraction (For some reason) is a US made thriller starring Kari Wuhrer.

She stars as a woman gone mad after her husbands suicide, she becomes the house keeper for the family of woman she feels is responsible and through a series of mind games and manipulations aims on tearing them apart from the inside.

Trouble is we've seen this plot before, and we've seen it done a lot better.

Wuhrer is someone I consider to be a poor actress who contributes little beyond looking the part. Here she demonstrates that yet again and adds to the fairly high T&A levels.

It's generic, it's standard stuff and though it's not entirely terrible it's certainly take your brain out level entertainment.

The Good:

I'm a simple man, I see boobs I click like

The Bad:

Weak plot

Certain parts simply don't make much sense

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Your father didn't do it like that!

Sometimes gentlemen prefer brunettes.

[gridoon · 4/10 · 16 July 2003]

This movie is a direct rip-off of "Scorned", which in turn was itself a direct rip-off of "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle"; they even hired an Andrew Stevens lookalike to play the husband. To give you an idea of its quality, I will elaborate on the "bloodless" murder a previous reviewer talked about, and tell you that it must also be the first stabbing in the history of cinema that is executed without a knife! Yes, I swear, play the scene frame-by-frame and you'll see that when Wuhrer is supposed to be stabbing the housemaid to death, she isn't actually holding anything! Maybe that explains the lack of blood. But that's not all; the dialogue that's used to show us how the family is in a constant state of crisis is forced, awkward and delivered at the most inappropriate moments. The script is totally by-the-numbers, with every plot point telegraphed in advance (the "evil woman" seduces the father and the son, makes friends with the daughter, causes health problems for the mother, etc.). Despite all that, the film IS ultimately worth seeing, for one reason alone: Kari Wuhrer. With her pretty face, voluptuous and supple figure, and insinuating voice, she manages the no-small-feat of being just as sexy when she is dressed as when she is naked. She certainly blows Shannon Tweed out of the water in any case. (*1/2)

Standard thriller, but quite funny to watch

[The_Void · 6/10 · 12 July 2007]

What we have here is a dumbed down, (seemingly) made for TV, version of the nineties thriller 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle'. The main reason I saw this, aside from the fact I seem to have something of a penchant for stupid and rather dull thrillers, is the fact that it stars Kari Wuhrer. Her name might not mean a lot to a lot of people, but she's about the closest thing we've got a B-movie queen nowadays (although she really does need to get a better agent!). As mentioned, the plot pretty much rips off The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, although this time there is a different reason for revenge and the unfortunate woman at the centre has a different affliction. Wuhrer plays a woman upset after her husband killed himself due to his work colleagues. She takes it upon herself to get revenge, killing a couple of them, before posing as a maid for another. She worms her way into the family through each of the different members, all the while plotting her sweet revenge.

The thing that makes this film fun is the fact that it's completely ridiculous! The acting is terrible, and there are several sequences that are just far too convenient and/or don't make any sense at all! The film is directed by Jim Wynorski, who made Chopping Mall in 1986 before going to make a load of made for video crap, like this film. Some of the soft porn from his other films has made it into this one, and while we don't get to see much; there are plenty of breasts on display to keep things interesting. Kari Wuhrer gives by far the best performance and single handily makes the movie worth watching. She's always nice to look at, which cant really be said for the overall experience of watching this movie; but it is nice to see Re-Animator's Barbara Crampton on screen again. The plot is fairly standard stuff and although there is some attempt to build the characters, it is all a bit hard to care about. It doesn't take a genius to work out what will happen in the end, but there's plenty of laughs (for wrong reasons, mostly) on the way and while this is pretty crap, it's nice, gentle viewing and I did rather enjoy wasting time on it.

More of a horrid movie than a horror movie

[curious-11 · 18 June 2003]

The other reviews are quite on-the-money, so I won't go over the same material, other than to state that this movie has to be one of the clumsiest movies I've ever seen.

Things that ought to have been simple to get right, but obviously weren't:

1) The astonishingly well-endowed housekeeper undresses and gets in the shower. Ann (Kari) sneaks into the house, grabs a VERY large kitchen knife, and proceeds to stab the housekeeper to death with blow after blow with the knife. There is NO blood being spattered. She then wraps the body in a white sheet, and is carrying it through the house. Still no blood. At ALL. With the number of times the housekeeper was stabbed, you'd think she'd be draining like a sieve. But apparently she clots REALLY well.

2) Ann manages to empty a full freezer of its contents, put the body in, and refill the freezer, all in the space of about 30 seconds while the daughter is trying to open the garage door. Although the freezer was full when opened, adding an adult womans body and then piling everything on top doesn't seem to add any mass to the freezer.

3) Ann sneaks into her husbands bosses house, turns on the gas, and sets a light to spark when the switch is turned on. The boss is upstairs, but comes down. Comes down a very large staircase. When he turns on the light, the house is shown (exploding) from the outside. The house is clearly one story.

4) Numerous interior shots of the families house also shows it to be two story. Numerous exterior shots of the house show it to be one story. Apparently it is MUCH larger on the inside than the outside.

5) How many times can a person REALLY get hit full-force with a heavy piece of steel and not be killed? Apparently a LOT of times, because both the husband and Ann repeately give each other good solid blows with both a crowbar and a tire iron. Neither one ends up in the hospital. The husband DOES get a minor cut on his forehead, though.

One wonders if the director or producers even watched this movie prior to releasing it.

When Kari Wuhrer is providing the best acting in a movie...

[jman_316 · 4/10 · 9 July 2003]

...you know you've just got a direct-to-video stinker. The storyline has been done before (woman attempts to get even with family she feels killed her husband), and has been done better. At least with Shannon Tweed's "Scorned" it didn't take itself too seriously so it made the film enjoyable. This is pretty much dreck from the word "Action!" The male actors in this aren't good at all. Seth Adams Jones who plays David gives perhaps the worst "emotion" scene in film history when he talks to his father about how he should've been stricter. Melissa Stone adds the single worst sex scene in film history as well. While her dolt boyfriend is screwing her on top of their freezer, she just lays there with a straight, hurry-up-and-get-this-scene-over-with-so-I-can-put-my-shirt-back-on face that totally kills whatever eroticism the scene could have.

The other sex scenes aren't much better. Wuhrer can't even be bothered to take her panties off for her scene. Crampton has to use a body double so blatant I wondered why they even bothered with this scene. In the end, Wuhrer's character wins and she drives off into the sunset. There are much better Wuhrer movies, skip over this one.

Highly overrated

[mentalcritic · 2/10 · 8 January 2005]

Yes, you heard me right. This film is very highly overrated, and given that it enjoys a 3.7 rating at the time of this writing, that should tell you all that you need to know about it. Maybe it is the gratuitous display of enlarged breasts that caused no less than seven people to give it a ten out of ten. It certainly cannot be the dialogue, which is about as stilted as one can get. Nor could it possibly be the acting, as the cast here make the Days Of Our Lives or Home And Away alumni look good.

Then there's the plot devices. Any film that uses diabetes as a plot device, especially to attempt the murder of a character, automatically gets a thumbs-down from me. Having lived with the condition for seventeen years now, I can tell anyone who hasn't seen an example of it that it takes a lot more than our antagonist does to use someone's diabetes to kill them. It becomes quite clear from the prop syringes used in this film, as well as the fact that the diabetic stereotype (one cannot call these things characters) never checks what her blood glucose level is, that makes it clear the writers here did exactly no research into the condition. Oh, and before I forget, replacing the contents of a 10ml bottle of insulin with saline using a .5ml syringe cannot be done in a matter of minutes, or even an hour. That's one for the goof list.

I had to add this, but I have no trouble believing that nobody in the past twenty years, under the age of fifty, has died from diabetes. Gloria Foster was sixty-eight when she died, and even then, I doubt that her diabetes was the sole factor. It would take a deliberate effort on the victim's part, and one that could not possibly be sustained in light of the incredibly painful symptoms of hyperglycaemia (a word I am sure the writer here has never heard).

One will also note that while this character's synthetic insulin is replaced with saline, and her food spiked (both of which would be impossible to do without escaping notice), she still moves like a gymnast. When one's blood sugar is as high as is implied in one scene, it doesn't just make one feel heated. It makes one feel as if their bones have been hollowed out and filled with ground-up glass. This, and a few blood glucose tests, would invoke a visit to the hospital, which would absolutely defeat the purpose of this scheme.

About an hour into the film, we all drop pretensions and wind up with what is essentially a porn film without the money shot. The horrible background music makes it abundantly clear that the distributor who picked this turgid effort up is also responsible for such stinkers as All The Rage or 2001: A Space Travesty as well as such soft porn crap as Illicit Dreams 2. In short, this is an effort from a porn producer who wants to look vaguely respectable.

In my parlance, a rating of two out of ten is a damning score. This is mainly because it indicates a film that is not bad enough to be good in a reversed sort of way, but rather just plain bad. It is not as offensively awful as some of the stinkers I have rated here, but it is not that far off.

Truly Bad!

[seamusotoole · 1/10 · 14 March 2005]

This movie is truly bad and I can safely say that it is one of the worst films I have watched this year! This film plays more like a bad soap than a thriller. The plot is badly thought out, the dialog is stilted and the acting is wooden at best. Kari Wurher was the only good thing about this movie and even she struggled to give it any life. It includes several gratuitous sex scenes which consist mainly of closeups of silicon enlarged breasts and which have very little to do with the plot. This may of course appeal to a number of people into porn flicks but to most of us it is just down right annoying. Maybe the writers got confused and thought they were still writing a soft-core porn title? Give this one a miss, it is not worth it!

I can't believe I rented this.

[Bacterium · 1/10 · 23 June 2003]

The box looked vaguely enticing. A revenge thriller. Well, it wasn't. It was a sorry collection of scenes cobbled together in a fashion that paid, no more than, lip service to the concept of a story line. The only thing that kept my attention was the realization (which came about 20 minutes in) that every female character in the film was going to get her kit off at some stage. Unfortunately, whilst this does happen, these scenes are interspersed between far too much "drama". Having said that, I still think this video would be far more appropriately placed behind the beaded curtain (at the local video store) than out with the serious movies.

90% copy paste of scorned 1993 by Shannon tweed.

[afterdarkpak · 5/10 · 5 August 2020]

If somebody watched scorned , then its almost same story, but the ending of scorned is way better than this stupid movie.

anyhow , both movies has some really hot woman with hot boobies. some weird acting and stupid end plot, but still its good.

Totally weird tale of revenge

[rlcsljo · 6/10 · 9 August 2002]

*WARNING: Spoilers ahead*

The movie starts off with a rather promising premise: A guy uses his wife to "close the deal" by letting the contractee have sex with his wife (Wuhrer). Her husband expects a promotion, but instead is fired(!), after apparently landing a big contract.

No real reason is given, other than they had been looking for someone else for a while. Her husband commits suicide and Kari is on the warpath. Logically, she kills her husband's boss and mistress.

But, illogically, she turns her attention to the woman who replace her husband and her family (Crampton). No indication is given that she might be crazy, although she may have just felt sexually "used" for no ultimate purpose, but this is never explored.

Fortunately, before everyone is killed, or set up, a lot of people have sex, including Kari with the woman's son--this movies only redeeming virtue (redeem away).

Just a disappointment, because Kari did not do the bulk of the nudity.

I was at the LADWP when some scenes from this movie were shot, I did not get to see Kari, however--nuts!

"Anna" middle name Lucky

[tritonv8 · 5/10 · 1 March 2006]

I enjoyed the title but their was some remarkable circumstances. A house in Beverly Hills CA without a burglar alarm give me a brake. Anna so easily blowing up a house with kitchen gas cook-top and a crack ceiling flood light bulb.

You distantly heard the clicking of the pilots ignitions that would have lit the gas (safely) The residents heard the breaking of the door window slightly but not enough to investigate the man investigated at the sound of Anna cracking the light bulb witch was before she put the gas on. The gas was on about 2-3 minutes when the man put the kitchen lite on and the house looked like it was hit by a WW II flame thrower. If gas was that explosive I doubt if we would be using it in our homes.

Diabetes covered well by another viewer.

The killing of the housekeeper. Anna had so much time to stab to death a body in shower and clean up blood or keep off carpet in route to garage freezer.

Anna as new housekeeper good bluff waving her references in Nicoles face. A couple of phone calls could have taken care of that a good job for their daughter who was grounded and had to be home at 3:00PM. The housekeeper so beautiful but evidently a loner that no one notice her disappearance for I think time frame was about a week to 10 days.

The fight in the end could be okay , but she could have put the housekeepers body in pool and let police do the rest. Well the fight was important to make Nicoles husband look guilty and to not pursue her. Summation; "Anna" middle name Lucky

Fills-out a perfect trio of awful flicks

[caa821 · 10/10 · 18 April 2007]

After seeing this movie listed, and then looking at the previous comments here, there was no way I was going to miss it. Everybody knows "Plan 9 from Outer Space," is the worst flick, ever, without a lot of argument. For me, another absolutely, fascinatingly awful one is the opus starring Bruce Jenner and the Village People, "Can't Stop the Music."

Now, with this film, you have the perfect trio of absolutely, totally and wonderfully awful films, in three genres: science fiction, musical, and murder/drama.

Early-on, I was fascinated how the vengeful lead blew-up the home (one story outside, two stories within, as another already pointed-out). That stove had to have emitted gas fumes, in just a few seconds, at a rate which had to revise at least a half-dozen basic laws of physics. And the explosion created upon the target's flipping a light switch was greater than the one Jack Hawkins, Bill Holden, and their crew of experts, spent all night arranging, with about a ton of ordnance, in blowing the bridge on the River Kwai.

On to the bloodless stabbing, the placing the corpse in the freezer, replacing the frozen foods (all while the daughter operated the garage door opener) ---- and on, and on, and on.

My only disagreement with some of the folks on this site is that -- like the fore-mentioned other two flicks -- this one is also SO AWFUL that it DOES rate moving the dial in reverse from "O" and back to a "10"!!

------------------------------

Having entered the above comment April/07 -- I happened to notice this film being run again today (12/26/07) -- and couldn't miss the opportunity to view this bizarre story once more.

In accordance with this site's policy, from here this would have to be considered in the **SPOILER** category -- although I don't think this flick evokes a feeling of suspense on anything near a Hitchcock level.

What did intrigue me anew, and a point I can't imagine missing commenting upon previously, is some detail of the ending. When the mostly clueless husband, now widowed, looks through the box with the effects from his late spouse's office, he encounters the photo of the femme fatale with her husband; a quick call to her assistant reveals he was wife's predecessor, had committed suicide, and his wife had run amok in the office following.

This guy was so low-key in performing this role, we can only guess this now provided him some clue as to recent household events. However, the villainess heard his call to the assistant on an extension (naturally!), and a few moments later, attacks him in the garage. The two of them move, in combat, outside into the rain by the family swimming pool. They duel -- like, say Jackie Chan taking-on Chuck Norris -- utilizing , NO KIDDING, a tire iron and fireplace poker, respectively. Each strikes successful blows, but there is later no real residual injury indicated on either.

She is hurdled into the swimming pool, and appears to sink. He immediately dials 911 to report the incident. In the next scene, reference is made in dialog with the detective in-charge about the housekeeper's demise. This all could not have been more than a half-hour (in Beverly Hills!) since his call, probably less. The detective says something relating to the time span since she fell dead into the pool. Hubby/widower does indicate he had perhaps blacked-out for a bit, obviously indicating he could be 15 minutes off in his reckoning.

Next, the cover is removed from the corpse at the pool's edge, revealing the prior domestic, slain and placed in the freezer by the current one weeks prior.

The flick concludes with the villainess now driving happily on a highway to who-knows-where, hearing on the radio of the husband's arrest (he's identified as a prominent attorney, for Pete's sake!) and now also under suspicion for his wife's reason demise.

Such silliness is wonderfully consistent with the rest of this offering. This anti-heroine deserves a sequel. And it should begin by showing a flashback, showing how, in a maximum of, say, 15 minutes she: extricated herself, drenched, from the pool (without husband/widower seeing her); then extricated the frozen corpse from the freezer and deposited it into the pool (again, without being seen/heard); and finally, got-the-hell out of there before the cops arrive - remember, this is Beverly Hills, far removed from any public transportation; got herself and her wardrobe together, obtained a nice vehicle, and managed to get onto the highway, all apparently by the next day or so.

Thousands of films have produced many, many unbelievable occurrences. This climax could well be the most wonderfully outrageous of all-time.

Illogical so what? It's entertaining

[merklekranz · 7/10 · 26 April 2007]

In the end nothing else matters. Not the huge explosion from a trickling of gas, not the bloodless stabbing, not the medical inconsistencies, not the forensic evidence, not the derivative plot. The only thing that matters is that "Poison" is entertaining. This movie has everything, suspense, ample nudity, good character development, surprise ending, and of course, the wonderful Kari Wuhrer and Barbara Crampton. Do not listen to the people who trash "Poison" because of the above trivial objections, instead sit back and prepare to be amazed by this highly entertaining, sexy, revenge thriller. - MERK

Thy Neighbor

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 22 May 2022]

Also known as Poison and Midnight Vendetta, this Jim Wynorski film puts together a yin and a yang of enticing female stars with Kari Wuhrer and Barbara Crampton as Ann Stewart and Nicole Garrett.

Ann's husband Chris will do anything to get ahead, even hot wife her for his clients. Yet when he's fired - he soon commits suicide - and replaced by Nicole's husband Scott (Jeff Trachta), you may say that she loses her mind. She starts by blowing up the CEO who fired her husband real good with his entire family collateral damage.

Nicole and Scott barely get along. They're both too busy with work. Their daughter Darla (Melissa Stone) is coming of age - and doing even more on a washing machine with her boyfriend - while their current housekeeper Karina (Peggy Trentini) is so close to making Scott renounce his marital promises.

That's when Ann comes on in, kills Karina in the shower, gets hired as the new au pair and starts taking over as wife and mother. Also, she pours raw sugar into diabetic Nicole's food, which is in no way how you kill a diabetic. You just make them very tired that way. I mean, I guess eventually you could murder someone that way but it feels so ineffective.

Barbara Crampton looks younger than her teen daughter.

Every shot seems to be edited in a way that makes each shot after a closer close-up until scenes cut and paste on top of each other, edits ending before dialogue does, a hamfisted attempt at assembling what one can only imagine are the only takes of each scene with all the coverage of the Little Match Girl on a cold winer's night.

Then again, Kari Wuhrer and Barbara Crampton go to war.

Poison aka Thy Neighbour's Wife aka Midnight Vendetta

[allmoviesfan · 6/10 · 28 October 2022]

A thriller with three names - just to confuse everyone!

Not sure how I even got started watching this film where the very beautiful Kari Wuhrer plays a wife whose husband commits suicide as a result of not getting a promotion at work. I guess as you do when you're his wife and you're upset, Kari's character goes on to spend a great deal of time ingratiating herself with the family of the man she feels is responsible for her husband's death.

What follows is some sex and nudity + some scheming and murder as her plan comes slowly to fruition. Not the most original thriller ever, and I'm pretty sure it's been done better elsewhere, but still a fairly enjoyable film that doesn't burn through too much brainpower.

The ending doesn't add up (***SPOILER ALERT***)

[Aitch-5 · 22 August 2004]

I could comment on the famously fakey shower-stabbing scene. I could comment on the fact that the film seems to be rooting for a woman who spends most of the film plotting the destruction of an innocent if slightly dysfunctional family. Instead I'll comment on the ending, because it's one of those endings that stick in your mind BECAUSE THEY DON'T ADD UP. Apply five minutes of deduction to the ending and it falls apart.

STOP READING IF YOU PLAN ON SEEING THIS FILM.

I'm going to try to be circumspect about this and hope I don't spoil it too much -- but if you have already seen this film, you know that eventually the police get involved, and that Person A is arrested. If you've seen the film, you may remember that someone has died before this and that the personal effects of that person are brought to the house. Mixed in with the personal effects are some things that belonged to the spouse of Person B, the person causing all the mayhem. One of these items was a framed photograph of Person B and the spouse. Think for a moment and you'll realize that Person B, after several days, has planted fingerprints all over the house. Recall also that Person A was told, not long after discovering the photograph, that (1) Person A's spouse replaced Person B's spouse at work, and (2) Person B's spouse had died, and (3) both events happened not long before Person B got involved in Person A's life.

***HERE IS THE SPOILER:*** Person A is framed. The film tries to leave us with the impression that Person A is in massive legal trouble, while Person B drives off into the sunset smiling serenely -- that Person B has won. But wait a minute!

What about all the forensic evidence that Person B would have left around? How much time could Person B have spent cleaning all of it up? Ask yourself if Person B would have known about the photograph showing Person B's face. Recall that Person B showed up at the place where Person A's spouse works and made a huge scene, so that at least two people who work there would definitely remember seeing and hearing Person B (along with however many people there would have been who weren't on camera but who were presumably working in cubicles and offices nearby).

Ask yourself whether it's really Person A or Person B who's going to be facing legal trouble, when all Person A has to do is explain the events of the past few weeks and SHOW THE COPS THAT DAMNED PHOTOGRAPH. Ask yourself how long it would really take, if the cops had any competence at all, before the cops got curious about Person B.

I realize this is just a cheap erotic thriller and you're not supposed to take it seriously, but still...

A thriller that doesn't really thrill

[wizard5233 · 6/10 · 6 September 2001]

Not much of a thriller to me, this movie was very hard to understand. Anna Stewart is the wife of a business man who just lost his job to a woman from the Garrett family. Anna's husband later dies in a car accident and Anna avenges his death. She kills her husband's old boss, and then heads to the Garrett home. Anna kills the housekeeper and then takes on the housekeeper's job. What happens afterwards is very hard to understand, Anna has sex with the men in the family and slowly kills the mother of the Garrett family. This is one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. I don't recommend you watch this movie unless you want to see a lot of nudity, if you do want to watch a movie similar to this one, I would recommend that you watch Basic Instinct. Don't waste time with this so called thriller.

Really enjoyed this erotic thriller.

[alienlegend · 7/10 · 22 August 2023]

Kari Wuhrer and Barbara Crampton are a great combo. Yes, the film is ridiculous and doesn't make a lick of sense but it doesn't matter. I don't think anyone sitting down to watch this will be expecting Citizen Kane or Casablanca. Obviously, this is just meant to be entertaining and titillating. It easily succeeds at both. I was never bored like with some of these erotic thrillers. Of course, it isn't near the level of Fatal Attraction or Basic Instinct but it's a great B movie and Jim Wynorski knocked it out of the park. Kari Wuhrer really steals the show and there is plenty of nudity. If you enjoy these kinds of movies, I think you'll certainly appreciate this one.