Crampton Watch: Poison (2001)

Watched:  09/27/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jim Wynorski

Always a good sign when a movie has been given multiple names.  This one is listed as Poison (2001) on IMDB, but is also listed as Thy Neighbor's Wife, but I found it - for free - on Amazon as Midnight Vendetta.  

Why did I find it?  I was thinking "man, it's been a while since I watched a Barbara Crampton movie."  And while I am not gearing up to see *every* Barbara Crampton movie, stranger things have happened.  

Don't worry, as we enter the spooky season, we'll work in more Crampton who has camped out in horror films and is really working a lot, so it'll keep me busy and off the streets.

Poison is part of the post-Hand that Rocks the Cradle barrage of domestic thrillers that spun off into a whole thing on the Lifetime network.  The basic idea is:  women, your home is not safe from a seductress, who also *has murderous intent*.  

Here, our seductress is 90's MTV gameshow host and B-movie actress Kari Wuhrer.  She's married to a guy who must get a deal done to secure a Vice Presidency with his company, so he has Wuhrer sleep with him.  The next day, her husband loses his job and sorts out that they hired an unwitting Barbara Crampton instead.  

In a funk, and after telling Wuhrer everything, he drives a classic car off a cliff, apparently with trunkload of gas, as the car really goes up.

Crampton (who is maybe just under 40 here) is playing the mother to a college-aged son and an 18 year old daughter, and for reasons, they go ahead and say she's the age she is instead of fudging it.  She's not living in domestic bliss.  Her daughter is trying hard to be a floozy and her son is about to get kicked out of college for bad grades (but is away).

Crampton pleased with the fine work of new maid

They have a maid in the form of a B-movie pin-up girl (Peggy Trentini).  And Crampton is married to a functioning alcoholic with a mullet and a Don Johnson beard played by Jeff Trachta.

Wuhrer decides she needs revenge.  Explosively so.  So, she breaks into the home of the guy who fired her husband and causes a gas leak, which then makes his house go boom.

Then, despite the fact Crampton had *nothing* to do with her husband getting fired, she targets her house (why she leaves the guy alone who banged her while her husband waited is never discussed).

First, she Norman Bates the maid and hides her body in the garage freezer.  Then, she poses as the agency that sent her, and gets herself placed as the new maid.  From here, she starts a campaign to mess with the family.  Why she doesn't just blow them all up, too, is never explained.  

Convenient to the plot, Crampton is a diabetic and no one in the family likes her.  She's too bossy and asks things like "don't be an alcoholic" and "maybe don't dress like you're going clubbing for school".  Girl is just trying to make that money.  

Anyway, Wuhrer begins individually mucking about with everyone while admittedly keeping a neat house.

This is a movie that has some B-movie edge of Cinemax late-night performers in it, and sort of lives in a gray zone of trying to make sure it was going to get picked up for late night cable by ensuring it has boobs a-plenty in it, and some sex scenes.  If I roll my eyes at The Youths thinking sex in movies is cringe, this is certainly evidence in their favor.  

Perhaps plot makes this necessary, but the movie also has no idea who the main character is.  Like, if I needed to give someone an example of a movie and why even a 3rd person POV is important as we decide who we're focusing on, I'd use this as an example.  Is it Wuhrer?  It is Crampton?  Is it the husband?

In the end, I think this was a movie with one big trick that it saved for the last scene and they wrote a whole movie to get to that point, trying to figure out how to fill the other 88 minutes.  Like, it's a good idea for a movie ending - a real twist.  But then they twisted themselves in knots getting there.

But is was kind of what it was, and reminded me so much of what was on premium cable in the wee hours of the long, long ago.

SPOILERS

The entire end of the movie is basically easy to undo as the maid left the son alive, and he would be able to say "no, that maid has been missing for months, I was banging that lady".  So I'm not really sure what would have been achieved.  Like, the very next day, the "ha ha!  The villain got away with it!" bit would fall apart.