MovieChat Forums > Suspicion (1941) Discussion > Poison? (spoiler)

Poison? (spoiler)

posted 16 years ago by casper25_2001
7 replies | jump to latest

Two questions:

1. How can drinking brandy kill someone?

2. What what the poison he was going to use that you cant trace?

[–] mrob26 16 years ago

To answer your first question, some people have a very low tolerance to alchohol, or may be allergic to a component of a specific beverage, leading in some cases to breathing difficulties and swelling in the throat.

[–] Limeginger 16 years ago

Some people are allergic to amines, which are found in beverages fermented with grape skins present (sherry, brandy, port), which could possibly lead to anaplylaxis.

[–] gribfritz2 13 years ago

1. Better question, if you're allergic to it and it causes a horrible reaction like that, why drink it?

2. Brandy? lol

[–] joeparkson 10 years ago

Brandy is nothing more than wine with some water removed to make it stronger. If you can drink wine, brandy wont give you problems.

Soy 'un hijo de la playa'

[–] marckymarc71 9 years ago

Regarding the OP's question about the poison: This is more of a plot-hole than an answer, but why would Johnnie care if the poison was traceable if he was going to use it for suicide and not to murder his wife? What is the benefit in killing yourself with an untraceable poison? I suppose a convoluted answer might be that the cause of death would be "unknown" and that in that case his wife would be able to collect his life insurance. Still, it just seems to be a hastily-modified ending that did not respect the rest of the film.

"Who's running this airline?!"

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Not just "some water." It's enough to change the alcohol percentage of the liquid from 12% to 40+ percent.

[–] lexyladyjax 8 years ago

2 It was a McGuffin, something Hitchcock had in every one of his films but that was irrelevant to the plot other than to move it along. If it makes you feel better, there was a poison at the time that would certainly have been overlooked because it was unknown but it wasn't available to everyone: tetradotoxin.

At the time it would have killed and no test would have found it. Death would have been put down to heart failure.

This is a favourite Hitchcock film. A great deal of one's time has been spent pondering the possibilities. There's also poisonous gas from mixing chlorine bleach and liquid ammonia, but that tends to leave a messy corpse. It could be staged as a household cleaning accident.

Bored now.