Hepburn and Bogart in The African Queen.
“You song-singin’ skinny old maid!”
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread would have to be a contender here, with a couple whose toxicity sometimes gets extremely literal.
In a Lonely Place
Nice.
This one, along with True Romance, both popped in my mind. The couples in both of these by no means hated each other, but certainly weren’t good for each other.
I’d say it counts. Some people are best left single. Some people can’t be helped by anybody else.
I don’t know what you mean the exploitation in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” getting old after a while. For me, it’s a film I keep my kids away from because I want them to have fond memories of my parents.
Your parents are Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton?
No, but they could’ve been. Pretty enough and baggage to fill decades of weekend dinners.
I wish they were MY parents.
The Blue Angel (1930/1959)
Twentieth Century (1934)
The Devil is a Woman/That Obscure Object of Desire (1935/1977) – and other versions of the same source novel
Le Dernier Tournant (1939) – and all other versions and knock-offs of The Postman Always Rings Twice
Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943) – They don’t get along
Detour (1945)
Duel in the Sun (1946)
Gilda (1946)
Desert Fury (1947) – John Hodiak and Wendell Corey
The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
Out of the Past (1947)
Rope/Compulsion/Swoon (1948/1959/1992)
Caught (1949)
Gun Crazy (1950)
The Sound of Fury, a.k.a. Try and Get Me (1950) – Lloyd Bridges and Frank Lovejoy
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
Little Shop of Horrors (1960 – Seymour and Audrey, Jr.
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)
This Sporting Life (1963)
The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (1976) – Prototype for Thelma and Louise
Heroes of the East (1978)
The Last Seduction (1994)
Ichi The Killer (2001)
I was going to post this one.
Once we’re into noir, or neo-noir, they’re all toxic couples.
Body Heat
Palmetto
Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity.
Lana Turner and John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Winner. When you’d go so far as to erase someone from your memory…
Ann Blythe and Zachary Scott in Mildred Pierce.
Joan Crawford and Jack Carson aren’t exactly harmonious, either.
It’s terrible movie, especially since it’s marketed as a comedy but is mainly good if you’re lacking depression in your life, but the couple in This is Forty are definitely toxic.
From IMDB: “The publicity of the Golden Bear award for her debut Head-On (2004) shed some light on her past, when the Yellow Press discovered that she had acted in several porn videos under the role name Dilara.”
And Susan Tyrrell, who was Oscar-nominated for her performance.
Fight Club?
Damn. Ninja’d by 5 minutes.
I was going to say:
Fight Club but whether the toxic couple includes the Helena-Bonham Carter character or not is the question.