10 Best Anti-Valentine's Day Movies

When Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner reunited on screen for the third time, along with their Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile co-star Danny DeVito, audiences could have been forgiven for expecting another feel-good rom-com adventure.

1989's The War of the Roses, however, is an altogether different proposition. The film, also directed by DeVito, is an adaptation of the 1981 novel by Warren Adler, and centres on wealthy couple Oliver and Barbara Rose, whose seemingly idyllic marriage masks a deep-set mutual contempt.

In many respects, The War of the Roses is like a feature length version of the "You're My Little Chu-Chi Face" sequence from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: as Oliver and Barbara's hatred of one another intensifies, so too do their attempts to murder one another.

The fact that the actors in question were, at the time, regarded as two of the premier sex symbols in Hollywood, and had played off so nicely against one another in the past, only makes their downward spiral more effective and darkly funny.

As the movie's original poster wryly declared, "Once in a lifetime comes a motion picture that makes you feel like falling in love all over again... this is not that movie."