Pretty Poison (1968) User Reviews

A great film! Unbelievably neglected over the years

[The_Void · 8/10 · 19 November 2006]

This criminally neglected film has a lot going for it, and is certainly well worth tracking down! The comparisons to the Alfred Hitchcock classic 'Psycho' are obvious due to the fact that the film stars Norman Bates actor Anthony Perkins in another off-centre performance, but other than that; Pretty Poison is a law unto itself, and not quite like any other film that I've seen. The first thing that struck me about this film was the cinematography; the film somehow manages to look old and dated, yet beautiful at the same time. The fact that it's set in a serene little town does it some favours also, but it's the plot that is the biggest standout here. Anthony Perkins is Dennis Pitt; a mentally disturbed man who is given a job in a lumber yard. He soon bumps into the beautiful Sue Ann Stepanek, and she learns that he is a CIA operative, working undercover and has chosen her to be his 'partner'. However, that is not really the case at all as Pitt lives in his own little fantasy world, and after the pair slip up with a murder, they find themselves under suspicion.

Anthony Perkins may not be the most diverse actor ever to grace the silver screen; but he certainly plays the disturbed young man well! Here, he has the beautiful Tuesday Weld as his co-star, and the two performances compliment each other excellently, as the pair have a great on-screen chemistry, and the plot is always interesting enough to ensure that the film succeeds. It has to be said that Pretty Poison has something of a low scope where plot and plotting are concerned; but this isn't a problem as the modest way that the film pans out is good in that it's interesting and also rather intimate, so the film feels more realistic. The film is excellently paced, and there aren't any moments where nothing is really happening. At just eighty five minutes, Pretty Poison still manages to get its story and character profiles across in a way that is interesting and exciting. The conclusion to the main plot line is good and something of a shock, while the ending itself is predictable, but still works well. Overall, Pretty Poison gets my HIGHEST recommendations and I hope this one doesn't stay buried for too much longer!

Interesting Characters In This Unfairly-Ignored Film

[ccthemovieman-1 · 8/10 · 20 July 2007]

It was great to see Tuesday Weld again, and in her prime, physically. She was a real "looker," to use an old phrase. Just seeing her was worth the price of the rental.

Usually I point out the photography or the riveting story as the facet (s) of the movie I enjoyed best, but in this case it's the actors and characters they played.

It was also fun to see Tony Perkins ("Dennis Pitt") play his Norman Bates-type "Pyscho" character again, although I prefer "Bates" over "Pitt." At least Bates wasn't all talk like Pitt was in this story. "Norman" delivered the goods, when needed! Here, Weld's "Sue Ann Stepanek" walks the talk.

Tuesday Weld, by the way, proves in this film she's a lot more than a pretty face. (She also looked her age when she shot this film. That was 25, and here her role is that of a 17-year-old, which is stretching it a bit...but who's counting?)

The most interesting character might have been "Mrs. Stepanek," played by Beverly Garland, but she really had too small a role, just a couple of speaking scenes. I think this film would have been better had Garland's character been expanded regarding the exposing of Pitt as a fraud. She was just getting into that, but it was never followed up. Before you know it - poof! - she's gone.

The two other main supporting actors in here also played intriguing characters: John Randolph as the parole officer, "Morton Azenhauer," and Dick O'Neil as employer "Bud Munsch." Randolph and O'Neill were excellent character actors for many years.

For those watching for the first time, I would advise being patient with the first half of this film. The story doesn't really have much spark to it until "Sue Ann" begins to reveal her true inner self. which is not "pretty." Until then, we just get Perkins' nutcase character going on and on to Weld about his supposed CIA connections. Fortunately, as soon as this becomes tiresome, "Sue Ann" saves the film by springing into action.

Some reviewers thought the ending was unsatisfying but I had no problems with it since you know, thanks to movie's final shot, that justice will be served. Sometimes it just takes longer.

Overall, as most people observe, this a good movie that has been largely ignored over the years. This recent DVD release will help but, at this point, I doubt it will ever been a "known" film except to fans of either Weld or Perkins, or by word of mouth on websites like this. Sadly, you won't find this DVD at the big rental stores. You'll just have to take the word of reviewers here, beginning with J-Slack - who gives more of an in-depth account of the film's characters - that this film is worth renting or buying, sight-unseen.

Unnerving crime drama with psychological overtones

[moonspinner55 · 6/10 · 15 July 2007]

Eight years after "Psycho", Anthony Perkins, who seemed to quickly lose his way in ill-suited romantic dramas of the mid-'60s, finally gets a role here well-tailored to his wild-eyed personality, that of an introvert with simmering disorders forced by circumstance into playing "normal". A former teen arsonist in Massachusettes is released from the institution as a young man and is given a job at the lumber mill; he's perpetually wrapped up in CIA fantasies and conspiracy theories, and is thrilled when he meets up with a 17-year-old beauty from the local high school who is happy to play along with his games. Adapted from Stephen Geller's book "She Let Him Continue", this is a peculiar, well-made and written cult movie which works itself under your skin. Perkins lets himself relax a bit on-camera and gives one of his most notable performances, and Tuesday Weld (despite being a few years too old for her role) rarely strikes a false note as his new girlfriend with a somewhat sordid past herself (one that mirrors her mother's, whom she hates). The concluding events aren't really satisfying (with echoes of "Psycho" besides), and the circular plot-device posed at the tag doesn't work at all, but the performances really drive this thing, making it an engrossing and memorable sleeper. **1/2 from ****

Small, funny and decidedly evil

[grahamclarke · 2 June 2003]

Legendary critic Pauline Kael staunchly championed "Pretty Poison" which she clearly loved but her accolades did little in preventing this small, funny but decidedly evil movie from vanishing into obscurity.

The pairing of Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins was inspired. Being actors who Hollywood never quite understood how to use, they are perfectly cast as social renegades. Both are in their prime; young, attractive, funny and fiercely intelligent. They are a joy to watch. Four years later they would be brought together for the wonderful "Play It As It Lays", but by then both tapped into a world weary disillusionment far from the playfulness of "Pretty Poison". They were an odd team, playing off each other to dazzling effect.

How those two movies have been relegated to almost total obscurity remains a sad testament to the industry. Should the rare opportunity to watch "Pretty Poison" arises, don't miss it.

Pretty poison is on the loose!

[lasttimeisaw · 6/10 · 17 March 2016]

A low-budgeted romance-cum-crime dark comedy from director Noel Black, his debut feature PRETTY POISON was dead on arrival upon its release, but its reputation has been rescued ever since, arguably categorised as a "Neo-noir", it stars Anthony Perkins, 8 years after PSYCHO (1960), as an apparently self-referential young man Dennis Pitt, who was a teenage arsonist and has been recently released from mental institution on parole and works in a lumber mill, he looks normal, a breezy lad is ready to embrace his freedom. But a forewarning from his parole officer Morton Azenauer (Randolph) "you steps into a tough world where it got no place at all for fantasies" reveals his concerns.

Dennis has a crush on a blond local high-schooler Sue Ann (Weld) and tries to impress her by claiming himself as a secret agent, and it works! A guileless Sue Ann believes him and spurs him to do something exciting together. Smitten with her, Dennis invents a series of missions including sabotaging the chute of the mill where he works, under the fancy of a water-poisoning conspiracy theory. But during their jejune mission, things escalate into murder, and guess who is the perpetrator, it's Sue Ann, it turns out that she has no conscience of killing at all, she is the real psychopath and from then, the scale has been tipped. Dennis behaves more like a normal person while Sue Ann's escape plan goes wilder and scarier, there is no way this will end like Oliver Stone's anti-social affidavit NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994), so the only safe way for Dennis to cut off with her completely, is that he goes back behind the bars and leaves the pretty poison to the next victim and hopes one day, she can get her comeuppance.

The passive, self-preserving ending where vice gets away with murder is shockingly at odds with most Hollywood commodities, but the story itself has a semblance of food for thought. Anthony Perkins credibly juggles levity and seriousness with his unique greenness, he is less neurotic and more sympathetic here. Tuesday Weld, on the other hand, is much too calculated to underline an 18-year-old murderess' twisted frame of mind, and Beverly Garland is quite memorable as her controlling mother who doesn't have any inkling about the true nature of her daughter - surprised but not scared, when her doom abruptly arrives, that's the bloody irony of parenting.

If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Murder

[BaronBl00d · 6/10 · 24 December 2009]

Rather strange, psychological "thriller" about two societal/psychological misfits getting together and ultimately being coupled in murderous crimes. Anthony Perkins plays Dennis Pitt, a young man let out of a psych hospital for a juvenile record of arson and killing his aunt in the fire. Perkins is to go to a new town and work on a new job and forget all of his highly imaginative theories of conspiracies(that must have been behind his actions as an adolescent). Pitt is given this new lease of life by John Randolph's character as his parole officer. Well, Pitt moves to a city other than the one he was to take, takes a different job, and never checks in with Randolph. Oh, and by the way, he still has this highly imaginative mindset that everyone and everything is working against him or society. His job at a factory is producing a toxic that soon they will unleash on the drinking supply of the world. Perkins, playing the fragile yet innocuous disturbed, meets a young senior in high school who he enlists in one of his conspiracies. Tuesday Weld plays Sue Ann. She is adorable, beautiful, and turns out very deadly. Without going into the particulars of the plot, Perkins is the relatively normal one in this bizarre relationship. While the film does indeed drag at times, Perkins and Weld are both very good and ably assisted by Beverly Garland as Weld's mother, Dick O'Neill as a boss, and Randolph as Perkin's parole officer and friend. Pretty Poison is an interesting look into minds - what constitutes a really disturbed person juxtaposed against someone who is homicidal. What is normal - ostensibly or otherwise? The twists come plentifully in the end and the building of Weld's and Perkin's relationship is interestingly done.

power dynamics switch

[SnoopyStyle · 7/10 · 28 October 2017]

Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins) gets released from a mental institution. He has a tendency to tell fantastical lies. He is taken with teen Sue Ann Stepanek (Tuesday Weld) and pretends to be a CIA agent. She is wildly eager to believe him. He gets fired and engineers a mission to sabotage the factory. She joins him on his mission, kills a security guard, and steals his gun. Her mother threatens Dennis over Sue Ann.

Perkins is never forceful but always has that creepy off-centered presence. Sue Ann's quick acceptance of his lies is a little odd. There is an interesting switch in the power dynamics as her strange naivety turns into disturbed manipulative Lolita. It would be great to have more sexuality in the manipulations. This is plenty dark but I want the tone to be even darker. This is a fascinating little movie.

T. Weld is a LIT FLAME!

[shepardjessica · 9/10 · 24 June 2004]

The sleeper of 1968, this little-scene film is frightening with Tuesday Weld giving her best performance as a self-centered tinderbox of passion and greed. Anthony Perkins is his usual affable set of nervous tics and equally as good. What happened to this director? What happened to this film? The script has you guessing from beginning to end and it's a great payoff eventually.

A definite 9 out of 10 (the music is strictly bad tv score) in a great location in New England that hopefully will come out on DVD eventually. If you've never appreciated Ms. Weld before, this is the one you should try to track down. Strange story, wonderful cinematography, and sensitive lead performances make this one special.

PRETTY POISON (Noel Black, 1968) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 26 March 2006]

Yet another film that had always intrigued me but, till now, I hadn't had an opportunity to watch; in this respect, I found Second Sight's R2 "Special Edition" DVD release most welcome and didn't take long to add it to my collection. PRETTY POISON is the kind of offbeat, low-key and low-budgeted film that tends to be overlooked on its original release but which slowly garners cult status, thus ensuring that its reputation is kept alive along the years. This factor – but also the premise itself of a senseless killing spree committed by unbalanced young people – links the film to other classic American 'sleepers' like GUN CRAZY (1949), TARGETS (1968) and BADLANDS (1973).

Curiously, the film proved to be something of a comeback for Anthony Perkins: following the unexpected (but wholly deserved) celebrity he acquired through his iconic Norman Bates persona in Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960), he forsook Hollywood for more rewarding and versatile roles in Europe where he worked for such masters as Jules Dassin, Orson Welles and Claude Chabrol, among others – proving himself one of the most consistently interesting character actors of the time into the bargain! While Perkins' quirky characterization here might echo that of the Hitchcock film at times (as, indeed does Tuesday Weld's to innumerable teenage comedy or dramatic roles she had played earlier in her career), one of this film's main virtues is the way it constantly plays against this, undermining audience expectations at every turn. Indeed, at some point in the narrative, the character traits of these two roles are uncannily reversed and we slowly begin to realize that Weld (never better) is not the small-town ingénue she's been played up to be but is actually willing to go even further than Perkins' mild act of sabotage by deciding to bump off her domineering mother (bitchily played to the hilt by B-movie starlet Beverly Garland). Also worth mentioning here is John Randolph's excellent supporting performance as Perkins' probation officer.

Lorenzo Semple Jr.'s fine script gets into every one of the film's changes of mood – from the playful to the sinister – with remarkable ease. Unfortunately, while first-time director Noel Black showed great promise with this unusual yet endearing concoction, his subsequent career failed to deliver the goods (though he doesn't seem to be at all bitter about this during his wonderful feature-length Audio Commentary and, indeed, feels merely privileged that this one film has stood the test of time).

A movie not to be missed

[manuel-pestalozzi · 10/10 · 10 July 2006]

It mixes elements of Gun Crazy with Lolita and Night of the Hunter and may have influenced Terrence Malick's Badlands and Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade. With this I want to say, Pretty Poison is a very American and good and memorable movie.

It has the best performance of Anthony Perkins I have ever seen. And I have seen Hitchcock's Psycho. He plays a character who, like Billy Liar, lives in a kind of a fantasy world (he is not a teenager however, but well past 30) – a potential Lee Harvey Oswald, I guess. His confused state of mind is exploited by a premature, smart and amoral girl, played by Tuesday Weld who is also terrific. The world this confused character had constructed for himself and which gave him some kind of self confidence and cockiness crumbles fast and leaves him a helpless, quivering bundle.

There are some quirky details which lift the story from the ruts of formulaic story telling. The lower middle class girl drives a snazzy powder blue Triumph convertible sports car, the couple make excursions into the wilderness, the Perkins character has a nightmarish night out in hiding, with hooting owls, red lizards and headlights piercing the forest. It all has a slightly surrealistic quality which reflect the character's state of mind and gives the movie a dream like quality. The dialog is also good – the best scene for me was Perkin's phone call to the local sheriff in order to report a murder. Check it out.

In the final scene the girl meets a new boyfriend. I bet this is young Joe Pesci, but he is not in the credits. - Thanks to the IMDb message board I know now that I would have lost the bet. Still, it's a pleasant and exciting discovery.

A very curious story

[jcplanells3 · 7/10 · 5 March 2007]

I remember well this movie, that I saw in 1969 in my country. From then, not another exhibit, not in TV or VHS. Fortunately, there is a DVD edition --sadly, no subtitles in any language-- for to appreciate this very curious movie. Perkins plays a role as usual in him --our favorite psycho...--, and Tuesday Weld, that brilliant actress, is sensational, as usual in her. A couple very good. Not least, John Randolph, saw in Seconds, by John Frankenheimer, a very good an rare actor. The remarkable in this film is how the fantasies Perkins accepts at last that "out there" --like says John Randolph-- one can not live or survive in fantasies. So, when he discovers the truth about Tuesday Weld, he accepts his fate.

Brilliant film.

[stooze · 9/10 · 21 August 2005]

This film is one of my all time favorite films. I've never really understood why Noel Black wasn't given the green light for almost anything he wanted to do after this. I suppose this film must have been ahead of it's time. It's well structured, and the performances are great. Weld is captivating. Perkins plays the whole thing perfectly. The film also has a real sense of place about it. This isn't just any old town in America, it's a very specific town. The relationship between these two characters is perfectly drawn. I was very impressed by the interplay of naive and knowing. What a great ending. Why Noel Black wasn't given more support is a mystery to me.

quirky movie with great performances

[christopher-underwood · 7/10 · 29 May 2008]

This is a very unusual and quirky movie with great performances from Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins. It is also a bit of a worrying film in that everybody seems a bit unbalanced or at least not quite up to scratch and we are never quite sure where it is going to go. At first things seem straightforward enough, in fact Perkins' fantasies/make-believe tales for Weld are becoming just that much too silly when the whole thing takes off when the little lady gets a bit bigger. Not just a little bit bigger, either because she begins to dwarf Perkins. All very well done for no sooner have we begun to write Perkins off as an out and out psychopath, he becomes all vulnerable and we are forced to begin to re-evaluate Weld. My only criticism is that the film should have either been more hard nosed or played the whole thing for laughs more. Listening to the director at the start of the commentary on the DVD it seems that there was a deliberate attempt by the studio to soften the effect following the real life assassinations of the time. Well worth watching.

Pretty Poor

[kenjha · 5/10 · 9 April 2010]

The film starts with Perkins being released from an insane asylum or some sort of confinement (as the plot is rather muddled, it is not clear who he is and what his past is). With Perkins playing a character much like Norman Bates, this could almost be seen as a sequel to "Psycho," except that some hack named Noel Black directed this instead of Hitchcock. The plot is nonsensical and the main characters don't resemble real people. There is no flow to the proceedings. It just rambles along aimlessly and bizarrely, unsure of whether it's a drama, a thriller, or a black comedy. The only thing the film has going for it is the mercifully short running time.

A fine, fine movie.

[le_pooploser · 22 January 2004]

I just finished watching Pretty Poison, and it is a great movie worthy of recognition. I don't know why or how this movie has been somewhat obscured, I guess it wasn't so popular back in those days and it ruined it for other generations.

I'm glad I found this on the movie channel, great performances by Anthony Perkins, really impressive and not exaggerated, which is what a lot of times makes people see as good acting, but this is not the case here, a deep performance is what Mr. Perkins gives us, really laid back and neutral, Kind of the characters he played through his career (Josef K on Welles adaptation of Kafka's "The Process", and his Classic Norman Bates on Psycho) and a great Tuesday Weld as the strange and evolving character Sue Ann Stepanek.

It is so sad that movies like this get lost. A great Screenplay (Best Screenplay Award given by the New York Film Critics Circle Awards) and great acting should make a successful movie, I don't know what happened here.

[8.5/10]

Offbeat in a way that kind of works.

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 6/10 · 15 September 2023]

Pretty Poison's an odd film that doesn't fully live up to its potential, but it certainly wasn't bad. Its set-up sounds great, with an unstable man meeting and falling for an even less stable young woman after he tells her he's a secret agent. Things get more outlandish and dangerous as the film goes on, but the progression never feels super satisfying or well-plotted. It definitely has a start and end point, quite clearly, but meanders a great deal between beginning and end. Something feels weirdly loose about it all, and I think the approach did the story a disservice.

But at least Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld are both pretty good in the lead roles, and the whole thing gets more entertaining if you try to imagine it all as taking place between Psycho and Psycho II (a wacky misadventure for Norman Bates, because sometimes it's hard to see Perkins as anyone else but his most iconic character).

A mildly perverse and playful tale

[fredrikgunerius · 7/10 · 1 August 2023]

An attractive, mildly perverse and playful tale about a former mental patient and pathological liar (Anthony Perkins) who seduces a high-school cheerleader (Tuesday Weld) under the guise of being a secret agent, but then ends up in more of a pickle than he bargained for. Stephen Geller's novel "She Let Him Continue" was adapted by veteran Hollywood penner Lorenzo Semple Jr. (Papillon, The Parallax View) into a clever little screenplay, but it is Noel Black's fun, spirited direction which gives Pretty Poison its distinction. He finds humour and parables around every corner and in the bleakest of situations, something which provides the understructure for Anthony Perkins' wonderful Dennis Pitt - a true invention of a character. And despite its entertaining, seditious nature, the film demonstrates a not unsubstantial understanding of the human psyche as well. A sexy Tuesday Weld just about pulls off her role as a high schooler, despite being too old for the part. And Beverly Garland is spunky as her mother. The score is by Johnny Mandel (M*A*S*H).

Could have been better but not a total loss

[sunznc · 6/10 · 29 December 2009]

Pretty Poison is interesting to watch just for the cast. Beverly Garland, Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld. How did anyone get all of these people together? Doesn't Anthony Perkins seem strange outside of Psycho?

Anyway, Pretty Poison isn't a bad film it just suffers from a 'made-for-TV-feel' at times. The acting isn't bad but it seems kind of soapy or lurid whenever Sue Anne's mother comes onto the screen. She almost seems like a mother from a daytime soap.

The dialogue in the film is not deep. It almost could have been written by a bunch of high schoolers. I think the interesting thing here is watching Tuesday Weld's character responding to Anthony Perkins fantasies of the CIA and undercover work. Does she let on that she believes him to use him later? Or does she really believe his wild stories in the beginning?

This is the part that keeps a person interested in the story and it's up to you to decide. Nothing earth shattering here but I've seen much worse.

Neglected here too

[Pamsanalyst · 10/10 · 24 November 2004]

That as of this writing, there are only twelve comments on this little masterpiece while Travolta's lasest wise guy role brings down hundreds says something about our board. I know it is hard to find in the USA, but it played on Encore last month, admittedly at nine in the morning, but I suppose too many were watching the umpteenth rerun of The Transporter on HBO.

Perkins and Weld have amazing chemistry. The former never seems to age, while the latter never looked so young and beautiful. There is a little of Gun Crazy in the pairing at first, but the teenage Weld quickly shows her true colors. How my heart goes out to the young man fresh from an institution, trying so hard to be something, posing as a CIA operative or the like. They never warned him before they let him go about the spiders that inhabit those parts. The film moves quickly to its inexorable conclusion.

Seeing the setting made me want to go back to upstate New York, near the Massachusetts border where I lived. That town cannot have changed much today, though the river, perhaps the Housatonic, flows cleaner. I can't rate this film high enough.

Poor guy

[CuriosityKilledShawn · 7/10 · 12 September 2005]

Poor Anthony Perkins. He played one psycho and then another within a few years of each other and the guy got typecast for the rest of his career. I must say that Pretty Poison's Dennis Pitt is to Psycho's Norman Bates what a firecracker is to the big bang.

Orphan Pitt is fresh out of jail after spending some time inside for burning down his aunt's house when he was a kid. Unfortunately for him (and her) she was inside the house when it went up. It was only an accident but his weird personality is what really damns him.

He fancies himself as a bit of a Billy Liar. His life is boring and uneventful out of jail so he concocts elaborate fantasies to keep himself going and to make people interested in him. With the exception of his concerned parole officer, it works mostly for people who come and go.

That is until he meets pretty high school senior Sue Ann Stepanek and goes a bit too far with his fibbing. This time he says he's in the CIA and his mission is to stop a local factory from polluting a river. It's a noble plan but once he involves Sue Ann she becomes homicidal and takes too much pleasure in offing a security guard.

Obviously freaked out by the turn of events Pitt is unsure what to do, especially since Sue Ann has just declared her undying love for him. Any sensible guy would head for the hills but Dennis is just a bit too naive. You'll definitely feel sorry for the guy. He even gets roped into helping the increasingly mad Sue Ann carry out even more dirty deeds.

It's obvious that the film isn't headed for a happy ending and it's not even an easy watch getting there. Perkins is brilliant as Dennis Pitt and you'll be on his side the whole time and really feeling for him and his huge innocent eyes and nervous twitches and ticks that become more and more obvious. His only real crime is falling for the wrong girl. Once again, it's his weird personality that ends up damning him.

If you're a guy the lesson is don't fall in love with wrong girl no matter how pretty she is. It's the pretty ones that end up being the most poisonous. Trust me, The Gator knows. If you're a girl the lesson is don't be a bitch. Pretty much all guys are innocent until a woman comes along and screws them up. Prove me wrong kiddies. Prove me wrong.

Jeune Femme Fatale

[rmax304823 · 8/10 · 11 February 2010]

This is an exceptional movie. The budget was clearly less than monumental and there were no bankable stars. It belongs to no genre so there is no base to appeal to. The sex is subdued and there is little violence. No computer-generated images. I wonder who had the huevos to greenlight this. Somehow I doubt it would ever be made today.

Anthony Perkins is a young man who has just been released from a psychiatric facility, having accidentally burned his aunt to death when he set fire to the house years earlier. John Randolph is his sympathetic but skeptical parole officer. Perkins sets up residence in the town of Winslow, Massachusetts, evocatively photographed by David Quaid in a flat, TV style. You get to know Winslow -- the chemical factory, the river that purls through the town, the modest working-class home that Tuesday Weld lives in with her mother.

Weld is the champion member of the high-school band, and what a succulent piece she is, with her lustrous blond hair, her voracious and toothy grin, her unimpeachable figure. She bumps into Perkins at a hot dog stand. Perkins is a fabulist, maybe a trait he picked up in the funny farm, and he sweeps Weld up in his narrative.

Perkins pretends to be a secret agent from the CIA, keeping an eye on the chemical plant where he now has a job. They may be polluting the river. It's his job to find out if they're poisoning the water. "In a few years there may be nothing but monster fish between here and New York." One should not believe that the pollution is a symptom of Perkins' derangement. In 1968, there were virtually no laws governing the process. The film illustrates this lack of concern when the owner of the hot dog stand dumps his garbage in the river, then stops to wipe some mud spatters from his motorcycle. Two kids in New York caught cholera, of all things, from eating a watermelon they'd found floating in the Hudson. In any case, Weld is thrilled. She's eager to help him and wants to be a deputy secret agent.

The plot gets complicated and twirled around but not to the extent that we can't follow it. If, at first, Perkins is the fake and Weld is the naif, it gradually becomes clear that it's the other way round. I don't want to give away too much of the plot.

I attribute the success of the movie mostly to Lorenzo Semple's screenplay, which is full of oddments and stylishness. Noel Black's direction is functional -- not more than that -- but the story becomes so gripping that one's attention never drifts. Semple was also responsible for the outré and equally paranoid "The Parallax View." After "Psycho," poor Anthony Perkins seemed consigned to the role of not just maniac, but maniac being taken by thyrotoxic storm. Jerky and twitching and stuttering. Here he's merely given to excess fantasizing but is otherwise intelligent and, well, normal. Smart, maybe, but he doesn't know much about women, and he's abrasive towards his dumb superiors.

Perkins' and Weld's roles are pretty complex. They both handle the complexity well. Perkins must change from being slyly but playfully conspiratorial to being aghast. Weld has to morph from a gullible teen ager into a calculating young woman thoroughly committed to pursuit of hypothetical imperatives.

It all comes together quite well and I applaud everyone involved. Wish there were more like it today instead of all those trumpeting mastodons and monsters thumping their way across the megascreens.

***** POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD ***** Absorbing tale of two losers...good mixture of crime and suspense...

[Doylenf · 6/10 · 15 July 2007]

ANTHONY PERKINS delivers a less mannered performance than usual as the ex-jailbird released from prison after being convicted of arson as a youth. He's a defiant type who keeps imagining he's a CIA agent and even persuades TUESDAY WELD into believing he's working on dangerous cases for that government agency.

***** SPOILERS AHEAD ***** Weld falls under his influence only too quickly and is soon helping him in what she believes is a secret government mission, only to have things fall apart when a man is about to apprehend them for trespassing. She abruptly kills the man and throws his body into the water to make it look like an accident.

From then on, the suspense mounts as the plot takes various twists and turns toward spinning a pretty absorbing tale of two young people on a murder spree. Weld even shoots her own unsuspecting mother (BEVERLY GARLAND) and later pins the crime on Perkins.

Summing up: Nothing too original about the plot, but it's performed and directed with a good deal of style over substance with an ironic ending.

One of the Two Great Sleeper Movies of All Time

[dcearley · 9/10 · 12 June 2006]

When I was in college I went to a double feature (they still had them then!). The first movie was the terrible Sinatra film The Lady in Cement (amazing I can still remember), then this incredible gem came on. I was so taken with Pretty Poison I sat through the dreadful first film again to watch Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld in this quirky and gripping thriller. Beverly Garland, the quintessential B-movie actress of her day, also turns in the best performance of her career as the mother everyone can hate. My other great sleeper movie, like Pretty Poison, also has never been released on DVD: Resurrection with Ellen Burstyn and Sam Shepard. If you haven't seen either of these movies, you are missing out!

Crazy Is As Crazy Does

[kirbylee70-599-526179 · 7/10 · 10 August 2017]

PRETTY POISON is one of those movies that I'd heard of but never had the opportunity to see. For some reason it never appears on various movie channels or if it does it's on at such a late hour that I've missed it. And I check for movies that I've missed to DVR on these channels! So I was glad to finally get the chance to see this film.

The movie stars Anthony Perkins as Dennis Pitt, a young man who's spent most of his life in an institution because while a youngster he was responsible for a fire that killed his aunt. Having gone through rehabilitation and psychiatric care he is about to finally be released. His probation officer Morton Azenauer (John Randolph) tells him it is best to avoid the creative fantasies that Dennis tends to place himself in and stick with reality, working the job he's found for him and getting on with his life.

Dennis begins work at a lumber yard where he does his job well enough but still has moments where he is distracted. Dennis' boss Bud (Dick O'Neill) is a jerk of a boss who looks for reasons to give Dennis a hard time. Of course this will lead to Dennis resentment of both Bud and the job he now works at.

On lunch break one day Dennis sees a beautiful young girl (Tuesday Weld), a cheerleader he spies marching with the band. He bumps into her, passing her a small vial and tells her to be quiet, they're watching and he'll meet her at a theater that night. Once there he takes the vial and thanks her, leaving. She follows and he concocts a story that he's a secret agent on a mission. Her name is Sue Ann Stepanek and she's not intrigued by this supposed spy.

The two begin to spend time with one another going so far as Dennis meeting her mother and taking her out on a date. The make a stop by a local make out area where the cops harass them and take them back to Sue Ann's house. It is there that we get our first glimpse of what Sue Ann is capable off as we see her slap her mother when they argue after the police leave. Dennis is shocked and leaves the house.

Sue Ann contacts Dennis again and at just the right time. It seems that his Azenauer has let Bud know about Dennis' past and Bud then fires Dennis. When Dennis lets him know Azenauer is upset since Bud promised not to fire Dennis. Once more Dennis makes up a story about a new job and has Sue Ann play the part of a secretary confirming the job.

Angry at Bud, Dennis convinces Sue Ann that they have to perform an act of sabotage on the lumber mill, weakening the supports of a run off. In the middle of doing so the night watchman catches Dennis but Sue Ann knocks him unconscious with the wrench she's carrying. She takes his gun and shoots him, then pushes him into the river. Dennis is shocked but Sue Ann convinces him that when the run off falls it will look like it collapsed on the watchman and killed him.

The two love birds move forward from here into more potential threatening incidents before deciding to run off together. All the while we watch as Dennis, the man who is supposed to be the one with mental issues, is matched with this young all American girl who seems to be much more disturbed than he ever was. Where they will end up is anyone's guess.

The film moves along at a slow pace, at times distracting because of this, but never quite enough to make it boring. It has a made for TV look from that time rather than a feature feel and I'm not sure if that helps or hinders. This is not to say it looks bad, just mediocre. The performances by both leads are well done, more so for Weld than Perkins. Watching you can't help but recall all of the other times he's played mentally unstable characters, especially Norman Bates in PSYCHO. Perkins would go on to play other characters with questionable mental issues in several more films. While he hoped to put Bates behind him he somehow always found himself in these roles.

What makes this movie so interesting is the role that Weld plays here. Far too often you can tell just who the bad guy, who the person is most likely to commit a crime is in film. Here we're presented with a wholesome young girl who's held in high regard but who underneath is the pretty poison the film's title speaks of. It makes for an interesting character and performance.

The movie is being released by Twilight Time so you know up front that the image on screen will be the best possible to be found for this release. Extras include the isolated music and effects track, audio commentary with executive producer Lawrence Turman and film historians Lem Dobbs and Nick Redman, audio commentary with director Noel Black and film historian Robert Fischer, deleted scene script and commentary and the original factory trailer. I say this all the time but once more, Twilight Time has released this with only 3,000 copies available so if you want one make sure you order before they sell out.

A crime drama with little energy

[SimonJack · 5/10 · 23 August 2018]

The plot for "Pretty Poison" is a simple one, but it has a couple of surprise twists. Those are what make this film at all interesting. Without that, and the character of Sue Ann Stepanek, this film would lead to many unintended naps.

Anthony Perkins in a fine actor, but his character is mostly lifeless throughout this film. For all the fantasy, make believe and cuckoo ideas and things that Dennis Pitt conjures up, one would think he would emote some excitement. But Perkins plays the character flat and deadpan, which makes him not quite so easy to believe.

The only spark of energy in the plot comes from Tuesday Weld, who plays Sue Ann. Even at that, her role is just above mediocre. As are most of the roles throughout the film. The one exception is John Randolph as Morton Azenauer. He manages to show a spark of genuine concern for Pitt and his welfare.

The movie is based on a 1968 novel, "She Let Him Continue," by Stephen Geller. The interesting plot twist and ending earn the five stars I give this film.

One has to chuckle that some reviewers try to compare this movie with another Anthony Perkins film of a mentally disturbed person. But, to even consider this simple crime drama alongside the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, "Psycho," is preposterous.