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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.

Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins) is a young man who is being released from a mental hospital after having committed arson. He burned down his aunt's house at age 15. What he didn't know was that she was in the house at the time, and so she died in the fire.

Dennis has a job waiting for him at a chemical company, but it is mind numbingly boring work - sitting on an assembly line all day making sure that bottles of chemicals are OK and that they proceed down the assembly line OK, which they almost always do. Since Dennis' root problem is that he is subject to a rich fantasy life, this lack of something upon which to occupy his mind has him drifting into the exciting world of make-believe and out of dull reality in short order.

He gets involved with a pretty high school student, Sue Ann (Tuesday Weld), and tells her that he is an undercover CIA agent. Sue Ann seems to be a gullible thrill-seeking teen at first, impressed with Dennis's exciting stories of secret missions, maybe wanting to believe it, maybe actually believing it. Dennis has plans to sabotage the chemical plant where he works because it is dumping toxic chemicals into the river next to it. In his mind, some vandalism for the sake of his fantasy life and the environment is within the limits of acceptable behavior. But Sue Ann has a darker agenda, one that soon has Dennis unwillingly mixed up in murder. Complications ensue.

The 60s is not my favorite decade for film because so much of it is of two minds - You either have entries that are trying to push the envelope as it existed at the time such as "Midnight Cowboy" and "Bonnie and Clyde" or lighter fare such as Oliver or Mary Poppins. Sometimes you have both tendencies in the same film! But this one just clicks and rings true. Perkins was great as the doomed misfit, with a role that for sure is trying to capitalize - eight years later - on his role in Psycho, except here he's not a psycho as much as he is a gullible patsy. Then there is Beverly Garland as Sue Ann's hard drinking tough talking hypocritical mother just a year before she becomes the stepmother to My Three Sons - for sure this was a departure from her usual doe-eyed roles.

Note the brief scene at the end with Ken Kercheval, who played JR Ewing rival Cliff Barnes on Dallas some ten years later.

I'd recommend this one as it seems unfairly forgotten.

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" is a very interesting, offbeat, darkly comic thriller and a film that remains somewhat under-valued 50 years after its release. Anthony Perkins stars in the kind of role that fit him like a glove: Dennis Pitt, a young man just released from a mental institution. Starting a job at a chemical plant in a small Massachusetts town, he becomes utterly entranced with Sue Ann Stepanek (the memorable Tuesday Weld), a sexy blonde high-schooler and majorette. Given that Dennis is prone to a rich fantasy life, he feeds her a bunch of bull about the spy work that he's doing. She seems to fall for it, hook, line, and sinker, but as things progress, she takes the reigns, making him realize that underneath her wholesome beauty is a psycho that's about to emerge. Then he's just meekly plodding along in her wake.

A good candidate for cult status, "Pretty Poison" marked the filmmaking debut for young Noel Black, who worked mostly in TV and made only a handful of features. He gives the fast-moving, twisty plot very surefooted direction, and gets excellent performances out of his two stars. "Pretty Poison" also has a great feel for small-town America, and the kind of madness that could be boiling beneath the surface. What's appreciated about the tale (scripted by the busy Lorenzo Semple, Jr., based on the novel "She Let Him Continue" by Stephen Geller) is the fact that it's not so predictable. You're fascinated by this character played by the lovely Ms. Weld, and wonder what else she and the filmmakers will do with her.

Perkins may be too old for his role by at least a decade or so, but, much as he did in "Psycho", he does have the ability to earn some sympathy. By the end of the picture, you realize that for all his mental issues, he's not unintelligent. He may have been played for a sap, but he knows it, and he has some advice to pass on to his case worker Azenauer (top character actor John Randolph).

In addition to the great Randolph, other supporting players help to add gravitas: 1950s B movie queen Beverly Garland as Sue Ann's disapproving mother, Dick O'Neill as Dennis' cranky boss, and Clarice Blackburn as the helpful Mrs. Bronson. Ken Kercheval of future 'Dallas' fame has a bit at the end of the story.

But Ms. Weld, despite being a little too old for her role as well, is this pictures' main draw, revealing this not-so-innocent teens' true personality with a vengeance.

All in all, "Pretty Poison" is a striking little film that sinks its hooks into you and doesn't let go for 90 straight minutes.

Eight out of 10.

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 ****