Pretty Poison

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]

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!

I remember seeing this movie on BBC2 absolutely years ago. It was released on video but is a pure bugger to track down. I feel it never really got the credit it deserves as both Perkins and Weld probably turn in the best perfomances of their careers. Perkins is great in the role of a deluded arsonist who while on probabtion arrives in a sleepy little town. Once there he enlists the help of juvenile cheerleader Weld to help him in his schemes after filling her head full of his delusions about him being in the CIA. She of course is thrilled to escape her rather dull life and agrees to help him. It's interesting to note that Weld thought this was one of her worst performances when it's bloody obvious it is anything but. She is quite simply superb turning from an innocent cheerleader to an amoral killer. The range of emotions she displays is amazing. Perkins character of Dennis Pitt hasn't got a chance as behind her sweet innocence lurks someone far more deadly than he who ultimately goads him into matricide. If you can, see it!!!

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.

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.