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40 reviews in total

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27 out of 30 people found the following review useful:
A great film! Unbelievably neglected over the years, 19 November 2006

Author: The_Void from Beverley Hills, England

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!

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24 out of 25 people found the following review useful:
Unnerving crime drama with psychological overtones, 15 July 2007

Author: moonspinner55 from redlands, ca

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 ****

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20 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
Interesting Characters In This Unfairly-Ignored Film, 20 July 2007

Author: ccthemovieman-1 from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

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.

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33 out of 48 people found the following review useful:
Small, funny and decidedly evil, 2 June 2003
Author: graham clarke (grahamclarke@earthling.net)

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.

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20 out of 24 people found the following review useful:
A movie not to be missed, 10 July 2006

Author: manuel-pestalozzi from Zurich, Switzerland

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.

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11 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Nothing is what it seems..., 3 October 2007
Author: JoeytheBrit from www.moviemoviesite.com

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I was surprised by how good this film was; even during the first twenty minutes or so, when it didn't seem to be a very good film at all, it was actually very cleverly written. Nothing is what it seems here – you could be forgiven for believing the opening act was part of a badly-written comedy, probably because that is exactly what the writer wants you to think. Lorenzo Semple's tight script is slyly subversive both in its deceptively light treatment and in the manner in which it portrays small-town Americana (in much the same way that David Lynch would two decades later in Blue Velvet). He tells us that the white picket fences and pretty cheerleaders should never be taken at face value, because there is something rotten lurking beneath that all-American veneer…

Anthony Perkins' Dennis Pitt has been likened on these pages to Psycho's Norman Bates, but he's nothing of the kind. Bates was a demented lunatic whose madness simmered behind a mask of normality, while Pitt is simply a sad loner, a loser who invents a world of intrigue to disguise the fact that he and his life are so dull. He's not even bad, really. It's a clever piece of casting, in line with the aim of the film, and it immediately wrong-foots the viewer. We are fooled into believing that he has plans more sinister than he actually does by his use of the kind of bad dialogue found in second-rate TV spy shows and his use of age and experience to trick impressionable young teen Sue Ann Stepanek (Tuesday Weld) out of her clothes. Stepanek isn't fooled for a minute though, even though the film lets us believe she is. She plays Pitt in a much more sophisticated way than Pitt believes he is playing her – the film's coda tells us that.

Perkins performance here is terrific. You can see the layers of confidence slowly peeling away as his and Sue-Ann's roles become inexplicably reversed and he finds himself sinking deeper and deeper out of his depth until he is a mass of sweaty, twitching nerves, blindly following orders, all pretence of control abandoned. Weld is also first class. She plays her character the same throughout, even when her true colours are revealed to us, and resists the temptation to display the usual tics and grimaces of movie-land's bunny-boilers.

Get your hands on this film if you can. It's a crime that it is so relatively unknown.

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16 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
One of the Two Great Sleeper Movies of All Time, 12 June 2006

Author: (dcearley) from United States

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!

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16 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
T. Weld is a LIT FLAME!, 24 June 2004

Author: shepardjessica from sparks, nevada

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.

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11 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
A fine, fine movie., 22 January 2004
Author: le_pooploser from Medellín, Colombia

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]

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10 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Brilliant film., 21 August 2005

Author: stooze from Australia

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.

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