CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

SnoopyStyle 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.

lasttimeisaw 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.

Spikeopath Pretty Poison is directed by Noel Black and adapted to screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Junior from the novel "She Let Him Continue" written by Stephen Geller. It stars Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld, Beverly Garland, John Randolph and Dick O'Neill. Music is by Johnny Mandel and cinematography by David Quaid.Pure definition of a culter movie? Probably Pretty Poison. A wonderfully odd neo-noir that's as cunning as a fox, Noel Black's movie flummoxed many upon release but the underground swell of the cult enthusiasts has ensured this particular poison is still around to be swallowed.Plot finds Perkins as troubled Dennis Pitt, an arsonist as a youth and fantasist as an adult, he's just been released from a mental health facility, in spite of his parole officer's reservations. Beginning his employment at a chemical factory, Dennis comes into contact with young high school drum majorette, Sue Anne Stepanek (Weld), and lets her believe he is a secret agent. Little does he know, but Sue is only too happy to indulge his fantasies, since she herself is harbouring some unhealthy desires.Much like the brilliant film noir movie Gun Crazy (1950), Pretty Poison upturns the standard boy and girl crime spree formula by having the girl be the one doing the damage. Dennis Pitt has absolutely no idea how not in control of the relationship he is, he's beguiled by Sue, thinking he has finally found a soul mate to share in his fantasies, but she's pulling all the strings, luring him into a web of chaos from which he is completely incapable of escaping from.With the characterisations firmly in place, where both Weld and Perkins are on top form, Black and his tech team pump discoloured blood through the picture's veins. Pic actually breathes as a black comedy, for the first third the makers are toying with us the audience, making us unsure as to if we should be laughing? Or feeling edgy? Maybe even daring us to walk out? Yes! The film "is" that off-kilter with its tonal flows. Then the light dawns on us, but not the hapless Dennis of course, that we are in a deceptively menacing Americana, one that's even strangely sexy, and cynical into the bargain.Subversive, intelligent and utterly compelling, Pretty Poison deserves to be better known. 8/10

edwagreen Miserable film. What was this supposed to be a continuation of Anthony Perkins in "Psycho."He made this dreadful film 8 years after "Psycho" and he was certainly building on the type of a sick person. While Perkins did make the far better "Friendly Persuasion," he did the marvelous "Fear Strikes Out," but again he seemed to be typecast as a guy with severe emotional and mental hang-ups.This picture certainly proves that poison is bad for you. Perkins is really demented here and how the Tuesday Weld character could fall for him as a secret agent is beyond me. All right, so she is supposed to be a naive 18 years of age in the film.Murder, mayhem and other misery best describe this film.