The overwhelming critical and commercial success of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960) made Anthony Perkins (played Norman Bates) as the go-to-guy for playing disturbed young man in Hollywood. He just got typecast for the rest of his career. Tuesday Weld (“The Cincinnati Kid”, “Thief”, “Once Upon a Time in America”) has started her acting career as a child and later in her teenage years and early 20’s was repeatedly chosen over to play the role of a nymphet. By the 1960’s, she was tired of being typecasted like Perkins. They both were casted to play the central characters in Noel Black’s “Pretty Poison” (1968), which was based Stephen Geller’s novel, “She Let him Continue”. The movie posters boasted tag lines like: “Illusions can be Deadly”; “A shook-up story of the up-tight generation”, with Anthony Perkins’ baleful look. Nevertheless, the film manages to flip-flop a viewers’ expectations.
“Pretty Poison” is an oddity and the events portrayed in it
might have shocking for that era. The subsequent imitation of the movie or
novel’s plot with other unsavory couples would now make us easily guess the
trajectory Noel Black’s film travels, but still it holds up well due to
engrossing eccentric performances of Perkins and Tuesday Weld. Although the
movie was never a main-stream hit, it has gained a sizable cult following, over
the years. The film starts with Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins) just getting
released from mental institution. Dennis’ crime isn’t explained at the time,
but he seems to be smart guy with a lot of fantasies. His probation officer Mr.
Azanaeur (John Randolph) tells him about a job in lumber factory and warns Dennis: “These
fantasies of yours can be dangerous. Now, you lay off that stuff! Believe me;
you're going out into a very real and very tough world. It's got no place at
all for fantasies.”
But Dennis the daydreamer couldn’t think about life without
broad fantasies. Before long, we see Dennis working as a quality-control guy at
a lumber mill, in a small Massachusetts town. He watches over a pretty high
school girl, going on about her majorette routine. In the chemical plant, he
curiously watches and photographs the out-flowing pipes that pour chemical
wastes into local waterways. He is listening to Russian broadcasts from his
trailer’s short-wave radio. Later, when Dennis meets the same pretty high senior,
we get to know what kind of fantasy he is playing on. The girl named Sue Ann
Stephanek (Tuesday Weld) lives with her disapproving single mother (Beverly Garland) and seems to have no friends. She believes Dennis when he says that he
is CIA agent, working undercover to uncover a communist plot in the small town.
Dennis promises to let her in on his undercover playacting,
and Sue Ann is very happy to watch and learn from federal agent. The odd couples
also have secret trysts in a place known as ‘make-out valley’. They do make out as
Dennis piles lie upon lie, while believes it with a sparking smile. In the mean
time, the probation officer threatens Dennis to throw back into institution as
he is not neither attending his call nor reporting to him. Eventually, Dennis
drafts Sue Ann to join him on his dream mission to sabotage the chemical plant’s
waste-pouring pipes. While on the mission, a night watchmen with a gun under
his belt, catches Dennis. He is stunned, mulling over the prospect of once
again living inside a cell, but suddenly witnesses Sue Ann hitting the watchman
at the back of his head with a wrench. She remains gleeful while doing this
deed, and innocently asks if the agency would cover her for this. Gradually,
from then on, Dennis becomes a mere participant in his own fantasy.
The late 1960’s were the time when morally unpleasing,
violent couples made their presence in screen. In 1967 Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and
Clyde” (with Warren Betty and Faye Dunaway) was made and became one of the most
controversial crime film of the era (Roger Ebert described it as “Milestone in
the history of American Cinema”). Movies like “Kalifornia”, “True Romance”, and
“Natural Born Killers” drew inspiration from the exploits of Clyde Barrow and
Bonnie Parker. Although “Pretty Poison” doesn’t have a broad scope or robust script
like the 1967 movie, it possesses the same kind of quirky chemistry between the
central characters that lends an edgy movie experience. The late 60’s were the time, when American
cinema was going through a transitional period. A load of eccentric independent
features arrived, expanding the horizons of realism, violence & sex in
American cinema. “Pretty Poison” was just wedged between “Bonnie and Clyde” and
what touted to be as an anti-Bonnie and Clyde film, “The Honeymoon Killers”,
released in 1969 (it was also the year “Midnight Cowboy", an X-rated film, won
Oscar for best picture).
Director Noel Black includes the typical zooms and few
seconds flash-back sequences in “Pretty Poison”, which were the much utilized
techniques of that era, although Noel doesn’t film violence in a brutal and
pitiless manner, unlike other killer flicks of 60’s. The scenic small town atmosphere
and the cynical minor characters of the town somehow seem to have anticipated Lynch’s
portrayal of such towns. However, the film wouldn’t have worked if not for the
casting of Tuesday Weld. She easily comes off as a white-bread American girl,
but her transformation into a blood-lust girl with no troubled conscience is
thoroughly convincing. The script is designed to gradually reveal the inversion
of Sue Ann’s Dennis’ roles and Weld elegantly takes charge of that driver’s
seat.
Anthony Perkins’ superior smirks and smart answers were a
joy to watch. He also perfectly displays the confusing emotions as his fantasy and
bravado, gives way to spiraling panic situations. There is a little misogynistic
message in the end about how beautiful, clean-cut girls end up being the most
poisonous and screw up the lives of naive, innocent men. May be we could
attribute this message to the jaded cynicism of the American 60’s or as an unforgivable
imperfection or look it as a continuation of the movie’s dark central joke. Whatever
it is, “Pretty Poison” (89 minutes) worth a watch for its psychological
implications and engaging central characters.
Trailer
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