From the 1960s: Pretty Poison

1968 Crime Drama

From 20th Century Fox

Directed by Noel Black

Starring

Anthony Perkins

Tuesday Weld

Beverly Garland

John Randolph

Dick O'Neill

Clarice Blackburn

Here's a macabre little tale of pair of attractive young sociopaths who wreak havoc on a small Massachusetts town.  It seems the casting gods were on the mark when they hired Tuesday Weld and Tony Perkins, both of whom brought their considerable resources to play overwrought outsiders.  I've always considered it a minor American classic.

He plays Dennis, an unstable man who has just been released too soon from a hospital for starting a fire years earlier in his aunt's house not knowing the aunt was in it. His probation officer (John Randolph) secures employment for Dennis in a small Massachusetts town at a chemical processing plant.  He quickly becomes bored stiff with his job which consists of sitting before a conveyer belt and watching through a large magnifying glass little bottles of red liquid go by.  The boss (Dick O'Neill) is not pleased with Dennis at all and finds him very weird.

Dennis has lapsed into a fantasy world of spy games that would drive anyone else stark-raving mad listening to him but not a bored high school drum majorette, Sue Ann (Weld).  He meets her at an outside diner and immediately regales her with tales that he is an undercover CIA agent whose  secret mission is to foil a communist plot in the town.

Improbable as that is, the naive Sue Ann falls for his wild tale partially because she's looking for anything that relieves her from the

mind-numbing boredom of living in her small town.  She's been looking for excitement and is ready to take a leap like she's never taken before and he stokes her darkest fantasies.

As she's jumping up and down saying what can we do, what can we do, he tells her he wants to cause major damage to the chemical plant because he believes it is polluting the town's water as part of a secret communist plot.

Sue Ann salivates over getting to participate in some industrial sabotage.  She and Dennis are outside the building dismantling some structures when a night watchman catches them.  Sue Ann hits him in the head with a large wrench and after he falls in the water, she jumps in and straddles him, keeping his head under water until he drowns.

It's this scene that is so startling... and revealing.  Up to this point the narrative would have us believe that oddball Dennis has drawn the winsome but bored Sue Ann into his web of craziness, and while he has, it is Sue Ann who has begun to orchestrate the turns their lives will take.

Boy, what a week, Dennis says.  I meet you on Monday, fall in love with you on Tuesday, Wednesday I was unfaithful. Thursday we killed a guy together.  How about that for a crazy week, Sue Ann?  (I've never figured out what he's saying about Wednesday.  Was something cut out?)

Sue Ann glistens and gurgles as she speaks of killing the night watchman while Dennis wants to rhapsodize about the importance of his spy games.  She wants to talk about what they can do next and he says he wants to meet her mother.  She makes mention of how much she hates her restrictive, domineering mother (Garland).  

But everything changes when Dennis is fired.  He's clearly not going to win best-employee-of-the-month award and now the boss and the cops are suspicious of his involvement in the serious damage to the property.  Then Dennis's parole officer comes around and things begin to unravel more.  

Sue Ann suggests they flee to Mexico... right now.  Well, after they kill her mother.  (Sue Ann has stolen the night watchman's gun.)  She is standing in the doorway of her bedroom, gun pointing, laughing away, as her mother climbs the stairs to the second story.  The mother spots Sue Ann who fires several times and Mama goes tumbling down the stairs.  Dennis comes running out after hearing the shots.  Sue Ann, still laughing but more exhilarated, says... she looked surprised.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH:

They don't make it out of town before the police come calling.  Sue Ann, ever the crafty psychopath, smiles sweetly and tells the cops that Dennis is crazy and that he killed her mother and the night watchman, forcing her to watch and participate.  The sordid little piece ends with the probation officer watching Sue Ann talking with a young man at the same outside diner where she met Dennis.

It is based on Stephen Geller's novel She Let Him Continue and filmed under that title as well and a taut screenplay was provided by Lorenzo Semple Jr.  In the character and plot development it was fun to watch how Dennis becomes more and more fragile and vulnerable as Sue Ann unleashes her inner viciousness.  

Black does a super job of melding the film's sensitivity with its decidedly more unsettling nature.  It was his first feature and ultimately the only one that was even remotely celebrated.  

Weld will always remember this film and the director, as well, because she could not stand either one.  At one point she stopped speaking to Black and had him speak to Perkins if there was anything he wanted her to know.  Over the years she has never softened much on the subject of film or director and has added that she thought she was terrible in it.

Oh my, Weld and her director speak?

Oh, I must disagree.  She is everything.  She IS the film.  It is a beautiful performance.  Weld has always been a Hollywood outsider who marched to her own tune.  She is famous for playing by a different of set rules from those handing them out.  I think she summoned all her tremendous forces and gave them to Sue Ann.  Maybe hating the director even helped.  She out-psychos Perkins as her character, not his, dominates the film.  It's easy to see why she was Warren Beatty's first choice to play opposite him in Bonnie and Clyde a year earlier.  

Many have said that Psycho ruined Perkins's career because all people ever wanted to see him in was nutjob roles where he could give full run to his many quirks, tics, mannerisms and such.  One could not deny that Pretty Poison adds to that thinking. Nonetheless, I thought he was a perfect Dennis.

Beverly Garland

Garland, too, was very good.  I wonder how she got the role because she usually appeared in cheapie westerns or horror flicks.  Her fierceness was just what the role required.  Unsurprisingly, she said it was her favorite role.

It was filmed in Great Barrington, Massachusetts which adds a lot to the murky doings.

It was not successful when it was initially released but over the years has gained a cult following.

Here's the trailer:

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