Pretty Poison

It's established early on in Noel Black's Pretty Poison that Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins) is not entirely there. (Well, he is on parole from a mental institution.) Soon he gets Sue Ann Stepanek (Tuesday Weld) wrapped up in his "missions", and it doesn't take long for chaos to unfold.

This being Perkins' first post-Psycho Hollywood role (he had done several projects overseas), there are the obvious parallels between his famous role and Pretty Poison. But Black wanted to capture the Perkins previously seen in Friendly Persuasion and Fear Strikes Out, not the one that limited the actor's future career. (Perkins still got typecast after this.) That said, the two periods of his profession are entwined within Dennis.

That's not to disregard Perkins' work in Pretty Poison, far from it, He was an actor who captured a sense of naivete very well throughout his career. Though often in roles where he's a bundle of nerves within a lanky frame, he was still good at his job.

And then there's Weld. Surprisingly devoid of an Oscar nomination for her work in Pretty Poison, she plays Sue Ann as a classic femme fatale: attractive, seductive and very dangerous. (She certainly lives up to the film's title, that's for sure.)

Pretty Poison is part of that cinematic canon which marked a decided shift in Hollywood and its storytelling. Gone is the whole concept of playing it safe; now directors, writers and actors had less restrictions for the stories they wanted to make. And the results -- like what's seen here -- can be downright anarchic in comparison to the previous decade's contributions.

My Rating: ****1/2