Pretty Poison **** (1968, Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld, Beverly Garland) – Classic Movie Review 6335

At the top of their game, Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld are stupendous in director Noel Black’s satisfying, offbeat 1968 thriller based on Stephen Geller’s novel She Let Him Continue, mixing in a little twisted romance and dark humour.

Perkins plays paranoid arsonist Dennis Pitt, who is paroled along with kindly older Morton Azenauer (John Randolph), and asks the sweet-seeming student Sue Ann Stepanek (Weld) for help. But he finds that she is planning to murder her steely-eyed mother Mrs Stepanek (Beverly Garland).  Would that be by the Pretty Poison of the title or the gun she is pointing in the poster?

Pretty Poison is an auspicious directorial début by Black, who makes the most of the taut and compelling screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr.

It is the best film of Noel Black, who died on 5 July 2014, aged 77, and Perkins and Weld scarcely did anything after this to beat it either. Garland, too, is outstanding. But, sadly, it was not a box-office hit. Black turned to TV entirely after A Man, a Woman and a Bank in 1979 and Private School in 1983. Weld’s most recent film is in 2001. Perkins died on 12 September 1992.

Depressingly, Weld disliked working with Black and said she thought she gave her worst ever performance in the film.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6335

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