Pretty Poison
1968 Directed by Noel Black
Synopsis
She's such a sweet girl. He's such a nice boy. They'll scare the hell out of you.
A young man gets in over his head when he convinces a small-town girl he's a secret agent.
Cast
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Really excellent neonoir. Or protoneonoir. Something. Kind of pokes fun at Bond-mania and Psycho. Also Tuesday Weld: yowza
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Tonally sophisticated, and well crafted cult staple from Noel Black. It's a shame that films like Pretty Poison have faded into obscurity, but really, it is apropos that a film this misunderstood stars two leads that Hollywood never knew what to do with, the fabulous Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld. Mixing a bit of Lolita, with a dash of NIght of the Hunter and a TON of Gun Crazy, Black and company seamlessly shift between neo-noir, black comedy and straight forward surrealism.
Perhaps what I like most about this film is that nothing is what it seems. One could be forgiven for believing the opening act was part of a badly-written comedy, probably because that is exactly what the writer…
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Anthony Perkins manages another Norman Bates-like role in this OK thriller about a delusional arsonist who arrives in a new town and tricks a local girl into thinking he’s a CIA spy only to discover she may be more crazy than he is. It’s a mostly interesting film that features slid performances by Perkins and Tuesday Weld as his teenage lover, but it peaks early and never quite recovers.
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This movie is a slow and creepy ride to crazytown.
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Darkly hilarious and way ahead of its time. The great Lorenzo Semple Jr.'s script seems to play with audience expectations and the tropes of the killer-couple genre back when it had barely been invented. Besides a couple of arguable wheel-spinning stretches, it's awfully fun to have the king and queen of oddball creeper roles together in one movie, with Tuesday Weld in particularly fine form.
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Really excellent neonoir. Or protoneonoir. Something. Kind of pokes fun at Bond-mania and Psycho. Also Tuesday Weld: yowza
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Anthony Perkins is terrific as always. Tuesday Weld is delightfully psychotic. Tight, suspenseful, and unpredictable film. Just when you think you know how everything will play out, the film takes a huge left turn and keeps you guessing. Reminds me of Lolita mixed with Night of the Hunter. Fantastic underseen classic.
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This is a very unusual and quirky movie with great performances from Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins. It is also a bit of a worrying film in that everybody seems a bit unbalanced or at least not quite up to scratch and we are never quite sure where it is going to go. At first things seem straightforward enough, in fact Perkins’ fantasies/make-believe tales for Weld are becoming just that much too silly when the whole thing takes off when the little lady gets a bit bigger. Not just a little bit bigger, either because she begins to dwarf Perkins. All very well done for no sooner have we begun to write Perkins off as an out and out psychopath,…
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Tonally sophisticated, and well crafted cult staple from Noel Black. It's a shame that films like Pretty Poison have faded into obscurity, but really, it is apropos that a film this misunderstood stars two leads that Hollywood never knew what to do with, the fabulous Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld. Mixing a bit of Lolita, with a dash of NIght of the Hunter and a TON of Gun Crazy, Black and company seamlessly shift between neo-noir, black comedy and straight forward surrealism.
Perhaps what I like most about this film is that nothing is what it seems. One could be forgiven for believing the opening act was part of a badly-written comedy, probably because that is exactly what the writer…
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Anthony Perkins plays against type by playing a disturbed--but not criminally disturbed--young man who becomes obsessed with a cheerleader played by a deliciously sick (and gorgeous) Tuesday Weld.
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Ripped off constantly.
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Anthony Perkins manages another Norman Bates-like role in this OK thriller about a delusional arsonist who arrives in a new town and tricks a local girl into thinking he’s a CIA spy only to discover she may be more crazy than he is. It’s a mostly interesting film that features slid performances by Perkins and Tuesday Weld as his teenage lover, but it peaks early and never quite recovers.