Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: Pretty Poison - 1968

PRETTY POISON 1968lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2013/06/pretty-poison-1968.html

For as long as I can remember I've been intrigued by films whose themes dramatize a perception of reality I seem tohave held since my teens: the banality of evil. A term first coined in 1963 by political theorist Hannah Arendt in herHolocaust trial book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil , it’s a theory that has gone on to signifymany things, most persistently for me—the notion of wickedness thriving in the most innocuous of environments. Rosemary’s Baby found Satanic evil lurking behind the everyday meddlesome intrusions of nosy neighbors; TheStepford Wives exposed the murderous misogyny cloaked within patriarchal social systems; and Andy Warhol’sBad used basic-black comedy to satirize the lethal side of suburban materialism. In Pretty Poison, a bizarre littlechiller that slipped past audiences in 1968 but has since developed a loyal cult following, first-time director NoelBlack (with an award-winning screenplay by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. adapted from the novel, She Let Him Continue byStephen Geller) treads a path well-worn by directors as diverse as Alfred Hitchcock (Shadow of a Doubt) and DavidLynch (Blue Velvet): the dark underside of small town life.

Anthony Perkins as Dennis Pitt

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Tuesday Weld as Sue Ann Stepanek

Beverly Garland as Mrs. Stepanek

Anthony Perkins is Dennis Pitt, a recently-released-from-a-mental-institution loner (for the arson death of his auntwhen he was 15) with, to put it charitably, a tenuous grip on reality. A pathological liar, albeit not an especiallyaccomplished one, Pitt is given to flights of espionage fantasy so elaborate, one is never quite sure…least of allDennis himself…if he knows he's lying or not. Into his peculiar orbit comes drill team flag-bearer Sue Ann Stepanek,a 17-year-old high-schooler every bit as wholesome and unrefined as her name.Convincing the gullible Sue Ann that he’s a CIA agent on a covert mission to investigate environmental crimescommitted by the chemical plant where he’s employed, the delusional Pitt fancies himself the city slicker to SueAnn’s easily-seduced farmer’s daughter. Unfortunately, it isn't long before things grimly escalate in this bizarre gameof “Who’s zooming who?” - a game that finds the hunter, a tad slow on the uptake, discovering he has been capturedby the game.

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Although Most Men Are Loathe to Admit It, Women Terrify ThemPretty Poison dramatizes this unassailable fact (the very genesis of the femmefatale) by adopting a familiar film noir trope: the wiseguy male who thinks he

knows all the answers gets himself mixed up with a woman who has rewrittenthe book.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMOne of my strongest memories of being a pre-teen in the late '60s was the prevailing, almost oppressive sense (frommovies, television shows, and newspaper articles) that America was in a tumultuous state of self-reflection. After somany years of looking outside ourselves at Germany, Russia, Japan, and the vague specter of communism as thismonolith of absolute evil out to overthrow our just and unsullied American Way of Life; the ethical and moral morassthat was the Vietnam War—coupled with the rash of political assassinations, civil-rights related violence, andcampus rioting exploding throughout the country—posed the discomforting postulate that we were now living in anage when what we most had to fear was ourselves.Movies as dissimilar and ostensibly politically benign as Last Summer, Rosemary’s Baby, Bonnie and Clyde,Petulia, Angel Angel Down We Go , Easy Rider, They Shoot Horses Don’t They?, The Parallax View, and Targets,all reflected the late-'60s zeitgeist: ambiguity about and disillusion with the beliefs, conventions, and institutions inwhich we at one time placed our absolute trust.

The All-American GirlRather pathetically, this image of a handgun amongst the innocent, little-girl

trappings of a teen's dressing table still embodies the American ideal for a greatmany people: every man, woman and child in the country armed to the teeth.

For a time, it felt as though everything clean and shiny about American culture was revealing itself to have anunderside of decay and rot. Pretty Poison, a film whose title even captures this sense of wary disquietude, gives us

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a film that appears on the surface to be a harmless, anarchic black comedy about misfit youth, but is, in fact, atwisted and rather unexpected tale where nothing is as it seems and good intentions don't amount to very much.

Dennis studying a vial of the chemical his plant produces whose waste pollutesthe river and nearby lake...or is he thinking of Sue Ann?

American films in the sixties were obsessed with unearthing the villains who presented themselves as the clean-cutupholders of family values; in exposing the hypocrisy behind the small town bastions of normalcy and conformity;and in confronting the violent institutions and belief systems that casually traded lies for lives in the belief thatsomething real was being defended. Films like Pretty Poison—films that sought to explore the enemy within—askedaudiences to take a good look at what America had become.

PERFORMANCESIt’s perhaps debatable whether or not Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld deconstruct or merely exploit theirtrademarked screen personas in Pretty Poison. But what is clear is that in assuming roles that both recall and addunexpected twists to past performances for which they've become indelibly linked in the public's mind (Psycho’sunhinged Norman Bates for Perkins, Lord Love a Duck’s covetous co-ed Barbara Ann Greene for Weld), Perkinsand Weld—who share an electric chemistry—take audience preconceptions and make us choke on them.

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It begins to dawn on Dennis that Sue Ann is something of a force to be reckonedwith

Tuesday Weld, an incredibly talented actress who has shunned fame the way most people avoid a trip to the dentist,is said to have been miserable during the making of the film, loathed her director, and blamed him for her giving whatshe considered to be one of her worst screen performances. (Obviously upset and trying to make a point, Ms. Weldshould nevertheless know that that dubious honor falls to her timeless work in Sex Kittens Go to College.)On the contrary, in spite of having been labeled a "neurotic" by Pretty Poison co-star John Randolph, and said tohave been frequently in tearful hysterics during the filming, Tuesday Weld gives a masterfully canny performance inthe film. One that is, at turns, both charming and chilling. I think she's mesmerizingly good, her performance hereranking among one of the best of her career. And at almost 25-years of age at the time and playing 17, shesomehow manages to get away with it...her preternatural physical development hinting at a shrouded psychologicalmaturity.

Roger Corman stalwart (and personal fave), the always excellent Beverly Garlandis a particular standout as Sue Ann's brassy mother.

And then there is Anthony Perkins. When I was growing up, he always gave me the creeps. But upon discoveringmore of his pre-Psycho work, I have begun to find him strangely attractive and have since developed quite theposthumous crush. In Pretty Poison, Perkins is once again cast to type in the kind of role he found it near-impossibleto escape following Psycho. Yet, typecast as he was, no one could ever accuse him of sleepwalking his way throughPretty Poison. His Dennis Pitt is one of his more affecting and underplayed performances. Sympathetic, complex,and imbued with a great deal of dimension. I especially like how his character starts to revert to an almost childlikestate of bewilderment and confusion as his overactive fantasy life begins to spiral out of his control into anightmarish reality.

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John Randolph plays Dennis' appropriately concerned case officer, Morton Azenauer

THE STUFF OF FANTASYAdding to Pretty Poison’s already considerable quirk factor are the odd ways in which Pretty Poison’s plot intersectswith, Tuesday Weld’s 1966 teen-culture spoof Lord Love a Duck, and Weld’s own private life. Note: If you haven’tyet seen Pretty Poison, you may want to skip over this section.

Pretty Poison / Lord Love a Duck / Real lifeThe characters Weld plays in both films have aggressively contentious relationships with their mothers. In real-life,Weld loathed her mother and was fond of telling reporters that her mother was dead, even though she was quitealive and kicking. This prompted Weld's mother, one Yosene Ker Weld, to write the tell-all book If It's Tuesday...IMust Be DEAD! published in 2003 - ironically, after her death.

Pretty Poison / Lord Love a Duck / Real lifeThe ageless, feckless men Weld manipulates in both films are portrayed by actors (Perkins, Roddy McDowall) whoin real life were closeted gay men. In 1972, Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins reteamed for the film Play it As ItLays, in which Weld portrayed an actress suffering a nervous breakdown and Perkins her gay best friend, a suicidalfilm director. In real life, the depressive Anthony Perkins was indeed Weld's good friend and directed two films...oneof them being the last-straw sequel Psycho III.The Lord Love a Duck connection finds Weld marrying the assistant of her good friend Roddy McDowall in 1965,only to discover that her new husband also happened to have been McDowall's lover.

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Pretty Poison / Lord Love a DuckWeld’s character in both films is a dissatisfied, disaffected high-school senior who comes under the influence of astrange man whom she’s able to manipulate into helping her out with her “problems.”

Pretty Poison / Lord Love a DuckIn both films, Weld’s character rises like a phoenix from the ashes while her male compatriot rots in prison. Pretty Poison / How Awful About AllanIn Pretty Poison and the 1970 TV movie, How Awful About Allan, Anthony Perkins plays a man who, in his youth,causes the accidental death of a relative by fire. Both roles cast the twitchy actor as a potential villain only later toreveal him as a victim of a complex, calculated scheme.

THE STUFF OF DREAMSGiven how superior their performances are and what a thoroughly hard-hitting thriller it is, it's a pity that neitherAnthony Perkins nor Tuesday Weld care(d) much for Pretty Poison. Weld, for the aforementioned animosity she felttoward her director, Perkins, less for his performance than for finding the film "slow moving." I rememberwhen Pretty Poison was released in the San Francisco area in 1968 and being intrigued by the newspaper ads andTV commercials. Still, given all that, it seemed to disappear from theaters so quickly that I never actually got aroundto seeing it until the late 1970s, when it was screened at a revival theater compatibly double-billed with PertBogdanovich's Targets (another socko, small film from the same year that I highly recommend).

I was simply floored by Pretty Poison and still consider it to be a film far superior and more frightening than some ofthe more high-profile films with similar themes (Badlands, Kalifornia, Natural Born Killers). There's really much torecommend it, not the least being a '60s vibe that somehow doesn't feel dated, and, most gratifyingly, top-notch lead

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performances by two of Hollywood's more charismatic (if idiosyncratic) stars.

She Let Him Continue"I was such a fool, Mr. Azenauer. I let him go on even after I knew he was crazy..."

BONUS MATERIALIn 1996, Pretty Poison was made into a pedestrian TV movie of profound mediocrity. All plot, no subtext.

Happily, Noel Black's Pretty Poison is available on DVD. Unfortunately the U.S. version is without the director'scommentary on the UK DVD release. To read more about this forgotten gem, check out this great article at Joes'View.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

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