When Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins) was fifteen he set his aunt’s house on fire. She died in the flames. Dennis has a tendency to live in his own fantasy world. He was put in a mental institution for years. Now he is on parole and must report to his probation officer, Morton Azenauer (John Randolph) each week. Dennis was supposed to report to a lumber company for work. The job was set up by the parole board. Instead, he breaks parole and gets a job at the Sausenfeld Chemical Company in Winslow, Massachusetts.
Dennis sees pretty, young Sue Ann Stepanek (Tuesday Weld) holding a flag and marching with her high school drill team. Attracted to Sue Ann, Dennis incorporates her into his latest fantasy. He tells Sue Ann that he is an agent for the CIA and makes her a civilian recruit helping him in his mission. Dennis believes that the chemical plant is part of a conspiracy to poison the water supply. The plant is poisoning the water, but it is out of greed and neglect and not out of any diabolical international plot.
Dennis decides he needs to sabotage the plant. Dennis doesn’t realize that Sue Ann has some mental issues herself. While they are loosening screws that hold the discharge pipes together for the exterior shoot, the night watchman, Sam Joyals (Parker Fennelly) finds them. Dennis panics but Sue Ann hits the guard in the head with a wrench. The guard is unconscious but alive. She steals his gun, rolls him into the river and sits on him until he drowns. Dennis doesn’t know what to do. He is depressed and feeling guilty, but Sue Ann is exhilarated.
The next day Dennis goes to work trying to maintain his composer. The shoot collapses. They find the watchman. Dennis’s boss, Bud Munsch (Dick O’Neill) fires Dennis. Two detectives, (Don Fellows and Tom Gorman) are on hand to question him. Dennis is now paranoid, so Sue Ann suggests that they get married and take off for Mexico, but first Sue Ann wants to get rid of her interfering mother (Beverly Garland).
“Pretty Poison” was released in 1968 and was directed by Noel Black. It is an American Crime Romance and a bit of a black comedy. The movie was based on the 1966 novel “She Let Him Continue” by Stephen Geller. This is another film that failed at the box office but garnered a cult following later.
Although the movie is similar to other “killer couple” movies, it is a lot tamer than most. Although any teenager with a gun is a little on the scary side. Weld’s character starts out as a naïve but spoiled teenager who resents interference from her mother but by the end, she is a conniving femme fatale that gets what she wants. She looks and acts sweet and innocent, but don’t cross her.
I’m not sure how old Perkins’ character is supposed to be in the film, but I suspect he is somewhere in his early or mid-twenties. At the time Perkins was thirty-six, although his slender build and eccentric manner allowed him to pass for younger. Weld’s character was seventeen when in reality she was twenty-five. Garland, who played Weld’s mother, was forty-two, only six years older than Perkins.
With some decent talent, the film ended up being better than I expected. I wasn’t all that impressed with the directing but Perkins’ deadpan delivery of what his character thinks a spy should sound like makes up for any shortcomings.