PRETTY POISON

There's something deeply wrong with the American girl next door, and Noel Black's PRETTY POISON is delighted to investigate. A spectacularly twisted combination of teenage romance, black comedy, and small-town psychosis, this neglected cult classic stars Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld as two young lovers whose shared enthusiasm for make-believe takes them into increasingly unpleasant territory. Perkins plays a recently institutionalized fantasist who convinces a beautiful high school majorette (Weld) that he's a secret agent investigating a Communist conspiracy. She proves an enthusiastic recruit, although her ideas about what constitutes an appropriate response to enemy activity turn out to be considerably more extreme than his.

Coming a few years after Psycho, PRETTY POISON finds Perkins playing another socially maladjusted young man with serious psychological problems, only this time he may be the most reasonable person in the movie. Weld is astonishing as a wholesome American teenager whose cheerful disposition remains entirely undisturbed by the increasingly appalling things she's willing to do. Black directs with a wonderfully straight face, but it's the warped chemistry between Perkins and Weld that makes the film irresistible. He's thrilled to have found someone who believes his fantasies; she's thrilled to have found someone who gives her an excuse to act on hers.

“If PSYCHO was the seed of a new kind of mainstream Hollywood movie ... then this is the brightly colored fruit.” - Joe Gibson