If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A low-budgeted romance-cum-crime dark comedy from director Noel Black, his debut feature PRETTY POISON was dead on arrival upon its release, but its reputation has been rescued ever since, arguably categorised as a "Neo-noir", it stars Anthony Perkins, 8 years after PSYCHO (1960), as an apparently self-referential young man Dennis Pitt, who was a teenage arsonist and has been recently released from mental institution on parole and works in a lumber mill, he looks normal, a breezy lad is ready to embrace his freedom. But a forewarning from his parole officer Morton Azenauer (Randolph) "you steps into a tough world where it got no place at all for fantasies" reveals his concerns.Dennis has a crush on a blond local high-schooler Sue Ann (Weld) and tries to impress her by claiming himself as a secret agent, and it works! A guileless Sue Ann believes him and spurs him to do something exciting together. Smitten with her, Dennis invents a series of missions including sabotaging the chute of the mill where he works, under the fancy of a water-poisoning conspiracy theory. But during their jejune mission, things escalate into murder, and guess who is the perpetrator, it's Sue Ann, it turns out that she has no conscience of killing at all, she is the real psychopath and from then, the scale has been tipped. Dennis behaves more like a normal person while Sue Ann's escape plan goes wilder and scarier, there is no way this will end like Oliver Stone's anti-social affidavit NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994), so the only safe way for Dennis to cut off with her completely, is that he goes back behind the bars and leaves the pretty poison to the next victim and hopes one day, she can get her comeuppance.The passive, self-preserving ending where vice gets away with murder is shockingly at odds with most Hollywood commodities, but the story itself has a semblance of food for thought. Anthony Perkins credibly juggles levity and seriousness with his unique greenness, he is less neurotic and more sympathetic here. Tuesday Weld, on the other hand, is much too calculated to underline an 18-year-old murderess' twisted frame of mind, and Beverly Garland is quite memorable as her controlling mother who doesn't have any inkling about the true nature of her daughter - surprised but not scared, when her doom abruptly arrives, that's the bloody irony of parenting.

Pretty Poison is directed by Noel Black and adapted to screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Junior from the novel "She Let Him Continue" written by Stephen Geller. It stars Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld, Beverly Garland, John Randolph and Dick O'Neill. Music is by Johnny Mandel and cinematography by David Quaid.Pure definition of a culter movie? Probably Pretty Poison. A wonderfully odd neo-noir that's as cunning as a fox, Noel Black's movie flummoxed many upon release but the underground swell of the cult enthusiasts has ensured this particular poison is still around to be swallowed.Plot finds Perkins as troubled Dennis Pitt, an arsonist as a youth and fantasist as an adult, he's just been released from a mental health facility, in spite of his parole officer's reservations. Beginning his employment at a chemical factory, Dennis comes into contact with young high school drum majorette, Sue Anne Stepanek (Weld), and lets her believe he is a secret agent. Little does he know, but Sue is only too happy to indulge his fantasies, since she herself is harbouring some unhealthy desires.Much like the brilliant film noir movie Gun Crazy (1950), Pretty Poison upturns the standard boy and girl crime spree formula by having the girl be the one doing the damage. Dennis Pitt has absolutely no idea how not in control of the relationship he is, he's beguiled by Sue, thinking he has finally found a soul mate to share in his fantasies, but she's pulling all the strings, luring him into a web of chaos from which he is completely incapable of escaping from.With the characterisations firmly in place, where both Weld and Perkins are on top form, Black and his tech team pump discoloured blood through the picture's veins. Pic actually breathes as a black comedy, for the first third the makers are toying with us the audience, making us unsure as to if we should be laughing? Or feeling edgy? Maybe even daring us to walk out? Yes! The film "is" that off-kilter with its tonal flows. Then the light dawns on us, but not the hapless Dennis of course, that we are in a deceptively menacing Americana, one that's even strangely sexy, and cynical into the bargain.Subversive, intelligent and utterly compelling, Pretty Poison deserves to be better known. 8/10

Noel Black's darkly comic masterpiece "Pretty Poison" may owe quite a debt to "Psycho", (Anthony Perkin's Dennis is cut from the same cloth as Norman Bates), and in turn would influence the likes of Malick's "Badlands". What's even more surprising than the failure of the film to be better known than it actually is, (it's certainly a 'cult' movie), is that Black never went on to anything like a real cinema career though his direction here is exemplary. The plot, about a gormless sap being lead very badly astray by a femme fatale, (in this case, a very young femme fatale), is as old as the cinema itself and has served many a film-noir and gangster movie very well indeed though this is a lot more off-the-wall than most genre pictures. Perkins is Dennis Pitt, recently released from a correctional institution where he has been incarcerated for arson and Tuesday Weld is the high-school senior who latches onto him. Dennis may be as nutty as a fruitcake but it's Weld's Sue Ann who is the film's pretty poison and it's she who eggs Dennis on and leads down much more dangerous roads than even he might have gone by himself. Both players are superb, Weld particularly so and there are brilliant supporting turns from Beverly Garland as Weld's tramp of a mother and John Randolph as Perkins' probation officer. The source material is a novel by Stephen Geller and the brilliant adaptation is by Lorenzo Semple Jr. Cult movie it may be; Noel Black's only real film of note it may be but this is still a small classic.

Miserable film. What was this supposed to be a continuation of Anthony Perkins in "Psycho."He made this dreadful film 8 years after "Psycho" and he was certainly building on the type of a sick person. While Perkins did make the far better "Friendly Persuasion," he did the marvelous "Fear Strikes Out," but again he seemed to be typecast as a guy with severe emotional and mental hang-ups.This picture certainly proves that poison is bad for you. Perkins is really demented here and how the Tuesday Weld character could fall for him as a secret agent is beyond me. All right, so she is supposed to be a naive 18 years of age in the film.Murder, mayhem and other misery best describe this film.