DVD REVIEW: Cinema Cult – Pretty Poison

Shane | 21 March 2015 | Reply

DVD REVIEW: Cinema Cult – Pretty Poison
Shock Entertainment
Directed by Noel Black, 1968
Starring Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld, Beverly Garland
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
8/10

An underrated gem featuring excellent performances from its leads – Anthony Perkins and the ravishing Tuesday Weld – Pretty Poison tells the story of Dennis Pitt (Perkins), a disturbed young man prone to flights of fantasy, who is released from a mental home after a childhood episode.

Adopting the persona of an undercover CIA spy whilst working at a polluting chemical plant, Pitt works hard to impress pretty schoolgirl Sue Ann Stepanek, and before too long they’re an item and working on his imagined mission to expose his boss for trying to poison the towns water supply.

Highlighting the factory’s horrendous pollution of the environment showed the filmmakers to be ahead of their time, and in a brilliant twist Pitt is shown to be a naïve innocent, and safer in custody than exposed to the real danger – Weld’s titular ‘pretty poison’.