Taglines: She’s such a sweet girl. He’s such a nice boy. They’ll scare the hell out of you.
Pretty Poison movie storyline. Dennis Pitt, now in young adulthood, has been conditionally released from a psychiatric hospital, where he had been institutionalized for an incident that occurred when he was fifteen. Despite the doctors believing he to be rehabilitated in not suffering from the fantasies which dominated his life, Dennis is still required to check in with his case officer, Morton Azenauer, once a week. Azenauer will do whatever he can to help Dennis survive in the outside world.
A year following his release, Dennis violates the conditions of his release by moving without telling Azenauer, thus missing his weekly check-ins. He moves to Winslow, Massachusetts where he has gotten a job at Sausenfeld Chemical Co., his boss, Bud Munsch, the company, and his acquaintances in town not aware of his history. In not being truly rehabilitated, Dennis believes the company is part of an alien conspiracy to poison the water supply, including openly discharging chemical waste into the local lake next to the plant.
Dennis spends much of his time gathering photographic evidence to support his belief. He also becomes infatuated with seventeen year old high school senior Sue Ann Stepanek upon first sight. In his “investigative” work, Dennis is able to convince Sue Ann that he is a secret agent, she who he co-opts into those investigations as they begin a romantic relationship. However, as Sue Ann deals with what she considers her repressed life, she, in her own slightly off kilter mental state and using her relationship with Dennis, works toward her own agenda, leading to tragic consequences.
Pretty Poison is a 1968 American black comedy film directed by Noel Black, starring Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld, about an ex-convict and high school cheerleader who commit a series of crimes. The film was based on the novel She Let Him Continue by Stephen Geller. It has become a cult film.
About the Story
Dennis Pitt is a disturbed young man on parole from a mental institution who becomes attracted to teenager Sue Ann Stepenek. He tells her that he is a secret agent, and takes her along on a series of “missions”. Things, however, turn out disastrously when Dennis takes Sue Ann along to sabotage a factory on imaginary orders from the CIA. When the couple encounters the factory’s night watchman, Sue Ann knocks him unconscious and then drowns him.
While Dennis is wracked with guilt over both what he has done and what he has allowed to happen, Sue Ann is excited by the “adventure” and entreats Dennis to run away with her to Mexico. First, however, they have to get rid of her disapproving mother. The couple return to Sue Ann’s home for her clothes and are interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Stepanek. Sue Ann realizes that Dennis is incapable of actually killing a person, so she shoots her mother and orders Dennis to dispose of the body. But instead, he calls the police.
Dennis knows that the police will take Sue Ann’s word over his, so he makes no effort to defend himself in court and takes the blame for their crimes. Sue Ann, meanwhile, betrays him without a second thought, sending him to prison for life. Dennis is more than happy to be locked up, as it keeps him away from Sue Ann, of whom he is now quite frightened.
While Dennis refuses to tell his skeptical parole officer Azenauer the truth, he asks him to “see what Sue Ann is up to” in hopes she will be exposed for what she really is. The film ends with Sue Ann meeting a young man and lamenting to him that the people who took her in after her mother’s death won’t let her stay out late; it is implied that she will use and destroy him just as she did Dennis. But Dennis’s parole officer is indeed watching as she departs with her latest victim.
Pretty Poison (1968)
Directed by: Noel Black
Starring: Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld, Beverly Garland, John Randolph, Dick O’Neill, Clarice Blackburn, Joseph Bova, Don Fellows, Ken Kercheval, George Ryan
Screenplay by: Lorenzo Semple Jr.
Cinematography by: David L. Quaid
Film Editing by: William H. Ziegler
Costume Design by: Ann Roth
Set Decoration by: John Mortensen
Art Direction by: Harold Michelson, Jack Martin Smith
Music by: Johnny Mandel
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: September 18, 1968
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