Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins) gets released from a mental institution. He has a tendency to tell fantastical lies. He is taken with teen Sue Ann Stepanek (Tuesday Weld) and pretends to be a CIA agent. She is wildly eager to believe him. He gets fired and engineers a mission to sabotage the factory. She joins him on his mission, kills a security guard, and steals his gun. Her mother threatens Dennis over Sue Ann.Perkins is never forceful but always has that creepy off-centered presence. Sue Ann's quick acceptance of his lies is a little odd. There is an interesting switch in the power dynamics as her strange naivety turns into disturbed manipulative Lolita. It would be great to have more sexuality in the manipulations. This is plenty dark but I want the tone to be even darker. This is a fascinating little movie.

Plot-- An outpatient uses his fantasy skills to entice a blonde cutie into his dream world, but gets more than he bargained for, to say the least.One of the squirrliest pairings in movie history. Weld and Perkins are darn near perfect as the young couple from heck. And to think that the sweet-faced little Sue Ann (Weld) turned up at random out of a highschool drill team. No wonder Pitt (Perkins) wants back into the safety of an asylum. If she's the outside world, we'd all better hide. He may be a James Bond fantasist, but at least he doesn't straddle corpses in ecstatic delight. In fact, he's got a social conscience when it comes to what his employer is doing. And that's the problem. He's got a sense of limits, but she doesn't.So why does he go along with her betrayal of him. I can understand why he wants back into confinement, but why turn seductive Sue Ann back loose on society. After all, he's trying to keep mill gunk out of the stream. Maybe it's because, unlike the ugly river poison, she's a pretty poison.Really original premise, expertly played out. No doubt the screenplay couldn't have been produced ten years earlier. The sixties lifted the lid on the exotic, and this one goes about as far as any. I like the working class locations that lend both realism and flavor. And get a load of the stream that's used as everyone's dumping ground. No wonder the two kids are weird. Stodgy old Hollywood would never give awards to a movie like this. But in my little book, I'd give one-eyed Oscars to both Perkins and Weld, and a real one to screenwriter Semple. Meanwhile, I'll never look at a girls drill team the same way again, and you may not, either.

An insightful and witty script, assured but understated direction plus inspired performances by Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld make "Pretty Poison" a unique experience.Towards the end of the film, Anthony Perkins' character, Dennis Pitt, is visited in jail by his case officer, Mr Azenauer, played by John Randolph. Azenauer has begun to realise that Dennis is innocent of the crime for which he has been jailed. Asked why he doesn't protest his innocence, Dennis replies with a classic line: 'I've learned that people only pay attention to what they discover for themselves'. "Pretty Poison" is full of offbeat wisdom such as this. The story begins as Dennis Pitt is paroled from the mental institution where he has been for a number of years. Among other issues Dennis is thought to have an overactive imagination and trouble separating fact from fantasy. Before he leaves he is warned that he is going out into a very tough and real world that has no place at all for fantasies. Dennis travels to a small town where a job has been arranged for him at a chemical plant. He becomes involved with a 17 year-old high school student, Sue Ann Stepanek, played by Tuesday Weld. He attracts her by pretending to be an undercover agent. Sue Ann goes along with this pretence but it seems more a way of injecting excitement into her dull and restricted life, much of which she blames on her mother.Alarmed at pollution to the waterways caused by the chemical plant, Dennis plots a little sabotage. He involves Sue Ann in the plan, but this proves to be the catalyst for her to reveal her sociopathic tendencies. She gets her hands on a gun, and has a scheme of her own with matricide in mind. It is a reversal of roles; Sue Ann now takes charge while the increasingly apprehensive and guilt-wracked Dennis is no match for her ruthlessness or cunning. Their feelings for each other change with the changing circumstances. At the end, Dennis is back in prison, a far wiser soul with few illusions left; only Azenauer suspects he is innocent.As the plot gets darker, the film retains a lightness of touch – its wry humour helped by the great screen chemistry between Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld – although their roles seemed to be the stereotypes from which both actors were trying to free themselves. In Perkins' case it was from the neurotic, arrested personality of Norman Bates that he had made famous in "Psycho". Tuesday Weld, on the other hand, brings to her role memories of Thalia Menninger, the gap-toothed nymphet she portrayed in "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis". Both their parts in "Pretty Poison", while not parodies of those earlier roles, are beautifully realised variations with a twist. Perkins invests Dennis Pitt with a vulnerability and sensitivity that makes him the most worthwhile character in the movie, especially when contrasted with the meaner-spirited but more 'normal' people around him.Don't be put off by the 1968 date of manufacture – other than superficialities such as cars, hairstyles and lack of iPhones, "Pretty Poison" hasn't really dated, it is still a surprising and rewarding experience that, to paraphrase Dennis Pitt, is waiting for people to discover for themselves.

The content and plot of this movie had much suspense. Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins were terrific. One thing that needs to be mentioned here was the fine filming of this movie,not the director so much but the way this was superbly shot by David L. Quaid. Hitchcock would have been proud. The shots down the stairway when when Sue shoots her mother and the subsequent collapse and fall backward with breakfast going all over the place. The scene at the bridge when the " bomb" is being placed. David Quaid must have been in the water for this shot.Then the collapse of a part of the bridge and the death of the worker.Even the shot at the outside diner car at an angle captures Sues' psychotic look near the end of the movie.