Retro Television Review: The Judge and Jake Wyler (dir by David Lowell Rich)

Posted on February 25, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1972’s The Judge and Jake Wyler! It can be viewed on YouTube.

Judge Meredith (Bette Davis) is a retired criminal court judge who has developed a severe case of hypochondria. She lives in a mansion that she never leaves. Anyone who comes to see her must be personally vacuumed by her butler before they can be allowed to stand in her presence. She hates people who take too long to get to the point and she also has little use for people who are rude on the phone. She especially dislikes cigarettes and refuses to have even an unlit one in her presence.

Jake Wyler (Doug McClure) is an ex-con who is currently on supervised probation. Despite his criminal past, he’s a likable and amiable guy and, every morning, he wakes up with a new woman in his bed. Jake enjoys tweaking authority and he always has a pack of cigarettes on him somewhere.

Together, they solve crimes!

They actually do! The judge is dealing with retirement by running her own detective agency, one that is exclusively staffed by people that she previously sentenced to prison. Jake does most of the leg work as far as the agency is concerned. The Judge calls him every morning and demands to know why he’s not working harder. Jake would rather just sleep-in but working for the judge is a part of his parole. She could easily send him and everyone else working for her back to prison. This sounds like a pretty unfair situation to me and the Judge is so demanding that I think it could be argued that she’s an abusive boss. But, because this is a pilot for a TV show and the Judge is played by Bette Davis, everyone is very loyal to her.

At the start of the film, Jake reveals to Robert Dodd (Kent Smith) that his wife, Caroline (Lisabeth Hush), has been cheating on him with Frank Morrison (Gary Conway). When Robert is later found dead in a hospital room, the official verdict is that he committed suicide. However, his daughter, Alicia (Joan Van Ark), claims that her father was murdered. At first, both Jake and the Judge suspect that Alicia just wants to collect a bigger life insurance settlement but it turns out that Dodd’s beneficiary wasn’t even Alicia. The money is going to his second wife, the one who was cheating on him. While the Judge yells at people on the phone, Jake investigates the death of Robert Dodd.

The Judge and Jake Wyler is a mix of comedy and mystery. Jake has a way with a quip and the majority of the suspects, including John Randolph and Eric Braeden, all have their own eccentricities. Director David Lowell Rich does a good job of keeping the action moving and the mystery itself is actually pretty interesting. Surprisingly, the show’s only real flaw is Bette Davis, who seems to be rather bored in the role of Judge Meredith. Even though the character seems to have been specifically written for her trademark caustic line delivery, Davis delivers her lines with little enthusiasm. One gets the feeling that she wasn’t particularly happy about the idea of having to do a television pilot.

Davis need not have worried. The Judge and Jake Wyler did not turn into a series. That said, the movie is an entertaining and diverting murder mystery.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Prizzi’s Honor (dir by John Huston)

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1985, Prizzi’s Honor tells the story of Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson), a blue collar guy who lives in Brooklyn and who is a hard-working hit man for the Prizzi crime family. Charley is the son of Angelo (John Randolph), who is the right-hand man to the family’s elderly but still ruthless Don (William Hickey). In the past, Charley came close to marrying the Don’s daughter, Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston), and he is almost as much a member of the family as the Don’s two sons, Eduardo (Robert Loggia) and Dominic (Lee Richardson).

While attending a family wedding, Charley meets and is immediately infatuated with a woman named Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner). Later, when Charley is sent to California to kill a man who robbed one of the family’s Vegas casinos, he is shocked to discover that the man is Irene’s husband. Irene swears that she didn’t have anything to do with the casino theft and, after a whirlwind courtship, Charley and Irene get married in Mexico. What Charley doesn’t know (but eventually discovers) is that Irene is herself a professional killer. While Charley and Irene try to balance work and love, Maerose conspires to turn the family against Irene and win Charley back.

Directed by the legendary John Huston, Prizzi’s Honor is pitch black comedy about two hard-working people who kill for a living. (The film’s big set piece is an extended sequence in which Charley and Irene’s attempt to pull a job together goes wrong in every way and they end up arguing about their relationship while dragging dead bodies from one room to another.) Though Prizzi’s Honor was released long before the series premiered on HBO, the film feels almost like a companion piece to The Sopranos, full of mobsters who are not as clever as they think they are and who struggle to uphold the old ways in an increasingly complicated world. Particularly when compared to the gangster who populate a film like The Godfather, the Prizzis are defined by their pettiness. If Don Corleone epitomized wisdom and honor, Don Prizzi epitomizes someone who holds onto power solely for power’s sake.

Prizzi’s Honor is one of those films that probably seemed a bit more revolutionary when it was first released than it does today. At this point, we’ve seen so many films about hired killers who have quirky conversations while carrying out their work that the mix of violence and dark humor can feel almost like a cliché. As well, there are certain parts of the film, like the opening wedding sequence, that feel as if they go on for just a few minutes too long, as if John Huston himself was not always comfortable with the balance between the dark drama and the comedy of mob manners. That said, Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner (who gives a performance worthy of the great femme fatales of film noir), Anjelica Huston, John Randolph, and especially William Hickey all give strong enough performances to hold the audience’s attention and the film’s finale cuts to the point in such a way that it leaves you reconsidering everything that you’ve previously seen. Prizzi’s Honor has its flaws but Nicholson and Turner have such chemistry that the film’s ending sticks with you.

Prizzi’s Honor was nominated for 8 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor for William Hickey. (Oddly, Kathleen Turner was not nominated for playing Irene.) In the end, it only won one Oscar that year, for supporting actress Anjelica Huston. The Oscars that year were dominated by a far more convention love story, Out of Africa.

Film Review: King Kong (dir by John Guillermin)

Posted on April 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1976 remake of King Kong is the version of the great ape’s story that no one ever seems to want to talk about.

Everyone, of course, continues to appreciate the original King Kong from 1933, with its charmingly dated but still somewhat effective special effects. The Japanese King Kong films have their fans, even if it still annoys me that two endings were made for the original King Kong vs. Godzilla. The Peter Jackson-directed remake from 2005 had many admirers, including me. The monsterverse Kong certainly has many fans, as is indicated by the fact that Godzilla vs Kong is the first box office hit of the post-pandemic era. King Kong is a beloved character and yet the 1976 version of his story never seem to get as much attention as all the others.

Some of that, of course, is because the 1976 version of King Kong is often described as not being very good. It tells the same basic story as the first King Kong but there’s a few key differences. The expedition to the hidden island is no longer made up of a film crew. Instead, everyone has a separate backstory that doesn’t really make much sense. Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin) is an energy company executive who is looking for a new source of oil. Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges) is a long-haired hippie environmentalist type who stows away on Wilson’s ship. Prescott apparently thinks that there’s some sort of ancient primate living on the island. Meanwhile, Dwan (future great actress Jessica Lange, making her film debut) is an aspiring actress who is discovered in a life raft, floating out in the middle of the ocean. It turns out that Dwan (that’s not a typo, that’s her name) has escaped from the yacht of a sleazy film producer. Nobody on the ship seems to be surprised when Dwan suddenly shows up in her life raft and Dwan doesn’t seem to have any hesitation about accompanying a bunch of strangers to previously unexplored island. That’s the type of film this is.

After a considerable amount of time, during which Dwan falls in love with Jack and Fred spends a lot of time looking generally annoyed, the island is discovered. As you can already guess, Dwan is kidnapped by the island’s natives, and she’s rescued by a giant ape who falls in love with her after she punches him in the nose and says, “Put me down, you male chauvinist pig ape!” In some shots, Kong is obviously a man in a rubber suit. In others, he’s just as obviously an animatronic model. Unfortunately, the animatronic version of Kong sometimes appears to kind of be leering whenever he looks down at Dwan in the palm of his hand, which bring a definite element of ickiness to a few of the scenes in which Kong carries Dwan across the island.

Eventually, just as in the original film, Kong ends up a prisoner in New York. This time, when he escapes, grabs Dwan, and goes on a rampage, he ends up climbing the Two Towers. This leads to scenes of helicopters and fighter planes all firing at the Two Towers, which is a bit difficult to watch today. I remember a few years ago, one of our local stations actually broadcast this version of King Kong on September 11th and it definitely did not feel right.

The 1976 version of King Kong was a hit at the box office and was nominated for three Academy Awards. It won the the award for Best Visual Effects, sharing the Oscar with Logan’s Run. That said, King Kong wasn’t exactly popular with critics, either at the time of its release or today. To a certain extent, it’s understandable why this version of King Kong is so frequently criticized. The script takes a deliberately campy approach to material that, in order to have any real emotional impact, needs to be played straight regardless of how silly the story might seem. Charles Grodin never seems to be sure whether the film is a drama or a comedy. Jeff Bridges is likable but a bit too naturally mellow for his role. Jessica Lange made her film debut in King Kong, famously beating out Meryl Streep for the role. Despite the fact that the film was a box office hit, the reviews of Lange’s performance were so negative that she didn’t work for three years after appearing in the film. (She spent that time studying acting. She went on to win a Tony, two Oscars, and three Emmys so take that, critics.)

And yet, I kind of like this version of King Kong. When taken on its own very silly terms (and not as a remake of a legitimate classic), it’s definitely entertaining. Even the fact that Grodin, Bridges, and Lange are all miscast kind of works to the film’s advantage. You can’t help but appreciate that all three of them are trying so hard to be convincing in roles that they shouldn’t have been playing. For all the criticism of Jessica Lange’s performance, she actually does as well as anyone could with some of the dialogue that she gets stuck with. It’s not easy to pull off a scene where you explain to a giant ape that the relationship is never going to work because you’re a city girl and he’s a …. well, he’s a giant ape. But Lange manages to deliver the lines without laughing and that couldn’t have been easy. Lange’s then-inexperience is obvious whenever she’s having to react to or interact with the other actors but she does fine when she’s having to talk to a guy in a rubber suit or a big animatronic head. (Let’s see Meryl Streep pull that off.) Though it seems to take forever for Kong to actually get captured, the film picks up once he’s transported to New York. If you can look past the awkwardness of how the film uses the Twin Towers, the scenes of Kong rampaging through the city have an over-the-top grandeur that’s both ludicrous and compelling. By the time he reaches the top of the World Trade Center, you will totally be on his side. That’s the way it should be.

This remake of King Kong is deeply, deeply silly but, sometimes, that’s exactly what you’re looking for.

TV Review: Night Gallery 1.6 “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar/The Last Laurel)

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The first season of Night Gallery came to a conclusion on January 20th, 1971. Though the first season was undoubtedly uneven, it did end on a high point. The first segment in the 6th episode, They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar, is widely considered to be the best episode of Night Gallery and one of Rod Serling’s best teleplays. It also brought Night Gallery one of it’s few Emmy nominations when it was nominated for Outstanding Single Program of the year. (It lost to The Andersonville Trial, a theatrical adaptation that was produced for PBS.)

They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar (dir by Don Taylor, written by Rod Serling)

They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar tells the story of Randy Lane (William Windom). In 1945, Sgt. Randy Lane returned home from serving in World War II, a war hero who had a wonderful future ahead of him. He had just gotten married. He had just gotten a good job at an up-and-coming company called Pritzker Plastics. When he came home, the first place he went was Tim Riley’s Bar, where his father and the other bar patrons toasted him and told him to look forward to the future.

Twenty-five years later, the middle-aged Randy Lane is looking at his life and asking, “Is this as good as it gets?” He’s now a sales director at Pritzker Plastics but his boss (John Randolph) doesn’t appreciate him, his assistant (Bert Convy) is plotting to steal his job, and the only person who seems to care about him is his sympathetic secretary (Diane Baker). Randy’s wife died in 1952, while Randy was out of a sales call. Randy now lives alone. Even his neighborhood bar — Tim Riley’s Bar — has closed and been abandoned. With the bar schedule to be torn down, Randy wonder what happened to all of the promise and happiness of the past.

When Randy goes by the deserted bar and looks through the front window, he’s shocked to see all of his old friends and his father waving at him. But when Randy rushes into the bar to join them, he discovers the bar is deserted. Later, Randy is at work when suddenly, he sees Pritzker Plastics the way it was back in 1948. Even later, when he enters his house, he finds himself standing in a hospital hallway in 1952, once again getting the news that his wife has died.

In many ways, They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar is an atypical Night Gallery segment. Though there are hints of the supernatural throughout the story, it’s hardly a work of horror. Instead, it’s a rather melancholy meditation on aging, disappointment, and regret. Is the past forever lost? Can things ever be as good as they once were? These are the questions that are raised in this well-directed and well-acted segment.

The Last Laurel (dir by Daryl Duke, written by Rod Serling)

Clocking in at 8 minutes, The Last Laurel is yet another segment about a bitter man (in this case, Jack Cassidy) who suspects that his wife (in the case, Martine Beswick) is cheating on him with his doctor (in this case, Martin E. Brooks) so he teaches himself a supernatural skill in order to get revenge. In this case, it involves astral projection. Not surprisingly, it ends with a twist that’s pretty much dependent on one of the characters doing something extremely stupid.

The Last Laurel is well-acted but predictable. It’s not bad but, especially when compared to something like They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar, it feels rather insubstantial. It feels like filler.

The first season of Night Gallery came to an end with an excellent episode. Starting tomorrow — season 2!

Previous Night Gallery Reviews:

30 Days of Noir #24: Fourteen Hours (dir by Henry Hathaway)

Posted on November 24, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As a genre, film noir has always been associated with crime: murder, brutish gangsters, seductive femme fatales, and occasionally a cynical private detective doing the right thing almost despite himself. However, not all film noirs are about criminals. Some are just about desperate characters who have found themselves on the fringes, living in a shadow-filled world that appears to be monstrously indifferent to all human suffering.

That’s certainly the case with the 1951 noir, 14 Hours. The film centers around Robert Cosick (Richard Basehart, who previously played a murderer in another classic noir, He Walked By Night). Robert isn’t a gangster. He’s not a private detective. He doesn’t carry a gun and he doesn’t provide any sort of hard-boiled narration. In fact, for the majority of the film, Robert is defined by less who he is and more by what he’s doing. Robert Cosick, having earlier checked into a room on the 15th floor of a New York hotel, has climbed out of a window and is now standing on a ledge. Robert says that he’s going to jump.

What has driven Robert Cosik to consider such an extreme action? The film never settles on any one reason, though it gives us several clues. When his father (Robert Keith) and his mother (Agnes Moorehead) show up at the scene, they immediately start bickering about old family dramas. When Robert’s ex-fiancee (Barbara Bel Geddes) begs him to step in from the ledge, he listens a bit more to her than he did to his parents but he still refuses to come in from the ledge.

But perhaps the real reason that Robert Cosick is out on that ledge can be found in the film’s shadowy visuals. Directed in a semi-documentary fashion by Henry Hathaway and featuring harsh, black-and-white cinematography that’s credited to Joe MacDonald, Fourteen Hours emphasizes the indifference of the city. From the menacing landscape of concrete buildings to the crowds gathering below the ledge to see if Robert lives or dies, New York City is as much as a character in this film as Robert, his family, or the cop (played by Paul Douglas) who finds himself trying to talk Robert into reentering his hotel room. When night falls, the city may light up but it does nothing to alleviate the shadows that seem to be wrapping themselves around Robert. For the fourteen hours that Robert is on that ledge, he may be the center of the world but the film leaves little doubt that New York City will continue to exist in all of its glory and its horror regardless of how Robert’s drama plays out. Whether he lives or dies, Robert appears to be destined to be forgotten.

When the film isn’t concentrating on the cops trying to talk Robert into getting back in the hotel room, it shows us the reactions of the people who see him standing out on that ledge. (If this film were made today, everyone would be holding up their phones and uploading Robert’s plight to social media.) Some people are moved by Robert’s struggle. For instance, a young woman played by Grace Kelly (in her film debut) reaches a decision on whether or not to get a divorce based on what she sees happening on the ledge. Two office workers (played by Jeffrey Hunter and Debra Paget) even strike up a romance as they wait to see what will happen. Some people view Robert as being a madman. Others see him as being a victim. And then there’s the many others who view him as being either a minor distraction or a piece of entertainment. For them, it’s less important why Robert’s on the ledge or even who Robert is. What’s important to them is how the story is going to end.

It’s not a particularly happy film but it’s made watchable by Hathaway’s intelligent direction and the performances of Paul Douglas and Richard Basehart. With its theme of instant fame and hollow indifference, it’s a film that remains as relevant today as when it was initially released.

A Movie A Day #32: Number One (1969, directed by Tom Gries)

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

number-one Quarterback Cat Catlan (Charlton Heston) used to be one of the greats. For fifteen years, he has been a professional football player. He probably should have retired after he led the New Orleans Saints to their first championship but, instead, the stubborn Cat kept playing. Now, he is 40 years old and struggling to keep up with the younger players. His coach (John Randolph) says that Cat has another two or three years left in him but the team doctor (G.D. Spradlin who, ten years later, played a coach in North Dallas Forty) says that one more strong hit could not only end Cat’s career but possibly his life as well. Two of former Cat’s former teammates (Bruce Dern and Bobby Troup) offer to help Cat find a job off the field but Cat tells them the same thing that he tells his long-suffering wife (Jessica Walter). He just has to win one more championship.

Number One is unique for being one of the first movies to ever take a look at the dark side of professional football. At 40, Cat is facing an uncertain future. His years of being a star have left him unprepared to deal with life in the real world. He has no real friends and a wife who no longer needs him. This would seem like a perfect role for Heston, who always excelled at playing misanthropes. Heston is convincing when he’s arguing with his wife or refusing to sign an autograph but, surprisingly, he is thoroughly unconvincing whenever he’s on the field. For all of his grunting and all the lines delivered through gritted teeth, Heston is simply not believable as a professional athlete, even one who is past his prime. (When he played the 40 year-old Cat, Heston was 46 and looked like he was 56.) Whenever Cat throws a football, he’s played by Heston in close-ups and very obviously replaced by real-life Saints quarterback Billy Kilmer for the long shots. A football film is only as good and convincing as the football action and, on that front, Number One leaves much to be desired.

The 1969 press photo displays Heston's throwing technique.

This 1969 press photo displays Heston’s throwing technique.

Two final notes: For the scene in which Cat is tackled by three Dallas Cowboys (all played by actual players), Heston requested that the players actually tackle him. Heston ended up with three broken ribs.

Finally, Number One was made the cooperation of the New Orleans Saints and features several players in the cast. When Number One was filmed, the Saints were still a relatively new expansion team. Cat is described as having already led the Saints to a championship but it would actually be another 40 years before the Saints would finally make their first trip to the Super Bowl.

Horror On TV: Darkroom Season 1 Episode 1&2 “Closed Circuit/Stay Tuned, We’ll Be Right Back” (dir by Rick Rosenthal and Paul Lynch)

Posted on October 16, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

While I was looking through YouTube for TV shows to use for this year’s horrorthon, I came across something called Darkroom. Apparently, Darkroom was a horror anthology series that aired for a few months in 1981.

So, I figured, why not share!

(Apparently, each episode of Darkroom was made up of two thirty-minute stories. For syndication purposes, it appears that the each 30 minute segment was considered to be a separate episode.)

Below is the first episode of Darkroom! It originally aired on Nov. 27th, 1981. In Closed Circuit, an aging anchorman discovers that he’s about to be replaced by a computer. In Stay Turned, We’ll Be Right Back, a man discovers that his radio can be used to contact the past and must decide whether or not to change history. The show is introduced and hosted by James Coburn.

Closed Circuit was directed by Rick Rosenthal, who directed Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween II. Stay Tuned is directed by Paul Lynch, who directed Jamie Lee Curtis in Prom Night.

Enjoy!

Film Review: There Was a Crooked Man… (1970, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Jedadiah Leland

I first saw There Was A Crooked Man as a part of TCM’s tribute to the great actor Warren Oates. Warren Oates was rarely cast in the lead but, as a character actor, he appeared in supporting roles in several great films. Unfortunately, There Was A Crooked Man is not one of them.

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and written by the screenwriting team of Robert Benton and David Newman (best known for writing Bonnie and Clyde), There Was A Crooked Man is meant to be a comedic western. Outlaw Paris Pittman (Kirk Douglas) is arrested while visiting a bordello. Paris is sent to an Arizona prison, where everyone tries to get him to reveal where he has hidden the stash from a $500,000 robbery. Pittman uses everyone’s greed to manipulate them into helping him attempt to escape. Standing in Pittman’s way is the new warden, a liberal reformer played by Henry Fonda.

There Was A Crooked Man is a long movie that features a lot of familiar faces. Burgess Meredith plays The Missouri Kid, who has been in prison for so long that he is now an old man. Hume Cronyn and John Randolph play a bickering gay couple who eventually become a part of Pittman’s scheme to escape. Even Alan Hale, the skipper from Gilligan’s Island, shows up as a guard named Tobaccy! There Was A Crooked Man is a big movie but it’s also not a very good one. It’s not serious enough to be a good drama but it’s not funny enough to be a good comedy either.

At least the movie has Warren Oates going for it. Oates plays Harry Moon, a prisoner who is drafted into Pittman’s escape plot. It is a typical Warren Oates supporting role but he steals every scene that he appears in. Even in the smallest of roles, Warren Oates was worth watching and he’s the best thing about There Was A Crooked Man.

Hume Cronyn, Warren Oates, Kirk Douglas, Michael Blodgett, and John Randolph in There Was A Crooked Man

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #29: Pretty Poison (dir by Noel Black)

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“I don’t care if critics like it; I hated it. I can’t like or be objective about films I had a terrible time doing.”

— Tuesday Weld on Pretty Poison (1968)

It’s actually rather depressing to read that Tuesday Weld hates Pretty Poison because it really is an underrated gem, a nifty little thriller that acts as sly satire on youth, conformity, and small town life. The main reason that the film works is because of the performances delivered by both Weld and her co-star, Anthony Perkins.

But then again, when we the viewers think back on a movie, we remember what we saw as a member of the audience and sometimes, we forget that just because a film is fun to watch, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was enjoyable to make. When actors and other technicians think back on a film they were involved with, they remember the experience of actually making it. Reportedly, Weld did not get along with the director of Pretty Poison and couldn’t wait to get away from him.

Interestingly enough, in Pretty Poison, Tuesday Weld plays a teenage girl who doesn’t get along with her mother and who can’t wait to get away from her. Perhaps being miserable while making Pretty Poison helped Weld to bring a miserable character to life.

Pretty Poison opens with a nervous-looking man named Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins) watching a group of high school cheerleaders practicing on a field. His attention is focused on one cheerleader in particular, the blonde Sue Ann Stepanek (Tuesday Weld). Even before the opening credits have ended, the film has established a familiar dynamic. Sue Ann is the fresh-faced example of small town American innocence. Dennis is the type of creepy older guy that every girl has had to deal with at some point in her life. (When I was in high school, there were always guys like Dennis hanging out around the mall. When I was in college, the Dennis Pitts of the world were the guy who still hung out around the dorms even though they hadn’t been a student in a decade.)

Having established this dynamic early on, Pretty Poison spends the rest of its running time turning that dynamic upside down.

Dennis has recently been released from a mental hospital. Under the watchful eye of his parole officer (John Randolph), Dennis gets a mind-numbingly dull job at a local mill and tries to live a normal life. When Dennis finally does get a chance to talk to Sue Anne, he lies to her and tells her that he’s a secret agent and that he’s in town on a mission. Sue Anne responds to Dennis’s awkward flirting and soon, she’s accompanying him on his “missions.” During one such mission near the mill, they’re spotted by a security guard. Sue Anne responds by enthusiastically murdering him.

Yes, the cheerleader’s a sociopath.

Sue Anne’s tyrannical mother (Beverly Garland) does not approve of her relationship with Dennis. Sue Anne wants her mother out of the way and she expects her secret agent boyfriend to help her out…

Pretty Poison is a sharp mix of dark comedy and heightened drama, one that gets progressively darker as it progresses. From the minute the film first shows Sue Anne intensely practicing on that field while Dennis watches her, it’s pretty obvious that the film was meant to be an allegory for American society in 1968. Sue Anne is the perfect, all-American cheerleader who kills people because she can. Dennis is the neurotic outsider who knows that he’ll never be able to get anyone to believe the truth.

And it all works, largely because both Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld are so well-cast. It is, of course, impossible to watch Perkins without first thinking about Psycho but he actually manages to make Dennis into a very different character from Norman Bates. If Norman was a psycho who, at first sight, looked like an innocent, Dennis is an innocent who, at first sight, looks like a psycho. Tuesday Weld, meanwhile, turns Sue Anne into a disturbingly plausible killer, the type who, within minutes, can alternate between moodiness and giddiness, all the while squealing with orgasmic joy while bashing in someone’s head.

Tuesday Weld may hate Pretty Poison but it’s still a pretty good movie.