What makes a cult movie? Certainly not just being well-liked or popular, but being less well-known than it deserves to be and being cherishable for probably all the wrong reasons. This little gem did virtually no business on its minimal release way back when, garnered a smallish following on the box, and only recently has come to DVD. It's a sharp little tale of fanciful thinking and mayhem and offers perfect roles for its two leads, Tuesday Weld at 25 playing a 17-year old high school senior and Anthony Perkins at 36 -- but looking far, far younger -- playing a young, disturbed man of indeterminate age. Some eight years after "Psycho", Perkins is back in the role of 'The Nutter' which will haunt him for the rest of his career.
Having recently been released from an institution where he has been for many years after an arson attack as a teenager, he takes work in the small Massachusetts town where lissome Weld catches his eye. Being something of a fantasist, he suggests to her that he is really an undercover CIA agent and she willingly joins him in his fantasy life. When he is dismissed from his job at the local lumber mill, he turns to sabotage with her assistance, during which she blithely kills the night watchman and lifts his gun. She promptly uses it to rid herself of her overbearing mother and assumes that Perkins will arrange the cover-up and will whirl her away into a realm of excitement. Instead, he is left facing the blame on his own, while Miss Innocence looks for her next bit of male escape. Perkins may be not quite the model citizen, but she is in fact the incipient psychopath. It's all rather grippingly done and amongst both actors' best roles. There was a time when I thought the young Perkins was charismatically gorgeous -- if not quite in the Tyrone Power class -- but I now realise that what I thought to be male beauty was really rather callow youth. Oh well, some of us grow up eventually, but I still do reckon this film.
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