by Lorenzo Semple, Jr., and was based on the novel, She Let Him Continue (which was also the working title at the time), by Stephen Geller. Perkins plays a paroled arsonist who pretends to be a secret agent to win over a stunning blonde honors student, played by Weld. But despite a well-scrubbed facade, Weld's character is in fact a psychopath, and soon the pair are committing a string of crimes, including homicide. It was Black who decided to cast Perkins in the film: "I saw Tony (Perkins) in Neil Simon's The Star-Spangled Girl on Broadway and thought he’d be ideal. I sent him the script, and he wanted to do it. I then met him for the first time at Joe Allen's after a performance of the play. He had enormous charm and intelligence, the very qualities I wanted to come through in the role he would be playing. I was looking for the young Tony of Friendly Persuasion and Fear Strikes Out, not Psycho, although commentators naturally made the comparison between Norman Bates and the character in Pretty Poison." Black took 30 days to shoot at lush locations around Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1967, with exactly one day in a studio for the scenes in the prison and an office. "While I was looking for the location in four states, I came across a lot of factories expelling worse things into rivers than shown in the film", Black recalled. During production, Black and Weld reportedly did not get along with each other. She often refused to do what Black demanded of her and would break down and cry. "Don’t talk to me about (Pretty Poison)", she said, "I couldn’t bear Noel Black (the director) even speaking to me. When he said 'good morning,' it destroyed my day." Some reviewers panned the film, and when it did poorly at the box office, 20th Century Fox pulled it from theatres. But after other critics rose to the film's defense, the studio soon rereleased it, and it found a cult following. "I don’t mind, especially as Pretty Poison is what people like to call 'a cult classic'", said Black. "Most of my few other features were done for money. I had two wives and two children to support." Pretty Poison was awarded the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay in 1968. In 1969, Black spoke