4/5 Flawed But Intriguing
  by Gary F. Taylor (Biloxi, MS USA)
Filmed in 1990, POISON was an extremely obscure art house film--until Senator Jessie Helms, a hysterical homophobe, threw a public temper tantrum over the fact that it had been financed in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Helm's tirade had the effect of piquing public curiosity, and while it never played mainstream cinemas POISON did indeed go on to a wider release on the art house circuit, winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival and receiving an unexpectedly rapid release to the homemarket as well. Thereafter it rapidly returned to the same obscurity from which came.

It is easy to understand why the film never caught on in any broad sense. It is deliberately "art house," and your ability to "get" the film will depend a great deal on your knowledge of the literature and films it references. In a general sense, the film is inspired by the writings of Jean Genet (1910-1986), a French author associated with the existentialist movement.

A deliberate outsider, Genet spent so much of his youth in and out of prison that he was ultimately threatened with a life sentence as a habitual criminal. In his writings, Genet fused his homosexual, criminal, and prison adventures into a consistent point of view--one that championed freedom of choice (no matter how unattractive the choice), self-determination (no matter how unfortunate the result), and generally gave the finger to any form of authority (no matter how necessary.) POISON specifically references three of his most celebrated works: OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS, THE MIRACLE OF THE ROSE, and THE THIEF'S JOURNAL, all of which were to some extent autobiographical.

At the same time, the film also references a host of other films--so many that it is sometimes difficult to know whether a single reference is deliberate or simply a fluke, an effect that Genet himself would have likely admired. The most obvious of these references is D.W. Griffith's 1916 silent masterpiece INTOLERANCE, for like that film POISON tells three distinctly stories, cross-cutting between them that they might heighten each other. Unlike INTOLERANCE, however, each story is also told in a distinctly different cinematic style, and these too seem to reference various other films.

The first of these stories, HOMO, is very specifically drawn from Genet. It tells the story of a constant criminal and homosexual who, while in prison, meets a man whose repeated sexual humilitation he witnessed when both were children in a reformatory. He forces the man, who is unwilling mainly due to fear than from morality, into an emotional relationship and later rapes him. The "present" sequences are shot in a murky half-light, the prison presented as a labyrinth of potential sexual destruction. When the prisoner recalls his youthful past, however, the tone changes to a surrealistic and extremely artificial beauty--not unlike that seen in such films as James Bidgood's PINK NARCISSUS and Fassbinder's QUERELLE. It is worth pointing out that these different styles are ironic in use: although shot darkly, the events of the "present" sequence are only mildly shocking in comparison with the events of the "past" sequence, which is shot in a bright and rather romantic style.

HORROR references the 1950s and early 1960s cinematic style of such "B" directors as William Castle and Roger Corman, and it frequently borrows cinematic ideas from Rod Sterling's television series THE TWILIGHT ZONE. In this particular tale, a scientist has labored to isolate the essence of the human sex drive--and succeeds only to ingest the element by accident. With human sex drive raging out of control in his body, he develops oozing sores, and his physical contacts with others spread the condition. It is difficult not to read this as a reference to the AIDS epidemic.

The third story, HERO, is actually presented very much like a modern television news story and is told through a series of interviews. Here, a young boy has shot his father--and then, according to his mother, leaps from the window sill and simply flies away. Neighbors comment: the boy exposed himself. School teachers comment: the boy was unnatural, the boy was normal, the boy was creative, the boy was a liar. A doctor comments: it is possible the boy had a, er, disease of the genitals. As the story progresses the layers add up--but it leaves us without clearcut answers, much less a clearcut response, and in this last respect it is exactly like the other two stories.

It is extremely, extremely difficult to know how to react to POISON. It has moments of remarkable beauty, but these are coupled with moments of equally remarkably off-putting disgust. It is often an erotic film, but the eroticism is tinged and occasionally saturated with revulsion. And in all of this it is remarkably true to its original source: Genet, whose works typically provoke exactly the same sense of beauty, disgust, sensuality, revulsion, and uncertainty of response. I cannot say that I like POISON, which was the directorial debut of Todd Haynes, presently best known for FAR FROM HEAVEN--but then, it is not that sort of film; it does not invite you like it, but rather to consider it both in whole and in part. It strives to be interesting, and in that it is often quite successful.

Unfortunately, it may also be a little too interesting for its own good. While it certainly has its visceral moments, occasionally to the gag point, it asks us to solve a puzzle from which pieces are missing. This not a necessarily a bad thing, but in the case of POISON too many pieces have gone astray; it seems deliberately unsolvable. This may actually be intentional, but if so it was a mistake. A sense of mystery is one thing, but mystification is another, and given its overall strangeness--not to mention the subject matter--I think it very, very unlikely that it will ever have more than curiosity appeal outside an art house audience.

The DVD package is not bad, but neither is it exceptional. Although it is presented in its original ratio, some complain that scenes have been cut. I cannot comment on this point, for I have not seen any print that differs from this one. The print is reasonable but hardly pristine. The commentary track, however, is indeed worth a listen. Recommended, but only if you have a taste for the out of the way.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer



2/5 Never gels.
  by Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
Poison (Todd Haynes, 1991)

Todd Haynes has a tendency to try and wrap a lot of stuff into his movies, taking a number of disparate threads and weaving them into a huge, multi-layered tapestry. There are times he succeeds, and when he does, he creates some of the better moments in recent film history. His failures are just as spectacular, for there's never a moment when you can't see the potential of it all. Every time, he almost gets it right, but sometimes there's one fatal flaw that blows it. In the case of Poison, that flaw is that the threads Haynes is attempting to weave together-- a story of a boy who kills his father, another of a doctor who contracts leprosy through his medical experimentation, and a third, based on Jean Genet's novel Our Lady of the Flowers, about the love-hate relationship between two French prisoners-- never coalesce into the overarching weave Haynes envisioned. As a result, the movie has some very good performances that never get anything to lock onto; it's worth watching to see them, but don't be expecting another Superstar or Far from Heaven with this one. **

4/5 "Unrated" But "Cut"!
  by OldieButGoodie (TX)
Don't be fooled by the label "Unrated" expecting to see the same uncut version shown on The Sundance Channel 10 years ago, shortly after the movie's award at their Film Festival. The Fox release has cut certain scenes. In the "Homo" storyline, the sex was much more explicit. For example, in the scene where the 2 prisoners are sleeping side by side on the floor, in the video release Broom merely fondles the sleeping Jack. In the original, he does much more--quite daring for a theatrical movie. Perhaps that is why that scene and some others were edited. However, if you didn't see the original TV screening, you would not be aware of these deletions/edits.

Just remember that although the film may be unrated, it is cut.

5/5 The price of being different
  by Alberto E. P. Garcia (BR)
What is like to be different in a society that fears and rejects those who are different (and most of the time considers them less than human) and rewards those who are part of the herd? Watch this film and you'll find out. Based on the works of French writer Jean Genet (who was banned in the US in the 50s for his explicit portrayal of homosexuality), the movie is made up of three different interwoven stories: the first one is about a boy (everyone, from teachers to classmates, considers him "weird") who kills his abusive father and then "flies" out of his bedroom window, the second is about the sexual obsessions of a young man who has lived most of his life in prison, and the third about a scientist who claims he has distilled the essence of the sex drive, and one day drinks it by accident, turning gradually into a leprous monster, shunned by everyone. Disturbing and fascinating at the same time, this film will make you reflect on the complexities of human existence.

3/5 Interesting first film by an exciting director
  by Douglas King (Cincinnati, OH United States)
After the beautiful "Far From Heaven" and the dazzling "Velvet Goldmine", I was curious to see Todd Haynes' first film. Despite being made on a shoe-string budget and featuring unknown actors, "Poison" still manages to be a visually innovative, provocative and intelligent film. The film is made up of three seperate stories interwoven together. In "Hero", which takes place in the early 80's and is filmed in documentary style, a young boy kills his father, and the community tries to figure out why. In "Horror", which looks like a campy old black and white horror film, a scientist manages to turn the human sex drive into a serem, and then becomes a sexually predatory leper when he accidently drinks it. In "Homo", a man in prison in the early 20th century becomes obsessed with a fellow inmate who he watched being abused years before in a reformatory. Initially, the stories seem to have nothing in common, but the more the film goes on you start to see the connection ... they all focus on the darker side of human sexuality, and its consequences. Overall, this is an interesting first film by a terrific director who is just starting to hit his stride.