Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD EAN: 9781572526686 Format: Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC ISBN: 1572526688 Label: Fox Lorber Manufacturer: Fox Lorber Number Of Items: 1 Picture Format: Academy Ratio Publisher: Fox Lorber Release Date: October 26, 1999 Running Time: 85 minutes Sales Rank: 68324 Studio: Fox Lorber Theatrical Release Date: 1991
Description: Part horror film, part drama and part expose, Poison weaves three stories into one outrageous jigsaw puzzle that juxtaposes a disturbing sensuality with an offbeat moral conscience.
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Rating: - Flawed But Intriguing
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Never gels.
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, ... Read More
Rating: - "Unrated" But "Cut"!
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.
Rating: - The price of being different
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 ... Read More
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- Flawed But Intriguing
- Never gels.
- The price of being different
