At the time of its release, Todd Haynes's Poison was called "the toughest, most provocative, and least compromised movie on the AIDS crisis to date." (J. Hoberman, Village Voice) The film flips from one mode to another— mock documentary, camp horror, hyperbolic lyricism—to tell the stories titled, "Hero," "Horror," and "Homo." In the first segment, a suburban housewife explains how her son killed her husband and then (literally) flew out the window; in the second, a 50's scientist ingests a formula for sexual drive and becomes a hideous and drippy Leper Sex Killer; and in the third segment, a doomed and brutal romance transpires in a strangely bucolic prison. The tight web of cross-references and relentless equations of love and death tie all three stories into a single sexual biography that is startlingly raw and refreshingly frank. "Finally, the little movie from hell that I've been waiting for." (John Waters) More at zeigeistfilms.com. 35mm
1989, color, 1 hour 25 minutes, USA