Sue Ann Stepanek (Pretty Poison 1996)

Sue Ann Stepanek (Wendy Benson-Landes) is the main villainess in the 1996 made for TV movie “Pretty Poison”.  This was a remake of the 1968 film with the same title, which starred Tuesday Weld as Sue Ann Stepanek, and Anthony Perkins and Beverly Garland.
Years ago, after a savage beating from his father, Dennis Pitt (Grant Show) started a housefire that incinerated his parents.  He insists that, while the arson was deliberate, the incineration was accidental in that he thought they were out. 
Now Dennis is being released from the Kenneth M. Gordon Correctional Facility for the Criminally Disturbed, somewhere in Massachusetts, and his parole officer, Jane Azenauer (Lynne Thigpen), couldn’t be more delighted.  She seems also to be his psychotherapist and regards him as one of her successes.  Jane sends him off with a list of apartments and the info on a job at the post office, an employer unfazed by his past history.
Instead, without Azenauer’s permission, he gets hired at the Sausenfeld chemical plant in the small town of Winsloe, Massachusetts. Politely deflecting the advances of pretty new neighbor Bea (Dorothee Berryman), he instead becomes infatuated with the fresh-faced blonde head cheerleader of the local high school football team, 17-year-old Sue Ann Stepanek.
In a planned encounter with the teen, Dennis manipulates her in a made up scenario in which he is avoiding detection.  The two kiss before he leaves her alone.  Sue Ann is left feeling a little intrigued.
After the next football game, Sue Ann waits for Dennis.  After giving up on him, she is surprised when he comes up behind her in the parking lot and the two go for a ride in the car.  The two become involved and things heat up between them.
Sue Ann even helps Dennis out of a jam with his parole officer by lying to her over the phone about where he is and what he has been up to.
Soon Dennis persuades her that he’s a covert government agent in town on a secret mission.  He asks her to assist him in an assignment.  In due course, despite the disparity in their ages (he’s perhaps in his mid-twenties), she seduces him. His “mission,” he eventually tells her, is to establish that the Sausenfeld plant is deliberately polluting the local river. There are dead fish everywhere, and indeed he’s correct in tracing a pipe from the plant to a hidden outlet in the river.
What he and Sue Ann must do is commit an act of nocturnal sabotage that will make the plant’s crime manifest to the world.
On the night of the mission, Dennis is introduced to Sue Ann’s mother (Michelle Phillips).  The mother gives her blessing to the relationship, believing that Dennis’s intentions are “honorable”. Mrs. Stepanek is fully aware that Sue Ann is the “pretty poison” of the title as she receives constant beratement from her daughter. Mrs. Stephanek has her own ill-concealed relationship with materialistic boyfriend Benjamin (Frank Schorpion). Sue Ann tells Dennis she hates them both, and Dennis obligingly hurls a rock into the windshield of Benjamin’s snazzy car. Neither Mrs. Stepanek nor Benjamin seem to have any idea who committed the vandalism, even though there’s one very obvious suspect: Sue Ann.
In the committing the act at the plant, they’re caught by security guard Sam Joyles (Walter Bolton). To Dennis’s horror, Sue Ann strikes the man unconscious with a heavy wrench, then drowns him in the river. Afterwards, she’s red-hot for sex which should have been a warning that Dennis that she is dangerous.  While having sex in the vehicle, the two are caught by two policemen, who escort them to Sue Ann’s house.  Here Sue Ann and her mother get into a war of words.
The cops, in the shape of Chief Hagerty (Ted Whittall) and his colleague Goodman (Steve Adams), investigate the sabotage of the plant and the murder of Joyles, and obviously Dennis, with the criminal record that has recently seen him fired by plant manager Bud Munsch (Doug Lennox), is front and center of their list of suspects. At the same time, he has an excellent alibi.
While Dennis is paranoid that they are going to get caught, Sue Ann is the calm cool and collected of the two.
Next, Sue Ann tries to convince Dennis of shooting her mother with the gun she pulled off the cop she killed.  When Dennis can’t go through with it, Sue Ann immediately picks up the gun and shoots her mother who ends up at the bottom of the stairwell dead.  The two then bundle up the body and load her into the trunk of the car.  Dennis deposits the body in the water and is immediately arrested.
it’s no surprise when it is discovered that Sue Ann has been manipulating Dennis all along. As she tearfully tells the cops all the dreadful things Dennis has forced her to do, it’s clear there’s not a cop in the room who harbors the slightest doubt that Dennis is a homicidal maniac. Yet Jane Azenauer smells a rat, and even more so when Dennis insists that he’s the killer.  Dennis is happy to once again have his free pass back to the security of the Kenneth M. Gordon Correctional Facility for the Criminally Disturbed, and away from Sue Ann.  Nevertheless he still gives her a fairly strong hint that Sue Ann might be worth continued observation.
The film ends with Sue Ann meeting another older man and lamenting to him that the people who took her in after her mother's death won't let her stay out late.  It is implied that she will use and destroy him just as she did Dennis. But Dennis's parole officer is indeed watching as she departs with her latest victim.
Wendy Benson’s rendition of the Tuesday Weld role seems more faithful to the original. She’s the seemingly All-American girl, innocent to a fault, so virginal even in her extraordinarily skimpy miniskirts. And yet she’s also both promiscuous and a psychopath. Benson plays Sue Ann as a 17-year-old trying desperately to be a 25-year-old, with all the gauche pseudo-sophistication of teenagers going through that phase. Since Benson was a 25-year-old actress presenting herself as a 17-year-old, this effect works surprisingly well. 
==Trivia==
*Wendy Benson-Landes appeared as Margi Kleinjan in the 1996 episode "Syzygy" for the TV sci fi series "The X-Files".
*Wendy Benson-Landes appeared as Tiffany K. in the 1997 episode "Homecoming Queen" for the TV series "Clueless".
*Wendy Benson-Landes appeared as Joanne Hertz in the 1999 episode "Deja Vu All Over Again" for the TV series Charmed".
*Wendy Benson-Landes appeared as Amy Kemp in the 2012 episode "Till Death Do Us Part" for the TVV series "Castle".
==Gallery==
 
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Category:1990s
Category:Bare Stomach
Category:Blonde
Category:Cheerleader
Category:Live Action Villainess
Category:Pistol