{"id":6703,"date":"2024-10-25T11:48:52","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6703"},"modified":"2024-10-25T11:48:52","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:48:52","slug":"poison-ivy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/poison-ivy\/","title":{"rendered":"Poison Ivy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Poison Ivy<\/strong> (1992)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Line\/Suspense-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unrated Version (sexual content, language, some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Katt Shea Ruben\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Andy Ruben and Katt Shea Ruben\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Michael Frank\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Phedon Papamichael\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 29, 1992 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Drew Barrymore, Sara Gilbert, Tom Skerritt, Cheryl Ladd.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $1.8M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Poison Ivy<\/strong> is the very definition of a guilty pleasure. In this enjoyably trashy Fatal Attraction clone, a Lolita-like teenage seductress upends the lives of a dysfunctional wealthy family. She\u2019s played by Drew Barrymore who just ten years earlier charmed audiences as precocious little sister Gertie in E.T. In the ten years that passed, she blossomed into a jailbait sex symbol trying to restart her career after her wild child phase. She made a few forgettable movies during this time- e.g. Sketch Artist, No Place to Hide- but Poison Ivy<\/strong> is kind of hard to forget. For one thing, it actually got a theatrical release. For another, 17YO Drew is sexy as hell in it. It may not have cleaned up at the box office, but guys (I assume) rented it like crazy when it came out on video later that year. There were never any copies on the shelf at my local West Coast Video.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Barrymore stars as \u201cIvy\u201d, at least that\u2019s the name given to her by new best friend Sylvie Cooper (Gilbert, Roseanne) when she first introduces her to her father, aging newscaster Darryl (Skerritt, Alien). We never learn Ivy\u2019s real name or anything else about her for that matter. All anybody knows is that she\u2019s a slutty-looking scholarship student who supposedly lives with an aunt. The two girls couldn\u2019t be more different. Ivy is a fearless extrovert who behaves with reckless abandon; Sylvie is a shy introvert with no friends. She\u2019s prone to lying and phoning in bomb threats to her dad\u2019s TV station when she disagrees with one of his editorials.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ivy, with her leather jacket, tattoos and nose ring, isn\u2019t the kind of friend parents normally approve of. But this girl is intelligent and manipulative. It doesn\u2019t take her long to win the approval of both parents. She openly flirts with Darryl while riding in his car. The mother Georgie (Ladd, Charlie\u2019s Angels), a pill-popping, oxygen-huffing suicidal hypochondriac, takes a liking to Ivy after she fixes her oxygen mask. She even manages to win over Sylvie\u2019s dog. Before anybody knows it, Ivy has moved in and worked her way into their lives. Dad wants to screw her. Mom finds the daughter she wishes she had. Sylvie sees the person she\u2019d like to be (Ivy clearly represents Sylvie\u2019s id). This makes them blind to Ivy\u2019s actual intentions, none of which are any good.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Katt Shea Ruben is no stranger to sleazy potboilers with titles like Stripped to Kill and Streets to her credit. Not that Poison Ivy<\/strong> is sleazy. It\u2019s more like one of those sexy softcore thrillers that used to air on Cinemax in the wee hours of the morning. Well, maybe not exactly<\/em> like. Despite the lurid subject matter, Ruben tries to keep it classy. To wit, its existence doesn\u2019t solely rest on sex scenes. There\u2019s very little actual sex. She wants to make a legit psychological thriller about a disturbed lonely teenage girl who latches on to a family with the intention of making it her own. Ivy doesn\u2019t boil bunnies or kill those who get in her way; she\u2019s more of a manipulator, an expert mind game player adept at getting what she wants. Ivy is a classic sociopath. In a way, she\u2019s more dangerous than some knife-wielding psychopath.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Barrymore does tremendous work as Ivy even if her character goes underdeveloped. Of course, that could very well be intentional on the part of the director (Ruben also co-wrote the screenplay). By not knowing her background or real name, it adds an element of mystery. We have no idea who she is, what she\u2019s done and what she\u2019s capable of. It makes Ivy scarier, don\u2019t you think? Gilbert is also good as Sylvie, a dark-edged, literate teen loner whose interior dialogue (heard in voiceover) includes such observations as \u201clips are supposed to be the perfect reflection of a woman\u2019s anatomy\u201d. She follows that with \u201cNot that I\u2019m a lesbian. Well, maybe I am.\u201d She\u2019s actually the more interesting character in Poison Ivy<\/strong>. Sure, Ivy is hot as hell but Sylvie makes a better conversationalist. The two have decent chemistry; you can see why Sylvie is attracted to Ivy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Earlier I described Poison Ivy<\/strong> as \u201ctrashy\u201d. I think I need to qualify that description. It\u2019s not trashy in the same way as The Lonely Lady, Angel or Stripped to Kill. It\u2019s trashy in the sense that it\u2019s yet another Fatal Attraction\/Hand That Rocks the Cradle clone about an interloper causing upheaval in a family\u2019s life. Stylistically, it hits all the right points with the rainy nights, lightning flashes and attempts by the antagonist to make the protagonist look like a liar and\/or a crazy person. The score and cinematography are right out of a Hitchcock thriller. The thing is there\u2019s no genuine suspense in Poison Ivy<\/strong>. It\u2019s actually rather silly but no sillier than any other stranger-from-hell thriller.<\/p>\n

\u00a0When all is said and done, Poison Ivy<\/strong> is a reasonably entertaining B-level thriller. It\u2019s a big step up for Ruben in that it\u2019s not meant for the grindhouse circuit. It doesn\u2019t work perfectly. There\u2019s no real sense of menace on Barrymore\u2019s part. She lies, seduces and manipulates, but I don\u2019t see a killer instinct. Ladd\u2019s performance is of the Camille School of Acting. It\u2019s almost laughable at times. However, it works just well enough to make it worth watching.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poison Ivy (1992)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Line\/Suspense-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unrated Version (sexual content, language, some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Katt Shea Ruben\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Andy Ruben and Katt Shea Ruben\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Michael Frank\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Phedon Papamichael\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 29, 1992 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Drew Barrymore, Sara Gilbert, Tom Skerritt, Cheryl Ladd.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $1.8M (US) Rating: *** […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7344,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guilty-pleasures","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Poison-Ivy-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6703"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7346,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6703\/revisions\/7346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}