Poison Ivy
Poison Ivy
R | 08 May 1992 (USA)
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A seductive teen befriends an introverted high school student and schemes her way into the lives of her wealthy family.

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Reviews
Mjeteconer

Just perfect...

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ThedevilChoose

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

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Portia Hilton

Blistering performances.

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Lela

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

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DigitalRevenantX7

Rich student Sylvie Cooper makes friends with the enigmatic girl she calls "Ivy" in the principal's office after phoning in a bomb threat to her television presenter father's station. Ivy quickly makes her move by moving in with the Coopers (she lived with her aunt in relative squalor) where she becomes friends with Sylvie's parents – the TV presenter Darryl & dying mother Georgie. But friendship is not enough for the young woman – she covers up Darryl's lust for her & kills Georgie by pushing her off the balcony. As the family's grief over Georgie's death pushes them to the mental limit, Ivy attempts to replace Georgie in Darryl's eyes by seducing him.Poison Ivy was probably one of the most important B-grade thrillers in the early 1990s. It was one of the very first erotic thrillers of that decade, coming out around the same time as SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, which dealt with something similar, as well as the more sensationalistic likes of Fatal Attraction & Basic Instinct. It also made a name for actress Drew Barrymore, who would later go on to high acclaim in many other comedies.Poison Ivy is something of a prototype for the B-grade erotic thriller, a genre that would be one of the 1990s' most prolific genres. The film did not make too much money in the theatrical release but picked up most of its audience on video & cable TV – something that would be fitting for a film such as this. Of course, the sex scenes in the film are so tame that the film will be something of a disappointment for those who like harder softcore fare.Poison Ivy is, from a psychological point of view, a story about how a family that lives on extremes in the wealthy community can collapse when a free-spirited agent moves into their home. Sara Gilbert is the daughter who is prone to rebelling against the system by embracing the marginal – phoning in bomb threats to her father's workplace, smoking & so on. The father is as conservative as they come but is so tightly-wound up that his mental state is beginning to deteriorate – as evident in his drinking, while the mother is suffering from lung disease & is drugged up on painkillers & sedatives. Ivy has some inherent flaws in her character as well – she seems to be extremely lonely & only goes on her mission of seduction for personal benefit & her desire to have a family she can belong to, even if the family she is building up around her is falling apart from an old one. The character also has a clear lack of motivation for her actions.Drew Barrymore is a great actress in her own right, but I was somewhat less than enthused about her role here. For one thing, the role was supposed to be for an adult & Barrymore was just barely underage, something that necessitated a body double for her love scenes. Sara Gilbert seems just as miscast – her passive neurotic nature should have been handled by a much more rigid actress but she does a decent job anyway. Tom Skerritt is perfect in his role as the stuffy, opinionated & formerly hard-drinking TV presenter whose forbidden lust ends up putting him in a tough position. Some of the plot twists don't seem natural – Skerritt's wound-up nature shouldn't have let him cheat on his wife with a teenager who is literally young enough to be his daughter & get so twisted around her little pinkie, so to speak. But this is a minor contrivance that doesn't go too far in ruining the picture. Whilst not a masterpiece in any way, Poison Ivy is still a pretty decent film, making the proto-softcore erotica work in a passable way.

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RavenGlamDVDCollector

(Not meant as a review)(but not to be hidden on the Board Posts either)Interestingly, the plot featured Drew Barrymore as Ivy replacing Cheryl Ladd as Mrs Cooper. A few years later, same thing with that overblown movie CHARLIE'S ANGELS. Let me come right out and say that I'm not a Drew Barrymore fan. Too trashy for my taste. I do however despair when seeing my dreamgirls age, being an old boy like I am, that goes part and parcel with the business, but I have to say, Cheryl Ladd, my favorite Angel, still looked great more than a decade after the TV series. Hey, she was all elegance and grace and allure despite playing the part. Hell, the only thing wrong with Cheryl Ladd in this movie was that she was ENTIRELY UNCONVINCING as a sickly dying-of-emphysema patient. She would not have looked like that, moved like that, talked like that, had she been trying to act the part realistically? Surely not?As for the movie, the character of Ivy is too superficial. No feeling is generated for her. And I am not talking about the feelings of ahem, the little boys in the back row. Bit of a dumb choice, little boys. Hollywood has much better to offer. Then, and now.Then again, I'm not knocking this movie, or Drew Barrymore, completely. Sure, there are moments. As trailer trash goes, at least Ivy is good quality trailer trash lookswiseCheryl's an angel though! (And hey! You who dare to vote my review as being unhelpful! Stupid dolt! This is not a review!):)

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Paul Andrews

Poison Ivy is set in Los Angeles where Sylvie Cooper (Sara Gilbert) has been summoned to the principal's office at school for phoning in a bomb threat to her father's television station, there she meets & talks to the mysterious & alluring Ivy (Drew Barrymore). Almost complete opposites the mild mannered & unadventurous Sylvie & the overt & sexually active Ivy strike up a firm relationship & quickly become best friends, Ivy practically moves into Sylvie's giant mansion where her suicidal mother Georgie (Cheryl Ladd) is very ill with emphysema. Ivy starts to take control of the Cooper's lives, Ivy starts to seduce Sylvie's rich father Daryl (Tom Skerritt) & begins to rip the Cooper family apart...Co-written & directed by Katt Shea I have to say that I thought Poison Ivy was a really limp thriller that offered no surprises or genuine tension, why exactly has it spawned three sequels & counting? I suppose the biggest problem with Poison Ivy is the lethargic & uninvolving script that has wafer thin character's you don't care about sleepwalk through the film. There's no passion here, no excitement, nothing to get the pulse racing, there are no big twists or turns & the entire thing is very predictable. It's never clear why Ivy targets the Cooper's, why she befriends Sylvie (before she finds out her dad's mega rich), nothing about Ivy's background is ever mentioned other than she lived with an Aunt & quite why Ivy wanted to ruin a good thing by wrecking the career of Daryl, killing Georgie & betraying Sylie is a complete mystery to me, I mean she had been all but adopted by the Cooper's as part of the family so why ruin it with no obvious benefit other than breaking a family up & making everyone hate her. With no background on Ivy & no apparent source of motivation it's hard to care to be quite honest. The sacking of Daryl from his job gets one short scene that feels like an afterthought & didn't seem to affect the story that much at all. Then there's the slow pace, things only start to pick up towards the end & it's not until past the hour mark when things turn really nasty & by then the films almost over. There's some poor attempts at psychology as Sylvie has to deal with her ill mother complete with ghostly hallucinations, there's the issue of peer pressure, betrayal, the idea that family is the most important thing in life & teenage rebellion but it's all just padding with little thought or effort going into it. I mean if the most extreme thing Ivy does to Sylvie for the first hour is pamper her dog too much then you know your in trouble.I must admit that I found Poison Ivy really tiresome to watch on a visual level as well, the opening scene of Ivy swinging through the air where she flicks her hair away from her face looks like it belongs in a cheap shampoo commercial. None of it is erotic or sexy & simply dressing Drew Barrymore up in a few tight outfits doesn't cut it, the sex scenes are tame & I am pretty sure Barrymore got a body double. There's one breast shot & one naked male butt & that's your lot. Personally I didn't find Barrymore attractive in this at all, her shallow pointless character & wooden acting combined to send me to sleep rather than send shivers down my spine. There's no violence to speak of & even the 'Unrated' version doing the rounds on DVD is very tame by todays standards as teen flicks such as American Pie (1999) & The Hangover (2009) are far more explicit.With a supposed budget of about $3,000,000 this flopped at the box-office & you can see why, there's nothing here other than for Drew Barrymore fans & considering this was one of her first films she probably didn't have many at the time. The acting is pretty poor, I thought Barrymore was very wooden with no menace or sexuality about her performance at all while Tom Skerritt looks bored.Poison Ivy is a terrible erotic thriller that is neither erotic or thrilling in any way as far as I am concerned, a real damp squib of a limp wristed film that delivers nothing. Followed by Poison Ivy II (1996), Poison Ivy: The New Seduction (1997) & Poison Ivy: The Secret Society (2008).

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gcd70

This film, claimed to be a "Basic Instinct" meets "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle", is a big disappointment. There is no real storyline evident, just an idea that seems to have been given about fifteen minutes work. This is a Virginia Andrews style plot, but it just does not work. Not only is it incoherent, it jumps from one episode to the next and never pieces itself together or finds direction. And the characters are poorly developed, leaving the viewer caring less about what happens to them.Barrymore is watchable, but the film is a tease as it doesn't deliver the promised sensuality.Friday, August 14, 1992 - Village Centre Melbourne

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