Poison Ivy (1992 film)

Poison Ivy is a 1992 American erotic thriller film directed by Katt Shea. It stars Drew Barrymore, Sara Gilbert, Tom Skerritt and Cheryl Ladd. The original music score is composed by David Michael Frank. The film was shot in Los Angeles.

It premiered at Sundance on January 21, 1992, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury prize of Best Film. Although it did not fare very well at the box office, grossing $1,829,804 with its limited theatrical release to 20 movie theaters, the film received favorable word-of-mouth, and became a success on cable and video in the mid-1990s. It has since gained status as a cult film, and is the first installment in a Poison Ivy film series that includes three direct-to-video sequels.

Plot
Sylvie Cooper is a student at an expensive private school. On the day she first meets Ivy, a poor street-smart girl, she witnesses her mercy-killing a badly wounded dog.

When they next meet, Sylvie's father Darryl comes to pick her up, Ivy asks for a ride, and he reluctantly agrees. She sits in the front with him, puts her feet on the dashboard and deliberately shows him her legs by allowing her mini-skirt to fall back onto her hips, which Darryl notices.

A few weeks later, Sylvie invites Ivy home. She explains that Darryl adopted her and that her biological father is African-American. Sylvie also admits she once tried to kill herself. They meet Sylvie's sickly mother, Georgie, whom Ivy wins over by talking about her scholarship and helping her unblock her oxygen tank.

Soon after, as both of Sylvie's parents enjoy Ivy's company, Ivy practically moves in. The girls share clothes and Sylvie's bed. As they have similar figures, Georgie lends Ivy some of her clothes.

Darryl throws a party at the house to improve his failing career, and enlists Sylvie to help him. However, Ivy ensures that she must work on the night of the party, so she can assist Darryl. After the party, she dances with him in the kitchen and they embrace. Georgie walks in on them and storms upstairs.

Ivy apologizes, claiming that Darryl was under stress and she was only comforting him. Georgie believes her, accepts a glass of champagne drugged with sleeping pills, and falls asleep. Ivy sits on the bed next to her and begins to massage Darryl's crotch with her foot. It is implied that he performs oral sex on her and she climaxes.

Over the next few days, Ivy continues changing her appearance, wearing Georgie's clothing more often. Sylvie becomes increasingly irritated with Ivy's growing presence in her family. Her anger reaches a breaking point when even her dog chooses Ivy over her, which is because Ivy has dog treats in her pockets.

Sylvie skips school to spend some time alone. Darryl picks Ivy up and drives them into the forest, where they drink and have sex.

The next morning, Georgie plays the cassette tape Sylvie made for her and walks out onto her balcony. Ivy walks up behind her, talks to her and without warning, pushes her off the balcony to her death. As Georgie is known to be mentally ill, and has threatened to commit suicide previously, Ivy is not suspected.

A few weeks later, Ivy talks Sylvie into taking out her mother's sports car. When Sylvie becomes suspicious of her involvement in Georgie's death, Ivy crashes the car, then moves the unconscious Sylvie into the driver's seat.

In the hospital, Sylvie hallucinates that her mother visits her, inspiring her to return home to save her father from Ivy. When she arrives there is a raging storm, so she hurries inside, experiencing hallucinations the whole way. Once inside, she sees Darryl and Ivy having sex, and flees.

As Darryl hurries out to look for Sylvie, Ivy follows him. Accidentally showing the bruising on her chest from the steering wheel, revealing that she was behind the wheel, she claims that it was to protect him. As Darryl drives off to find Sylvie, Ivy goes up to Georgie's old room. Playing the tape Sylvie made for Georgie, she wears Georgie's robe and walks out to the balcony.

Sylvie sees Ivy and, because of her head injury, believes that it is her mother so makes her way to the balcony. Sylvie tells Georgie that she loves her and Georgie says she loves her too. When they kiss, Ivy begins to use her tongue, which breaks Sylvie out of her hallucination.

Ivy says Georgie wanted to die and now the three of them can be a family. Sylvie rejects her delusion, pushing her over the balcony. Ivy grabs onto her necklace in an attempt to take her with her, but she fails. As the chain breaks, a screaming Ivy falls to her death alone. Darryl returns to see Ivy's corpse on the ground with Sylvie above.

The film ends with Sylvie narrating that she still loves and misses "her", following the parallel between Ivy and Georgie.

Production
Producers Melissa Goddard and Peter Morgan brought the original idea to New Line. The studio then hired Katt Shea who had made a number of movies for Roger Corman; according to head of production Sara Risher, the studio wanted "a teenage Fatal Attraction".

The film developed greatly from this premise. There were three different drafts of the script and four different endings. According to Shea, the original ending had Ivy getting away with her crimes and hitch-hiking along a road. However, New Line insisted that Ivy be punished and made her shoot a new ending where Ivy died. New Line then wanted Shea to revive the character for sequels which the director refused to do; Shea now says she regrets the decision.

Shea says that she never regarded Ivy as villainous, but rather as a tragic character who just wants to be loved. She credits this for the film's popularity.

Critical response
The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival where, according to The New York Times, viewers were "either enraptured or insulted". At the Seattle International Festival of Women Directors it was perceived to be politically incorrect. Shea stated: "I always told New Line it was going to be different from what they thought. I'm out to prove it's possible to make a film that's really artistic, that's an honest expression that comes from me and that can still be commercial. I told them I can only make movies for myself. I just know that if I really love it there's going to be a market for it."

On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 39% rating based on 33 reviews. The site's critics consensus reads, "An unpleasant thriller that lacks the self-awareness to dilute its sordid undertones, Poison Ivy is liable to give audiences a rash." On Metacritic it has a score of 51 out of 100 based on reviews from 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Variety wrote: "Suicide, hints of lesbianism, murder, staged accidents and every other applicable melodramatic contrivance is dragged in. Unfortunate thesps take it all very seriously, while technical aspects are emptily polished." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 2.5 out of 4 and wrote "Here the casting is so wrong that nothing quite works."

Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote: "Katt Shea, who directed and co-wrote "Poison Ivy," displays a gleeful enthusiasm for the B-movie genre to which her film essentially belongs, as well as a grasp of the form's more delicate possibilities. "Poison Ivy" never resorts to overt malice when something more quietly sinister will do."

The character Ivy was ranked at number six on the list of the top 26 "bad girls" of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Sequels
Poison Ivy spawned three sequels: Poison Ivy II: Lily in 1996, Poison Ivy: The New Seduction in 1997 and Poison Ivy: The Secret Society in 2008.