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.

The always challenging transition from adorable child performer to sexy adult star was achieved flamboyantly by actress Drew Barrymore with this erotic drama that unfolds like a paranoia-drenched Lolita also known as Ivy.Poison Ivy is a thriller directed by Katt Shea. Andy Ruben wrote Melissa Goddard's story into the screenplay. It stars Drew Barrymore, Sara Gilbert, Tom Skerritt and Cheryl Ladd.Sylvie Cooper is a misanthropic student at a private high school for children of the privileged. While calling in a phony bomb threat to the TV station where her father, Darryl is a producer, Sylvia attracts the attention of Ivy. Ivy is an orphan from a poor family, attending the school on a scholarship. She and Sylvia quickly become best friends, and Ivy eventually moves out of her aunt's home and into the Cooper household. Ivy covets the Coopers' lavish lifestyle and luxuries, so she begins plotting to kill Sylvie's ailing mother Georgie, then seduce the alcoholic Darryl and frame Sylvie for the crime, thus taking over the Cooper house. This film strikes a pleasing balance between emotion and ambiguity.Also,it is arty-trashy exploitation film is an amalgam of Fatal Attraction, Stepfather, and Pasolini's Teorema, in all of which the order of a middle-class is disrupted by a depraved interloper, if only the script were better.Despite of its willingness to take risks, and its insights into the frailties and confusions of teenage friendships, lift the film right out of the rut due to decent acting from the cast especially Drew Barrymore.Her fans will enjoy this film.

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).

I read all the positive praise of this movie, so I was ready for some gripping drama, and so I rent it. After 15 minutes I was so disgusted with it, I stopped it, and returned it. Here's why:In all the "Hand that Rocks the Cradle" copycat movies I've seen, they ALL show us right away as how the characters meet. With "Poison Ivy," the movie begins with Ivy and Coop ALREADY BEING FRIENDS, or at the very least being acquainted. To me, what makes these movies terrifying, would be that you just don't know the stranger you happen to meet, bump into, or circumstances where the paths cross. Where did Ivy come from? Instead of scenarios in which we as viewers can witness, all we have are what Ivy tells us. And for the only source of who a character is and where she comes from is from what she says, we cannot trust it. From a legal standpoint, it would be considered "heresay."And not only can we not trust what Ivy tells us, we quickly learn we cannot believe what Cooper tells us either as she lies to Ivy -- and us -- by her claim of her biological father being black, and she adopted, when that wasn't true, and the lie she told Ivy -- and us -- that she cut herself trying to commit suicide, and then told us a few moments later, that THAT wasn't true, either.And Cooper's narrative time-jumps, almost as if she's in a hurry to tell her story, and within a few minutes of the movie we go from them speaking of wishing to be friends to Ivy moving in with the family. I'm sorry, but that transition is too sudden, too abrupt, too jolting, that we as viewers feel it's thrown in our face quickly to sort it out later.And Cooper's parents are the weakest parents I've ever seen. They have no backbone, no real authoritative presence, almost as if they're there for convenience's sake, they have no life outside just existing there, and within those first moments of this movie, it seems Cooper's father has no job-life.And so, for me, we have in the first 15 minutes no characters we really don't know nor trust, nor even care about. IMHO, don't waste your time with this movie. There are plenty of other good ones of this type of story.