While the 70s were, without argument, one of the sleaziest decades of the 20th century, we’re all forgetting that the 90s could easily give them a run for their money. Personally, I think that the economic and social prosperity of the era is partially to blame. With Watergate, the end of ‘Nam, hostages in Iran, the gas crisis, and the other upheavals going on, it’s easy for us to look back on all the polyester, permed hair, and hideous patterns and think “man, that was a nasty time.” Strip away the crippling fear of economic collapse and social upheaval, though, replace it with a great economy and relative peace, toss in a technological boom and general stability, and it’s harder to look at the 90s and realize how… well… porny they were. Forget about the fact it was the decade that made blowjobs acceptable dinner conversation—there was just something kind of skeevy in the air.
From frosted tips and scruffy goatees to body glitter and wet n’ curly hair, everyone looked like they’d just walked off an adult film set, and even the pop culture of the time was so horny you could lose your virginity just by channel surfing at the right hour of day. Not that I’m complaining—it was a glorious time to be a teenager, especially if your parents had cable. Especially if your parents had cable. For the 90s was, after all, the age of the great erotic thriller—that unique creature of the Clinton era that used genre cinema as the flimsiest of flimsy pretexts to show good looking people simulating sex to the strains of the best smooth jazz that pay cable could afford. Be it a shoddy neo noir, a shoddy family drama, or even a shoddy horror movie, the erotic thriller aimed to be erotic first and thrilling a distant second, often with fair shares of hilarity in between. Just as an entire generation had survived the 70s going to see big-budget pornos at the neighborhood theater, so too did the young people of the 90s—either openly or clandestinely, after their parents had gone to bed—come of age tuning into late night cable for something salacious. While Cinemax—or, as we who lived through that time know it, Skinemax—was the indisputable king of the made-for-TV erotic thriller, there was perhaps one cinematic franchise that stood head-and-shoulders above the rest to quietly eke out a place for itself as the porniest, horniest franchise of the decade: the POISON IVY series, available as a four-movie set from Shout factory.
POISON IVY was a strange creature from the start, a hybrid of contradictions: A mainstream movie with a solid leading cast that was spawned from the mind of exploitation auteurs. To the former, there was Drew Barrymore at the beginning of her post-child star fame, along with Tom Skeritt, Cheryl Ladd, and Roseanne’s own Sara Gilbert, providing audiences with a quartet of familiar, relatable faces to assure them this was most certainly not a lowbrow exercise in smut. To the latter: the movie was the brainchild of Katt Shea and Andy Ruben, a pair of Roger Corman acolytes who’d cut their teeth in the niche world of 1980s post-FLASHDANCE dance-themed sexploitation, including STRIPPED TO KILL parts 1 and 2 (strippers vs. serial killers) and DANCE OF THE DAMNED (strippers vs. vampires), as well as a foray into more traditional grindhouse fare (1990’s STREETS—prostitutes vs. serial killers). It was the perfect fusion of the high-and-low brow that would, in a way, define the cinema of the 90s, a time when foul-mouthed, blue-collar bro-filmmakers like Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino brought equal parts grit and polish to the world of indy cinema. That bifurcation would continue to assert itself in IVY’s box office trajectory: it premiered at Sundance, of all places, where it was lauded by The New York Times’ Caryn James as “genre bending” and a “commercial art film,” and ultimately got nominated for the Grand Jury Prize (it lost to IN THE SOUP, a movie with far less cultural cache).
IVY’s theatrical run would be less blessed, only grossing $1.8 million on a $3 million budget. It’s perhaps not a surprising fate for such an ambitious swing. While the plot of the movie may sound run-of-the-mill by today’s standards, mainstream audiences in 1992 weren’t used to something quite so salacious: Sylvie (Gilbert) is a troubled young woman from an upper-crust background, the sort of girl who bristles at her own class privilege and feels more comfortable dressing in grunge gear and hanging out in the woods than she does spending time around her family’s lavish McMansion. It’s during one of these woodland sojurns that she makes the acquaintance of Ivy (Barrymore), an even more troubled young woman whose uninhibited nature and unashamed sensuality appeal both to Sylvie’s suppressed wild side and more deeply suppressed sexuality. Before long the pair are inseparable, and, while Ivy positively drips with unwholesomeness, something approximating a touching friendship begins to develop between them: the worldly-wise Ivy allows Sylvie to indulge in her fantasies of a life free of restriction, getting tattoos and raising hell in the way most teenagers take for granted, while Sylvie’s buttoned-down nature and stable family life give Ivy a taste of the domesticity and normie upbringing she herself was denied. If things stopped there, it could be the touching story of the power of female friendships and the way damaged people sometimes find healing in one another. But, come on—you read those opening paragraphs. You know this isn’t going to end well. We never get a consistent backstory on Ivy—she has more origin stories than The Joker. Whatever happened in her past, though, she’s developed into the sort of person who seeks emotional fulfillment in sex—specifically, sex with older, sophisticated men who remind her of the ideal father figure she never had. As it happens, Sylvie’s own father, Darryl (Skeritt, whose mustache has never seemed so X-rated) fits that bill to a tee—and, it just so happens that Sylvie’s mom Georgie (Ladd) is on the way out, dying of one of those special Hollywood-grade terminal illnesses that leaves you looking fantastic. As Sylvie slowly comes to realize, Ivy likes her life so much she’s decided to take it for herself, and she’s going to have to step up against her former BFF before things turn deadly.
Let’s just strip POISON IVY down to its bare bones: this is a movie where a teenage girl orchestrates her best friend’s mom’s death so she can nail her dad. Toss in the lesbian attraction between the girls, Ivy’s own weird identification with Georgie prior to her death (rather than just take her place, she seems to want to literally become her), and the Elektra complex that comes along with all that dad fucking, and it’s easy to see why audiences who were sold on the movie as “a teenage FATAL ATTRACTION” were put off. To its credit, Caryn James was right in her assessment— IVY doesn’t sink quite so quickly into salacious territory, and even when it does, there’s a nice balance between gratuitous sex and some serious exploration of actual dramatic themes. Shea and Ruben are clearly interested in the psychology of the characters more than wallowing in shallow Pornhub-ready scenarios, and there’s a real, tragic arc to the story. Even though the film’s final lines— in which Sylvie assess her own feelings about what’s happened— were added in post after meddling execs decided Ivy had to be punished (rather than escape, as Shea had intended), they serve as a haunting coda that doubles down on the story’s emotional complexity and intensity.
Emotional complexity is not what the audiences of the 90s were after, though. While the film may have bombed at the box office, it found a second life on cable, where the sight of a lingerie clad Drew Barrymore excited the imaginations of peeping teenagers of multiple sexual orientations across our increasingly randy nation. Over the next few years, the movie went from scandalous Sundance darling to Skinemax lust object, spoken of in reverent tones in locker rooms and at sleepovers everywhere. The VHS box— depicting a red-clad Barrymore vamping beneath a grainy, water-toned image of her and Skeritt—became something approaching a totem in video stores and bedrooms, cardboard shorthand for adolescent sexual frustration and the consumption of forbidden cinema.
And people were paying attention.
POISON IVY would not go quietly into that long, sweaty night. Just as the 90s horror world saw such unexpected franchises evolve in the form of LEPRECHAUN and WISHMASTER, the world of cinematic erotic thrillers was about to have its own decade-defining series as the decision was made to try and make sexual lightning strike twice. Join me next time as we venture deeper into the 90s and take a look at Ivy come of age as the series finds its footing—and realizes that it is a series—with POISON IVY 2: LILY.
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