The Porniest Franchise of the Decade: Looking Back at the Poison Ivy Series
Part 2: The Secret Society
By Preston Fassel
Ah, the early 2000s. What a brave new world, with such perverts in it.
When we took leave of the POISON IVY series, we were still deep into the 1990s, when Skinemax reigned supreme as America’s primo source for late night naughtiness. It was a glorious, blessed time to be a teenager, a time when getting to see a former television icon taking it off on late-night TV was both a subversive activity (especially if that picture were hidden behind an undulating, multi-colored scramble) and something approaching a generational rite of passage. Throughout it all, the erotic thriller had been the genre to look for while perusing the listings in TV Guide. Not quite softcore, not quite concerned with actual narratives, they occupied a liminal space between respectable genre cinema—“I don’t want porn, I watch… thrillers”—and unabashed smut designed to excite the rapidly firing synapses of a nation flush with cash and hormones.
Then, something curious happened.
Like videotape supplanting film in Paul Thomas Anderson’s BOOGIE NIGHTS, bringing about an end to Jack Horner’s dream of an enlightened age of adult entertainment and ushering in a crass new era of soulless fuck videos, so too did the internet deliver a crippling blow to the kingdom of 2 am cable and its knight errant, the erotic thriller. Like Horner’s ideal audiences who “stay to see what happens,” a horny generation had kept their channels tuned to HBO or Cinemax for a few cheap thrills after our cheap thrills, awed by the tacky glamour and bold pretension of flimsy detective stories and b-grade horror flicks. It was the perfect intersection of interests for a generational cohort who’d come of age on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and an appreciation for irony—a glorious sociocultural melding of the not-very-sacred and the extremely profane. Ah, but with the dawn of the Information Superhighway, there was no more need for effort, no more need for sneaking and hiding. A few simple keystrokes, strokes, and clearing your browser history accomplished the same task as so many hours of searching TV listings and sneaking late-night peeks at films of dubious quality. Why waste your time and energy staying up until dawn to catch some vaguely-titled movie in the hopes of satisfaction when guaranteed sleaze was only a click away? Plus, the filmmakers had just plain stopped trying—whatever schadenfreude there’d once been at the ineptitude and crassness of the erotic thriller had faded away deep into the decade when filmmakers gave up even the pretense of caring about narrative. The plots were even shoddier and more interchangeable, the production values somehow cheapened by the march of digital technology. The thrill had truly gone away. Our Carnal Camelot had ended, the erotic thriller that had been our brave Arthur ushered off into his sensual Avalon.
Like that hero of old, though, the erotic thriller was destined to return, re-emerging during a time of strife to reclaim its rightful place and remind a wayward people of the splendid pleasures of its dubious cinematic form.
The results were… well, we aren’t living in a second golden age of the erotic thriller right now, are we?
Why the POISON IVY series was resurrected deep into the 2000s—over a decade since THE NEW SEDUCTION had nicely wrapped up what could’ve been a narratively and thematically cohesive trilogy—is anyone’s guess; there’s tellingly little information floating around the net about the creative process behind the film, and sadly nothing in the way of special features on Shout Factory’s comprehensive four-disc set. Perhaps the powers-that-be thought a series that had so quintessentially captured something about the 90s could be retooled for the post-9/11 generation; maybe rights were about to expire and the studio needed to produce an ashcan movie. Maybe some nostalgic pervert with too much money at their disposal just got bored and horny. Whatever the (undoubtedly drug-fueled) reasoning, in 2008—yes, this is a product of the Obama Age– POISON IVY: THE SECRET SOCIETY was unleashed onto a world that took a glimpse at a singularly strange film and responded with a collective, Nathan Fielder-esque “Oh… okay”.
Sweet, cornpone Daisy (Miriam McDonald) leaves behind the idyllic country life—and her salt-of-the-earth hick boyfriend, William (Brendan Penny)—to attend upper-crust Berkshire College in ye olde New England, where she hopes to get a degree in law or government or something and fulfill her nebulous dreams of making the world a better place (like I said: this is firmly a product of the Obama Age). Although she’s slightly more worldly-wise than she appears—though that’s not saying much—Daisy still finds herself in over her head in the treacherous world of Bret Easton Ellis/Donna Tart-style old-money academia, immediately drawing the ire of Azalea (Shawna Waldron), the quintessential condescending rich girl; and drawing the attraction of Blake (Ryan Kennedy), a sports-car driving, mop-topped dudebro who’s one part cheap Keanu Reeves clone, two parts self-satisfied smirk and one part personification of the word “Tcha.” It’s not long before Daisy’s presence inadvertently sets off a firestorm of sexual politicking and betrayal, as Blake’s attraction to her upsets his friends-with-benefits situation with Azalea, who’s boning him as a means of obtaining information about a prestigious scholarship that involves Washington or some shit; the movie never really makes it clear.
Blake himself is in a special position to provide Azalea with that information because he’s not only the son of Professor Graves (Greg Evigan), a well-regarded, well-mulleted government professor whose recommendation plays a big role in who gets the scholarship, but his mother is Dean Graves (poor Catherine Hicks, this entry’s requisite slumming B-lister), an all-powerful figure whose influence reaches far beyond the walls of Berkshire. After it becomes apparent that Daisy has become a front-runner for the scholarship, Azalea takes the desperate measure of inducting her into the Ivies—a secret society that’s something of a younger, better looking, all-female version of the Illuminati with twice the robes but half the foresight: After aggressively informing pledges that their existence cannot be exposed, Azalea and the other girls proceed to very openly party at a lavish mansion that serves as the only sorority house on campus, in addition to casually dropping the group’s name in conversation—to say nothing of their openly-exposed, ritualistically applied matching tattoos. Although Daisy initially enjoys the prestige and sense of social mobility that membership brings her, it’s not long before she realizes that she’ll have to compromise her values—as well as her chastity—to truly belong… and that she’s become an unwitting pawn in a twisted sexual chess game…
THE SECRET SOCIETY functions like something of a bizarre mish-mash/reboot of the three previous POISON IVY films, with an additional dash of bizarro originality thrown in to help differentiate it from the rest. There’s the naïve girl going away to college and finding a scruffy love interest (LILY), the dangerous bad girl eager to achieve her goals at all costs (the OG IVY), and a revenge plot to utterly ruin a family’s life through a complex game of gaslighting, seduction, and murder (THE NEW SEDUCTION). To that extent, it deserves some credit for at least trying to fit the criteria of making this a POISON IVY movie, even if it stands alone in the franchise in lacking any connection to the titular villainess. The film plays like a generic campus thriller that was hastily retooled to fit the beats of the franchise, in a similar way to how the later HELLRAISER films were the product of cramming Pinhead into unrelated scripts. It’d have been a cool touch if there were even a throwaway line explaining that the sorority and its philosophies on power through seduction were inspired by Ivy, similar to how Lily overhauls her life after finding Ivy’s diaries in Part 2. Unfortunately, that’d have given the movie a degree of narrative cohesion that would be at odds with what would seem to be a fierce desire not to make sense.
There’s a THE ROOM-level dedication to absurdity here that’s quite frankly astounding; plot elements are introduced and rapidly forgotten, while other details that have zero internal consistency are aggressively meditated upon. For example, the scholarship which serves as the Maguffin for all of the film’s games of seduction: we’re never made quite sure what exactly the scholarship entails, or why it’s so hotly sought after; nor are the criteria for applying for/receiving it ever articulated. Azalea thinks that having sex with Blake will somehow help her win the scholarship, since his parents play a role in deciding who gets it, but, the film and Azalea both make it clear that Blake hates his parents and the feeling is mutual, so why would pounding their hated son inspire them to grant her any sort of benefits or prestige? Later, Azalea will decide that killing Professor Graves is her key to getting it (in a proper signoff to the series, this entry’s iconic dad fucking sequence ends pretty gruesomely), even though that eliminates one of her few potential allies. Making even less sense is Azalea’s “strategic move” of inducting Daisy into the Ivies solely because she’s a prime candidate for the scholarship, with the script seeming to think that the president of a sorority can somehow claim the scholarships granted to her sisters like some sort of feudal lord. This is all to say nothing of a subplot involving the Ivies manufacturing revenge porn, or an act of vandalism designed to give Daisy an upper hand in her relationship with Blake, or a very late third-act twist involving Dean Graves’ membership in the Ivies, which has virtually no impact on the plot and is quickly undone with a conveniently placed cassette recorder. It’s a fantastic miasma of ideas and archetypes all executed haphazardly, yet somehow, at the same time, it works. The POISON IVY films have always, to a certain extent, been about a blind dedication to the sordid and fantastical, and those are two words that sum up THE SECRET SOCIETY quite nicely.
SOCIETY is also interesting in that it gives us a look at what the series might have evolved into had this film been a success and effectively jump-started the franchise. The movie understands that it exists in a post-internet age, not only doubling down on the sex scenes but making them more explicit than any prior entry in the series; although the film never devolves into full-blown pornographic territory, it’s definitely the most softcore influenced of the series, with a definite eye towards trying to reach viewers well aware of their erotic alternatives. The aesthetics are also radically different, informed both by changes in fashion and filming conventions. The first three IVY films had a distinct look and sensibility to them, despite being separated by multiple writers and directors and being produced over the course of a decade. The DNA of SOCIETY is different, with an aggressively telenovela look and MTV reality show feel. Gone is the pleasant gauze, soft-focus and high exposure lighting, replaced by aggressive earth tones and harsh oversaturation that almost rivals the magenta nipples in SHOWGIRLS 2. SOCIETY premiered as a made-for-TV Lifetime movie with five minutes of nudity and graphic sex edited out before it was restored to its full glory on DVD; bereft the footage that’s one of the core reasons for this movie even existing, its easy to see why it failed to take off. It’d have been interesting to see an IVY that relied more on titillation and intrigue the way the first two films did, while still doubling down on the threads of absurdity for which Lifetime movies have become known. It could’ve been the perfect marriage, and a way to truly usher the series into the new millennium. Unfortunately, the movie was an epic critical and ratings bomb and, as of 2023, the ultimate death knell for the series.
The Poison Ivy saga could’ve ended with the abrupt but apropos image of Joy fleeing her house beneath the full moon that concluded NEW SEDUCTION. Instead, a once proud franchise closes on a lingering shot of a tramp stamp amidst verdant, hyper-green pastures. In its own way, it’s an appropriate—if unsatisfying—climax, a fittingly inane end to a series we never deserved in the first place.
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