Poison Ivy: The Secret Society (2008/aka Poison
Ivy 4/Warner DVD)
Picture: B- Sound:
C+ Extras: D Film: C-
The B-movie Poison
Ivy inadvertently relaunched the troubled career of Drew Barrymore many
years ago, and though this eventually led to Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, she has appeared in some good
films too (Donnie Darko) and a
single, forgettable romp became a cheesy franchise. Though
no other actresses have really benefited, Warner has actually allowed a third
sequel to be made (!!!) and the resulting Poison
Ivy: The Secret Society (2008) which tries everything and succeed at
little.
A young
woman gets to college and barely makes it there, along with dealing with a
parental death and lady snobs who dislike her (and most people) and have
actually established a “Skulls for the fashioned obsessed” deciding in
semi-Satanic style what they will do next.
We even get plenty of bad sex scenes where the women are often as
topless as the men; a new trend in the Horror genre’s B side (and “A side” with
al the bare bottoms) as production companies big and small get more desperate
to squeeze the last pennies out of a genre that has been battered worst than
all of Freddie and Jason’s victims combined!
The lack
of acting is also mildly amusing, but saddest of all, we have actually and
often seen much worse. As for the
“Society”, we expect this is one club Groucho Marx would join for all the wrong
reasons invited or not, but you can “Bet” like most viewers, he would get what
he needed/wanted and move on quickly.
The secret word is: calamine!
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 is a little soft throughout, but the awful
1.33 X 1 pan & scan side is worse, while the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is
nothing special with little difference in the two versions. There are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
