Katt Shea's Poison Ivy (1992) came into being when New Line asked Shea and Andy Ruben, her writer-producer and ex-husband, to make a teenage Fatal Attraction for a $3 million budget.
The team came back with a variant on Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The Stepfather (and of course Pasolini's Teorema), in all of which the order of a middle-class family is interrupted by a depraved interloper.
In Shea's trashy-arty exploitational movie, the outsider is Ivy (Drew Barrymore), a Lolita-like teen seductress with a Kewpie doll mouth, strategically placed tattoo, and high heels, lusting after Darryl (Tom Skerritt), the manager of a local TV station.
