In Bed and Streaming: An Itch Best Not Scratched

Poison Ivy II: Lily is the second installment in the Poison Ivy tetralogy. Like its urushiol-laden botanical namesake, it's annoying, itchy, and leaves you craving a hot shower. This particular film is noteworthy for being among the direct-to-video films marking Alyssa Milano's transition from Samantha Micelli into more adult roles (read: topless scenes). Poison Ivy II is considered to be an erotic thriller which is a more artistic way of promising sex and death.

Samantha!

The second installment follows the basic blueprint of its predecessor–a younger woman seduces an older man, leaving a wake of domestic strife, jealousy, and ultimately death by falling. However, there is a clear trajectory with each installment of the series. Instead of Drew Barrymore ruining Tom Skerrit’s life in the original, Alyssa Milano ruins Xander Berekely’s. In subsequent volumes, it’s Jamie Pressley and Greg Vaughn and finally, Miriam McDonald and Greg Evigan (sans The Bear).

Milano plays the titular (emphasis on the first syllable) Lily, an attractive but naive college Kalamazoo, Michigan. She takes a bus to Southern California to study art at a prestigious college with a kick-ass art department. The house she shares with other students looks like a Bohemian compound, complete with graffiti-covered walls and overgrown vegetation.

Anyway, Lily arrives at the commune as The Billy White Trio's "Diamond" plays (!). She immediately runs into a dude named Gredin. Vaguely resembling Edwin from I Mother Earth, Gredin sports a permanent five o’clock shadow, a terrible bleach job, earrings, and a motorbike, hence rendering him the campus bad boy. Gredin’s artistic specialty is weld sculpture, and he spends his time away from class in the backyard, working on his piece de la resistance, a crude replica of The Stanford Dish made entirely of discarded, or found as they say in the ateliers, metal alloys. A close-up of Gredin wearing sunglasses while sitting on his motorbike foreshadows what we all know will inevitably happen–an early hook-up, a bitter falling out, and reconciliation.

Gredin helps Lily to her room, lugging her bags through the weeds and refuse, some of which he collects to use for his sculpture. At the house, she meets her roommates–Tanya, the bitchy lesbian, Bridgette, the bitchy dancer, and Robert, the bitchy cellist who wears a black bucket hat and looks like James Iha had he been with The Cure instead of The Smashing Pumpkins.

The ace of the faculty is Donald Falk, an art teacher who no longer produces art. We later find out he’s sworn it off because his wife Angela thinks it makes him crazy. He also has a sordid habit of banging his students, which likely also makes him loco. Judging by the work displayed in their home, he was either an abstractionist or a terrible artist. Donald at a glance resembles General Zod from Superman II until he puts on his time-stamp round glasses that transform him into a movie-of-the-week version of Maurice Gibb.

When you lose control and you got no soul...tragedy!

Like the other males (and possibly the lesbian) Donald takes an immediate shine to Lily and becomes progressively creepier. This is much to the chagrin of Gredin who warns Lily of Donald’s history.

Back in her room, Lily finds a box of junk once belonging to Ivy–including her diary--not the sort of thing you leave behind, but what the hell? Inspired by this discovcut two inches off her hair to which everyone responds as though she's a Manson Girl shaving her head.

Lily accepts a gig babysitting at the Falk home, and in doing so, allows Donald another cliche. Not only is he hot for female students, but he’s also hot for the babysitter. That Lily fills both roles is a convenience. Add the convertible and you've got yourself a midlife caricature.

While it’s difficult to select the dumbest part of this movie, I’m going with the scene between Lily and Donald in the studio–where Donald claims to be every afternoon, not working. What ensues is a ridiculous melodramatic conversation about art, sacrifice, and facing one’s demons. Donald speaks as though becoming an artist is on par with paratrooping into enemy territory in broad daylight carrying only a Randall knife and a canteen of warm water. With no back-up.

Lily calls Donald on his bullshit (her term), claiming he has no place to speak of what art takes when he’s hung up his fan brush. Lily proposes a quid pro quo in which she and Donald will help each other face their demons--sort of an artists-with-benefits arrangement.

Donald jumps at the proposal like a hungry dog descending upon a fallen hamburger. He then pulls out an easel and a sketch pad and begins sketching Lily. This is a ruse to get her naked–sacrifice yourself, damn it. Face your demons, girl, and, let me face your tits. Lily acquiesces, driven by Ivy’s diary. Donald carries on, driven by his cock, and renders a crap charcoal sketch of Lily.

I'm going to show you my 'oh,' I mean sketching face.

Concurrent lover’s triangles ensue with Lily bouncing back and forth between Gredin and Donald, while Donald rekindles the fires of infidelity while remaining with an increasingly suspicious wife.

A big Halloween party is announced and Bridgette goes out to the Stanford Dish to let Gredin know.  Lily sees the invitation, which concludes with a hug, and assumes sex is involved.  Feeling jilted, she decides to attend the party dressed as a hooker, adding black lipstick, piercing her belly button, and smoking a cigarette.  This leads her roommates to conclude she is tweaking. 

The party makes the McAlbertsons' soiree in Midnight Cowboy look like a seven-year-old's birthday party.

Meanwhile, Lily sees Gredin dancing with another girl and goes full-on ho bag, planting a wet one on the lips of a partygoer wearing a mask. This turns out to be Robert.  Upon discovering his identity, Lily reacts as though she’s been playing tonsil hockey with Quasimodo.  All the while, Donald sits in his convertible and spies through the window, cementing his status as Creepy Creeperson.

It is revealed that Donald is a serial philanderer and he then claims Lily makes him feel like he’s never felt before. Yeah, right.  Bang time.  Afterward, Lilly experiences fuckers’ remorse and treks out to the Stanford Dish to apologize to Gredin again.  They become a couple.  

In a highly contrived scene to get all the characters in the same house for the final act, Angela invites Lily to Thanksgiving, though she suspects she’s screwing Donald.  Lily brings a date, her now-boyfriend Gredin, who hates Donald and vice-versa.  Dinner is understandably awkward with the two men bickering in passive-aggressive fashion.  

After dinner, the Falk's young daughter, Daphna, asks her dad and her babysitter to put her to bed. Once this is done, Donald gets aggressive with Lily in the hallway, forcing himself on her. Daphna pops out of her room and sees her dad trying to rape her babysitter, understandably loses her shit, and runs out of the house and into the street, teddy bear in tow.

What happens next is straight out of an old driver’s education video.  The child runs into the street, the driver’s eyes bulge, the tires screech, and the teddy bear flies in the air.  While their child lies bleeding in the street, Donald and Angela engage in a donnybrook, leaving Gredin to attend to her before acting as third man in and slugging Donald.  For her part, Lily had already fled, running back to her room to pack up her Ivy paraphernalia, finally concluding that slutting and homewrecking are not all they’re cracked up to be.  

Gredin catches up with Lily back at the house to tell her that Daphna will be alright.  An intruder then bashes Gredin over the head and comes after Lily.  It’s Donald gone crazy (he is, after all, working on his art again).  

Donald and Gredin have a punch-up, with Donald getting the upper hand.  Robert drops his cello long enough to inform Donald that the fuzz has been called and is en route.  Robert is then shoved down a flight of stairs by Donald.  His cello is spared.

As this is a Poison Ivy movie, Donald and Lily end up on the roof, where Donald slips and falls to his death.  Erotic.  Thriller. Lily again apologizes to Gredin at the Standford Dish, blaming the diary for her vicarious slutting.  He accepts the explanation and they live happily ever after–or until winter break.