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Drew Barrymore in POISON IVY (1992) presented by Strange Brew

February 4 : 7:00 pm 9:00 pm

This film is presented by St. Louis’s long-running cult film series Strange Brew — winner of the 2025 A-List Award for Best Movie Night in St. Louis. Strange Brew programmer Jon Scorfina will provide an introduction.

“Why settle for the usual walk around the exploitation block when [Poison Ivy] offers a wild ride with the top down into uncharted territory?” – Rolling Stone

Drew Barrymore stars as a seductive teenager nicknamed “Ivy” who befriends an introverted high school student named Sylvie (Sara Gilbert) and cons her way into her wealthy family in POISON IVY (1992). Sylvie and Ivy quickly become best friends. Ivy moves into Sylvie’s family’s home and the two girls begin exchanging clothes and even share a bed. Ivy ultimately helps Sylvie come out of her withdrawn shell. However, Ivy deviously charms Sylvie’s chronically ill mother (Cheryl Ladd) and develops an uncomfortable relationship with her father (Tom Skerritt), a recovering alcoholic; soon sinister cracks in their friendship and family devolve into something more deadly.

Directed by Katt Shea, POISON IVY became the perfect vehicle for Drew Barrymore to return from a brief acting hiatus and transition from a troubled, child actress into more adult roles. Billed as an erotic thriller during the genre’s 1990s heyday — distributor New Line Cinema even described the film as “a teenage Fatal Attraction,” — POISON IVY has recently been reinterpreted and embraced as a tragic sapphic romance. POISON IVY was initially a box office bomb but became a word-of-mouth cult classic, spawning three direct-to-video sequels and landing the character Ivy on Entertainment Weekly’s list of cinema’s top “bad girls.”

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