Alyssa Milano takes the baton from Drew Barrymore to play the hazardous Lily in 1996's Poison Ivy II: Lily. It's direct to video, has a 14% Rotten Tomato rating, and is about what you'd expect.
Director Anne Goursaud commented the film was more popular with boys because of Milano's nude scenes but the plot feels much more like the kind of porn aimed at girls. It was written and directed by women, so it's not surprising. Lily, Milano's character, like Bella in Twilight or Osha/Mae on The Acolyte, doesn't have much of a personality but all the men in the story would die for her.
"Your beauty frightens me," says her art professor, Donald (Xander Berkeley), as he convinces her to pose nude for him. Lily finds a box of Ivy's old stuff in her dorm room, presumably the same Ivy from the first film. Lily poses in front of a mirror and quotes from Ivy's diary tidbits about seducing and manipulating men. Later, in a final scene exposition dump because none of this was established throughout the film, Lily explains that she wanted to be different and sexy because she was having trouble adjusting to the crazy students at her art school.
Primarily it's the professor versus a slacker bad boy student called Gredin (Johnathon Schaech--yes, that's how it's spelt) who are helplessly devoted to her beauty but there's also a quiet guy named Robert whom Lily kisses at a masquerade, her one actually slightly promiscuous act in the film and she immediately expresses shame. She also does things the script wants us to think are crazy like cutting her hair from waist length to shoulder length and wearing halters with no bra. Her nice girl roommate Tanya (Kathryne Dora Brown) is shocked when Lily wears black lipstick and flowers in her hair. In retaliation, Tanya says she won't introduce Lily to her girlfriend, who is introduced at that moment at the same time Tanya's lesbianism is established. The two girls kiss, leave the room, and leave the film, apparently the point being that lesbians can be the moral centre of a film when the protagonist is ever so slightly colouring outside the lines. Their mission accomplished, they depart from the story.
It occurs to me this film qualifies as "Dark Academia" with its college setting and gossipy plot involving sex and murder. It has a few moments of cheesy fun, many unintentionally hilarious moments. There's a really cheap ploy for shock value when the professor's little daughter is hit by a car. The low brow manipulation was cheesy enough but I started cracking up when I saw this guy driving the car.
It's not just the actor's appearance but also his lighting and the expression. I feel like the little girl wandered into an Arby's commercial. I vividly imagined this guy going out for a roast beef sandwich and I was delighted he got mixed up at all in the soap opera dinner party.
The little girl's stuffed bunny flies up in the air and actually lands on the asphalt with a "squeak". Was the comedy entirely unintended? I wonder.
I discovered Alyssa Milano is secretly a pop megastar in eastern countries. Apparently she has said she hasn't tried to establish her music career in the U.S. because she fears it would be laughed at. Really?
Yeah, okay, that's fair.
It reminds me of Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless saying Americans like the worst French performers, like Maurice Chevalier. Of course, it's Chevalier's outrageous Frenchness that appealed to American audiences, so I can only assume it's Milano's adorable Americanness that makes up for the complete lack of interesting vocal inflection. Even so, looking at her music videos, it's astonishing one was produced, let alone several. I mean, it's on par with Rebecca Black.
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