By Ben Bussey
I can think of almost nothing more certain to make every reader aged over 30 wince in agonising realisation of their own increasing years than the fact that Drew Barrymore has just turned 40. How could it be that the cute little moppet who melted the hearts of the world in ET is now on the precipice of middle age – older than either Steven Spielberg or Dee Wallace were when that time-honoured classic was made? If ever we needed a stark reminder of how long ago the 1980s were, this is it; oh, how fast the years slip by.
Of course, ‘old before her time’ is kind of recurring theme in both the life and career of Drew Barrymore. As well as being the most notable child star of her generation – notching up appearances in a few minor genre hits like the Stephen King movies Cat’s Eye and Firestarter (as well as having made her debut in Ken Russell’s Altered States) – she also became one of the most extreme embodiments of all the worst child star cliches: booze, drugs and attempted suicide all before she was even 15. No doubt going through such troubles as Hollywood royalty makes the road to recovery that bit less treacherous, but even so, a cursory glance at the fates of any number of other former child actors underlines that things could easily have turned out a whole lot worse for Ms Barrymore. As it stands, she turned it all around beautifully, carving a prolific career as an actress and producer, and showing potential for a bright future in directing too based on her distinctly above-average coming of age chick flick Whip It.
And yet, between her years as an early teen trainwreck and a rom-com queen, there was that intermediate phase that all former child stars – or at least, former child actresses – inevitably go through; that time when they have to brush off the remnants of the cutesy image of days gone by, and declare in no uncertain terms that they’re all grown up now. We know the drill: nude photo shoots, high profile significant others, and a series of darker, edgier, overtly sexual roles. This period would be a rite of passage for the actress and the audience alike, in particular those viewers who came of age around the same time these films emerged – and revisiting these films in later years may well prompt somewhat complex reactions.
Ask any thirtysomething in 2015 (and yes, the current writer fits that category), and they will surely agree that Drew Barrymore pretty much wrote the book on being a big screen bad girl in the 1990s. Of course plenty of other actresses had made a similar transition before and since; notably, Linda Blair had embraced exploitation in the early 80s, resulting in such enduring cult classics as Chained Heat and Savage Streets; and in the immediate wake of Barrymore, Alyssa Milano would follow in her footsteps to more unabashedly sleazy effect with both Embrace of the Vampire and, notably, a sequel to the film which is the cornerstone of Drew Barrymore’s early 90s bad girl legacy: Poison Ivy. Made when Barrymore was still only 17, the now-familiar tale of a teen tearaway who worms her way into an affluent household via manipulation and seduction is a curious reflection of how such themes were handled in the early 90s, for while the concept is pure B-movie sleaze, it strives to treat its subject matter rather more seriously than we might have expected.
From the opening moments, Poison Ivy knowingly plays on the audience’s familiarity with Barrymore’s own troubled history. Memorably introduced on a rope swing over a gaping ravine, grunged-up to the nines with unruly blonde hair, battered biker jacket, cowboy boots and practically non-existent skirt, Barrymore’s anonymous loner – christened Ivy by the film’s real protagonist, Sara Gilbert’s Sylvie (who it seems safe to assume is so named in reference to Sylvia Plath) – is dished up to us as romantic nihilism personified. Gilbert’s teenage angst narration and subsequent conversations with Ivy are heavy with would-be intellectual ruminations on sexuality, class, life, death and suicide, all seemingly designed to hammer home that these are deep, intelligent, sensitive adolescents; all quite impressive at the time, but all rather grating now. Baggy tie-dye T-shirts, torn denim and big boots abound, rigidly tying the film to the era, and up to a point it does feel like a pretty decent encapsulation of the Generation X vibe that prevailed at the time – and the open hostility inspired by Ivy’s tattoo and nose ring (all fairly commonplace now) underline that, by and large, we’ve made some advances in the years since.
However, the early 90s was also the era of a somewhat different cultural movement; the rise of the erotic thriller. Poison Ivy attempts to mesh grounded young adult drama with a Red Shoe Diaries brand of glossy sexploitation, all soft focus and droning saxophones, and the two prove awkward bedfellows. While melodrama is never far from the surface – particularly in the thunderstruck, hanging from the balcony finale – Poison Ivy never seems to stop playing it straight. As a result, the film quickly lapses into inadvertent camp, and may well leave one wishing they’d just said to hell with it and fully embraced the inherent trashiness of it all, as would be the case in the increasingly porn-ish follow-ups with Alyssa Milano and Jaime Pressly.
Proceedings would be played even straighter in Barrymore’s other 1992 bad girl film, Guncrazy. Based on the 1949 movie of the same name (I gather it’s a loose remake, though I haven’t seen the original), the film again sees the actress take on a damaged goods white trash role as a trailer-bound teen who shoots dead her abusive stepfather and hooks up with a paroled convict (James LeGros), the two of them bonding over a shared passion for guns – and inevitably they’re on the run soon enough. This film again seems to capture the 90s zeitgeist pretty well: from the premise alone there’s a very True Romance/Natural Born Killers-esque vibe to it, but Guncrazy actually hit screens before either of those. Alas, it’s nowhere near as good, despite its fairly charismatic leads and above-average support from Billy Drago, Michael Ironside and a rather squandered Ione Skye. Like Poison Ivy before it, Guncrazy is a little too preoccupied with its own seriousness to wind up being much fun, but in this case it’s bordering on dour. Again, one can’t help wishing they could have gone just a little more Linda Blair with it.
It seems incumbent to mention that both Poison Ivy and Guncrazy are the work of female writer-directors, Katt Shea (previously responsible for Stripped To Kill and its sequel, subsequently responsible for The Rage: Carrie 2) and Tamra Davis (whose CV also includes Adam Sandler’s Billy Madison and Britney Spears’ Crossroads). This may well reflect how this era of Barrymore’s career saw her repeatedly cast as the strong young woman; while her characters were far from heroic, they were all in their own way battling adversity, standing up for themselves, and embracing their own sexuality. There would seem to be steps taken away from standard male gaze territory toward a greater emphasis on the female perspective, with at least a soupcon of male subservience. Barrymore is the object not only of desire, but of obsession, devotion, worship; the men in these movies are quite literally falling at her feet. Note that most of the love scenes she has in these films – Poison Ivy, The Amy Fisher Story (true life-based TV movie covering very similar thematic territory), Doppelganger – show her receiving oral sex. Yes, 90s men know that a woman’s pleasure comes first. It’s also curious to note that her nudity in these films also tends to be limited to the side angle; I don’t recall sideboob really being a thing in the 90s, but perhaps this is another place she was ahead of the curve. Hmm… trying to find a way to tie that in feminism, but I’m drawing a blank. Full frontal shots more male-gazey, sideboob less so…? Yeah, that’s not the strongest argument I suppose. Never mind. We all love sideboob, don’t we?
Anyway, now that we’ve mentioned both sideboob and Doppelganger… if Poison Ivy, Guncrazy and The Amy Fisher Story seemed a little too eager to suck the joy out of it all, Doppelganger sure does redress that balance. One of Barrymore’s few horror roles as an adult, writer-director Avi Nesher’s gleefully ridiculous 1993 movie sees her take on yet another troubled young woman role (this time a rich brunette, just to mix it up), but happily throws logic, restraint and any pretence of good taste out the window early on, as Barrymore’s New York heiress hides out in LA to escape her own phantom double. So is she just insane, or is she genuinely haunted? The film itself doesn’t seem to know most of the time; indeed, the finale goes from assuring us that it’s all in her head, to showing us that it isn’t in a very gooey, Hellraiser-esque fashion. Yes, it’s delirious to the point of complete incoherence, but given what a tepid period the early 90s was for horror, Doppelganger surely deserves points for enthusiasm.
The early 90s would see Barrymore continue to play the bad girl sex object with brief cameos in Waxwork 2, Wayne’s World 2 and Batman Forever, a couple more dramatic roles in Mad Love and Boys on the Side, and a more mainstream turn in that cowgirl flick called – funnily enough – Bad Girls. However, by the time she surprised cinemagoers everywhere by dying in the first scene of Scream (and I assure you, it was a big surprise at the time), she had pretty much left that phase behind her. For those of us with a deep appreciation of trash, it’s hard not to look back on those early 90s movies without being just a little disappointed; the opportunity was there for her to out-Linda Blair Linda Blair, but Barrymore took the more dramatic path. But that would seem to be a good reflection of how these things were in the 90s; all a little too anxious to be taken seriously.
Thank goodness, then, for the Charlie’s Angels movies. Yes, I said it. I know, they were overpriced blockbusters responsible for unleashing one the blandest Hollywood hacks of our time in McG – but damn it all, they’re so much fun. Attractive women in eye-catching outfits having spectacular wire-fu fights (when wire-fu still felt fresh) in the midst of utterly absurd plots? Really, who can’t find some enjoyment in that? They do once again see Barrymore a little too eager to play the dramatic card at times – in both films, the few solemn moments invariably centre on her character – but this is easier to accept when all other areas so readily venture into the guilty pleasure territory that her earlier films sometimes seemed anxious to avoid. I mean, if you can’t appreciate her in the Evel Knievel jumpsuit pictured above, then you have my sympathies.
It would be easy to be snide about the bulk of the work she’s done in the years since, given that – producing and co-starring in Donnie Darko aside – it tends to be nothing but rom-coms, and anyone who’s into horror and exploitation is generally expected to hate such films. Well – I for one am happy to declare that I don’t automatically hate all rom-coms, particularly not when they’re delivered with the warmth, sincerity and charm that Barrymore invariably brings. Somehow I find it unlikely we’ll ever see her return to full-on psychotic sexpot mode again, but whatever Drew Barrymore may do, she’ll always have at least a hint of that bad girl twinkle in her eye, and I daresay that’s enough.