Poison (2000 TV Movie) User Reviews

nooooo, please...

[JamieWJackson · 4/10 · 4 December 2002]

This can't be Mandy Schaffer's last film. Somebody, do something! :-(

Argh.

What little life this one might have had, the directing finished off. Don't blame the cast; they did OK. Even the winemaker's younger brother was pretty well done, and he didn't even get into the movie until halfway through. And please, please put Mandy in some more movies! She's too beautiful to bury her career at such a young age. Ya' breakin' my haht, heah....

Two specific criticisms, in case anyone cares (apparently nobody liked this movie very much). First, the way Traci kept popping up at just the right melodramatic moment, in order to see whatever she was supposed to see, and never got seen in return, was very annoying. Hollywood: please stop giving villains perfect timing luck which runs out exactly when the climax arrives. It's dumb. Write better scripts so you won't have to use that lame plot device any more. If your script isn't good enough to stand up without that, then don't produce it.

Second, Carmen wouldn't have fallen for that fake injury trick that Traci pulled. She already had Traci fingered. More bad writing/directing there.

I could trash this movie further but mercy forbids it. Actually I didn't hate it as much as the others seem to have. It just didn't have much of a reason for being made, unless it was purely a vehicle to show off the lovely Mandy. Oh, and to whoever didn't think she was sexy... the character wasn't very well written, but how can you say she wasn't sexy?!? One or the other of us needs glasses, and I don't think it's me.

MORE MANDY. (Not to be confused with "Moore, Mandy" -- although I'd like to see her again too. ;-)

P.S. Did I mention I hope Mandy makes me more movies? <:-D

What a trash wallow

[heckles · 4/10 · 28 November 2002]

Oh man. If you want to give your internal Crow T. Robot a real workout, this is the movie to pop into the ol' VCR. The potential for cut-up lines in this film is just endless.

(Minor spoilers ahead. Hey, do you really care if a film of this quality is "spoiled?") Traci is a girl with a problem. Psychology has developed names for it when a child develops a sexual crush on the opposite-sex parent. But this girl seems to have one for her same-sex one, and I don't think there's a term for that. It might be because her mother Dana is played by Rosanna Arquette, whose cute overbite, neo-flowerchild sexuality and luscious figure makes me forgive her any number of bad movies or unsympathetic characters. Here Dana is not only clueless to her daughter's conduct; she seems to be competing for the gold medal in the Olympic Indulgent Mother competition.

It's possible that Dana misses Traci's murderous streak because truth be told, Traci seems to have the criminal skills of a hamster. It's only because the script dictates so that she manages to pull off any kind of a body count.

A particularly hilarious note in this movie is the character of Carmen, a Mexican maid who is described by Dana as around so long she's like one of the family although she dresses in what the director thought would say, "I just fell off the tomato truck from Guadalajara." Carmen is so wise to Traci's scheming, she might also wear a sign saying, "Hey, I'm the Next Victim!" Sure enough, Traci confronts Carmen as Carmen is making her way back from Mass, and bops her with one of those slightly angled lug wrenches that car manufacturers put next to your spare as a bad joke. I rather suspect than in real life those things are as useless as a murder weapon as they are for changing a tire.

In another sequence, Arquette wears a flimsy dress to a vineyard, under cloudy skies, talking to the owner. Cut to her in another flimsy dress under sunny skies, talking to the owner's brother. Then cut to her wearing the first dress, in the first location, under cloudy skies - but it's supposed to be later. You get the picture. We're talking really bad directing.

As for skin, don't expect much, although Traci does own a nice couple of bikinis.

For those looking for a trash wallow, 8. For anybody else, 1/2.

Stop me if you've heard this one before...

[p1phillips · 22 February 2002]

Here we have another psycho-girl-on-the-rampage movie, this time portrayed by Mandy Schaffer. She is a seventeen-year-old who is fixated on her mother (Rosanna Arquette) and is never happy when a man comes between them. This time the man (Thomas Kretschman) is the brother of Arquette's business partner (Jurgen Prochnow, in a nice change from his usual creepy bad guy roles). Of course, Schaffer is soon bumping off anybody who gets suspicious or just plain gets in her way. There really is nothing new here, but Arquette is watchable in just about anything, and there's nothing wrong with the occasional cheap thrill, of which this movie provides plenty.

Crappy plot, awesome sexy cast

[dioditto · 2/10 · 20 June 2007]

Let me be really clear about this movie. I didn't watch this movie because of the plot, I watch it for the saucy sex scenes. That being said, this movie is so god damn awful I flip between pure joy of seeing a godly body of Traci (Mandy Schaffer) and cringing my eyeballs out for the disaster of a plot.

Spoiler Alert: The first scene of the movie already had me cringing.. you see a woman painting something by the lakeside, in pure bliss and serenity, then a beautiful girl approach and ask if she could paint beside her. When they both finished, they show each other what they had ... and the woman painted A VINEYARD WHEN SHE IS INFRONT OF THE LAKE. What kind of screwball director would make this kind of mistake?? And in another scene, Traci gets to kill her teacher's lover by smash him with the sail pole, and then she swims away, and none of the town's police suspected her once. I mean HELLOOOOO? MANDY DID NOT WEAR A GLOVE DID SHE? HER FINGER PRINTS ARE ALL OVER THE GOD DAMN BOAT!! After that, it gets worst, whenever Mandy is around, there is the "chilling" sound effect played which sounds like a cat in hissy fit. It's also a real pity Rosanna Arquette's is in this movie. I feel real sorry for her to have to star in this super low budget soft-porn no brainer. Same goes for Jürgen Prochnow, who also has the misfortune to star in this movie. All in all, 2/10.

Without Rosanna Arquette this movie would have been 1/10.

[Victor Field · 2/10 · 17 April 2002]

A truly, truly dire Canadian-German co-production, the ever-wonderful Rosanna Arquette plays an actress whose teenage daughter redefines the term "problem child" - a few uears prior to the "action" the child murdered her father, and mum took the fall for the offspring. Now she's moved up to the Northwest US to start over, but her child still has a problem in that she's devoted to her mother. So devoted in fact that she kills anyone who might be seen as a threat to their bond.

Unfortunately Mandy Schaeffer (as the daughter) murders more than people - she delivers such a terrible performance that she also wipes out the movie, though the incoherent script, useless direction and appalling music (check out the saxophone the first time she displays her bikini-clad bod) don't help any; we're supposed to find her sexy and scary, but she fails on both counts. Almost completely unalluring and not even bad enough to be amusing (not to mention the fact that Arquette and Schaeffer don't really convince as mother and daughter), all condolences to Miss Arquette and Jurgen Prochnow, both of whom are worthy of far more than this, and both of whom (particularly Rosanna) are the only sane reasons for anyone to sit through this farrago.

One of the production companies is called Quality International Films - not since the three-hour "Love, Lies And Murder" (from Two Short Productions) has there been such a "You must be joking" credit.

thumbs down

[General187 · 1/10 · 24 October 2002]

This movie is so bad, I knew how it ends right after this little girl killed the first person. Very bad acting very bad plot very bad movie

do yourself a favour and DON'T watch it 1/10

Mandy Schaffer's appearance in 'Poison'

[vambo_drule · 9/10 · 7 April 2006]

I thought this was a splendid showcase for Mandy's bodacious bod. If you don't expect anything else, such as clever plot twists and believable character development, you won't be disappointed. Consider this a Sports Illustrated shoot whose character goes around killing people, especially those who threaten to come between her and her 'Mommy' (Suzanna Arquette, who obviously doesn't want to play the sex kitten - she leaves that up to her daughter).

Mandy's face is a little too perfect, but her body is a complete 5-alarm fire, up there in the ranks of Sophia Loren when it comes to natural bustiness, a perfect 7-to-10 ratio of waist to hips, and splendidly configured legs, right down to her feet. (There has to be some ideal configuration of thighs to knees to calves to ankles that is altogether pleasing to the eye; Mandy certainly is the model for this idealized ratio).

And no flat butt to boot, which seems to be the undoing of many a busty babe with curves everywhere except in the 'nether hemispheres'. Mandy might have used a body double in the rear shot of her losing her towel as she descended into the candle-lit hot tub with her blindfolded German-Guy Victim No. 2, but from all I could see from her bikini shots, she had the butt for it and didn't need a double to prove it.

Mandy's acting abilities had little to do with her impression of a psychotic 'Mommy's Girl', with the obvious erotic lesbian overtones. Her bisexual nature (allowing herself to be boinked in the hot tub after a long flirtation with German Guy No. 2, who also happened to be her mother's lover) added an additional dimension to an otherwise one-dimensional caricature of adolescent female horniness conflicted with pathological murderous impulses (always by water with the men - the ultimate fate of the Latina housekeeper was edited out in the televised version for some obscure reason).

Mandy's Uber-Nordic facial features coupled with her Uber-Voluptuous body could either be a blessing or a curse. If Mandy really wants to further her career as an actress, I'd advise her to immerse herself fully in the Romance Languages, especially Italian and Spanish - and maybe French, although I don't know if they would go for her type. But this would enable her to reconcile her Bo Derek face with her Vida Guerra body - but maybe her face is just a little too Nordic, and she has shown off too much of her extraordinary body in a cheesy movie to enable her to advance to any more fame that was enjoyed by Michelle Johnson of the 1980's whose early fame in Blame it on Rio was followed by a series of skin flicks that failed to make it off the ground.

Vambo Drule.

Though dull and somewhat predictable...

[JMcClane02 · 30 December 2002]

Wow what a flop. This movie wasn't a total waste of time. I was introduced to the newest member of my "fox" list: Mandy Schaffer. Her complete hotness is really the only reason I sat through it. No I'm not a perv. But it just goes to show a pretty face and killer body go a long way. As for the acting she pulled the psycho routine off well, but it was still too predictable. And the rest of the cast did the best they could with a weak screenplay. My recommendation: Watch this for the shear joy of seeing that gorgeous Mandy Schaffer.

Good movie.

[andymaranam · 8/10 · 22 November 2018]

A striking resemblance to poison ivy or more so the hand that rock's the cradle. Which in itself is a good mantle to be held. A good movie of sickness and seduction with the usual plays although it does it well.