The Young Poisoner's Handbook

1995

Action / Comedy / Crime / Drama

4
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 83% · 15 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 83% · 1K ratings
IMDb Rating 7.0/10 10 3972 4K

london, england poison stepmother based on true story murder mental institution

Plot summary

Graham Young is a teenage misfit living in suburban London in the 1960s. He hates his stepmother but loves chemistry, and the two impulses unite in a wicked plot to slowly poison her. After she dies, he's found guilty and sent to a psychiatric hospital, where an idealistic doctor thinks he can be cured.

Director

Benjamin Ross Photo
Benjamin Ross

Top cast

Charlotte Coleman Photo
Charlotte Coleman as Winnie
Simon Kunz Photo
Simon Kunz as John
Malcolm Sinclair Photo
Malcolm Sinclair as Dr. Triefus
Roger Lloyd Pack Photo
Roger Lloyd Pack as Fred
720p.WEB
914.87 MB
898*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
30 fps
1 hr 39 min
Seeds 6

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by MichaelCarmichaelsCar

Black comedy near its best

Why has 'The Young Poisoner's Handbook' not developed a cult following? I have some theories, but this is certainly a film that should have found a larger audience at some point.This is pitch black British comedy near its best, reminiscent of both Hitchcock and 'A Clockwork Orange' -- its three-part structure is similar to that of 'A Clockwork Orange,' given that the protagonist is free, then confined, then free again to illustrate the vanity of "rehabilitation" where it concerns psychopaths, and we even hear excerpts from Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary, which Wendy Carlos incorporated into her electronic score for 'Clockwork.' Whether 'The Young Poisoner's Handbook' is paying homage or borrowing, the movie itself is a highly individual work that should please anyone with a fondness for Orwell or Ealing.Hugh O'Conor, with his wide-eyed gift for simulating innocence, is an ideal selection for the role of Graham Young, the real-life poisoner of the British village of Bovingdon, who slowly poisoned his stepmother to death with antimony sulfide, finishing the job with thallium. Cursed with a banal home life and a sociopathic mind, his self-described "gift for chemistry" is put to obviously nefarious uses, occasionally using friends as guinea pigs before the main attraction.The director, Benjamin Ross, makes a tremendously impressive debut here. His selection of music together with his fluid editing and camera-work often produce stirring and exciting results, the 1960s small British town setting keenly observed, with a very black wit. Graham's wicked stepmother, played by the singular Ruth Sheen (seen in many Mike Leigh films), joyfully accepts her first dose of poison after finding a box of Velvet Victories chocolates on her bedroom pillow, with a note reading "To my darling mother, xxxx." There's a vivid sense of the dustiness of the Young household, the darkness of Graham's bedroom punctured by the eerie glow of his flasks, the frustration of an overcrowded working class household where the telly's always running with the silliness of popular variety programs. The film also adroitly contrasts the self-important grandeur of Young's genocidal ambitions with the unglamorous pettiness of the actual crimes and the prosaic Bovingdon environment to which his perpetration of them was fortunately limited (the real Graham Young had wanted to be known as "The World's Poisoner," but was instead given the considerably less flattering moniker "The Teacup Poisoner"). Absurdity and grimness are very skillfully balanced. A marvelous, overlooked film.
Reviewed by heywood100 6 / 10

Runs like Clockwork...

...A Clockwork Orange to be precise. Which is something of a bafflement, as besides the occasional coincidental similarity the basic story ears no relation or resemblance to the Stanley Kubrick film or the Anthony Burgess novel. And they don't try to shy away from the fact that they've ripped off the film - they even use the same piece of music at certain times.So, inspired by the nadsat talk of the original and far superior film, the story is; Your Humble Narrator is only interesovatted in one lesson at the skolliwoll - Chemistry. He uses his knowledge to slowly poison his poor old pee and em but gets found out by the millecents and sent to Staja. There, he sucks up to the psychologist and gets an early release for being so horrorshow with the old chemicals. But once out, he begins poisoning the grahzny vonny malchicks and ptitsas at his firm, until they also figure out what he's up to and send him away again, O my brothers.And if you understood that you're a better man (or woman) than most. The film has identical shots and similar scenes to Kubrick's film, but has none of the originality or daring subject matter of it. As A Clockwork Orange was still banned when this film was released, I can only assume they thought no-one would remember what it was like and would let this pass. It makes absolutely no sense, but it has created a talking point that the film otherwise wouldn't have, since essentially this is nothing more than another average British movie.
Read more IMDb reviews

3 Comments

Be the first to leave a comment