ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 2, 1996 TAG: 9608020068
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
A great number of people would find nothing funny in the life story of Graham Young, a famous English poisoner. He killed a friend, his stepmother and, after his release from a mental institution, a couple of co-workers.
But English filmmaker Benjamin Ross apparently saw nothing much of straight-faced dramatic value in Young's story. What he saw - what you will see - in "The Young Poisoner's Handbook" is a comedy of the macabre, about evil in all its beautiful simplicity.
Ross, in fact, makes murder look like an inevitable, scientific conclusion and the murderer - played by angel-faced Hugh O'Conor - look like the dispenser of divine justice who must, however, eventually gag on a taste of his own medicine.
What makes Young possible - the forces that produce him in the test tube of his ugly little world - are a shrill stepmother, always blaming him for other people's misbehavior, and a father who is only too happy to let Graham take the blame. There's also a materialistic, unpleasant older sister, her dull fiance, and an unsympathetic schoolmate. Only the neighborhood chemist is friendly to Graham, bestowing on him his first, important tool of the trade - a notebook in which to keep track of his experiments.
At first, young Graham is preoccupied with making sense of life, which he calls "a series of illusions that only the scientist can strip away." But when an effort to produce a diamond-like crystal - the experiment of his dreams, literally - blows up in his face, producing a potent toxin instead, Graham discovers his true calling.
After that, his victims seem to just line up for him like bowling pins, waiting to be knocked down. First, there's the schoolmate who seems intent on stealing from him a would-be girlfriend, the twisted librarian Sue (Samantha Edmonds). Then, there's stepmother, who punishes him for having pornographic magazines. And the sister whom he merely maims for ratting on him (for something he didn't do) in the first place.
Director Ross, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff Rawle, doesn't apologize for the young poisoner's conduct. That would be boring. He simply traps the young man in the golden light of the stuffy flat he shares with his family and lets us watch what happens inside - as if to say, is it such a surprise?
All human beings, for the duration of "The Young Poisoner's Handbook," are like potent, chemical properties whose interaction can produce disastrous results. When Graham Young is part of the equation, there is no other possible outcome.
And that is an interesting and darkly comical premise.
"The Young Poisoner's Handbook ***1/2
A Mass/Sam Taylor production, showing at the Grandin Theatre, 99 minutes. Unrated.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Samantha Edmonds and Hugh O'Conor star in "The Youngby CNBPoisoner's Handbook." color