It’s 1995, and everyone has decided that salvation for the much-assailed British Film Industry is on the horizon at last because they quite like Shallow Grave. Then a couple of months later, they all decided that they liked Trainspotting even more and pretended en masse that they had never heard of Shallow Grave and had never made any such proclamations before and were on holiday when it wasn’t made and of course they will not be naming the vicar. Then everyone else decided that the ideal manner in which to capitalise on the success of Trainspotting was to essentially just copy it with less imagination and to diminishing effect and with soundtracks stuffed with transient indie bands who had scraped a couple of plays on daytime Radio 1, with few of the resultant films ever quite managing- to attain the degree of competency on display even in Adam And Joe’s supposed parody of the ‘genre’ Speeding On The Needlebliss. Meanwhile, with all of the promotional capacity and critical attention diverted towards the soul-baring – even though nobody asked them to – creative over-promises of middle-class graduates who really, really understood the metatextual narrative depth of shaking a camera a bit to depict the rigours of ‘drug addiction’, scores of other more deserving and indeed more original British-made movies went more or less unnoticed. Admittedly some of them were Solitaire For 2, but an inadvertent trend for twistedly-comic quasi-historical dramas also slipped under the radar whilst Begbie was hilariously throwing glasses at people and then throwing glasses at the people who said he’d thrown the glass, including such undeservedly overlooked and now incredibly difficult to get hold of minor triumphs as Small Faces, Whatever Happened To Harold Smith…? and over and above anything and everything else The Young Poisoner’s Handbook. Then of course The Full Monty came along and steamrollered any notion that the average member of the public needed more shouting about YOUTH CULTURE in capital letters especially if it involved two decade old albums and retired James Bonds in order to entice them back into the cinema, and also it ended up coming out before Whatever Happened To Harold Smith…? which makes some degree of a nonsense of this deliberately and wilfully provocative narrative anyway, but regardless, one major point still remains – more people should be talking about The Young Poisoner’s Handbook.

Fortunately, that’s exactly what I’m doing in Britcom Goes To The Movies, joining Guy Walker and Rob Heath for a look this little-seen highlight of British comedy-horror, its links to assorted small-screen comedy shows from Drop The Dead Donkey and Brass Eye to How Do You Want Me? and The Vicar Of Dibley, and exactly why it seems to have almost entirely disappeared while so many less deserving efforts are available on multiple platforms. As well as looking back to the days when you had to literally physically seek out any film that wasn’t a massively overpromoted blockbuster, discussing the importance of favouring Top Of The Pops albums and Blodwyn Pig over ‘Peace’ signs and Jim Morrison, and debating which forgotten hits of the sixties are arguably best left that way, we also do our best to answer the most troubling question surrounding The Young Poisoner’s Handbook – is it acceptable to laugh at something so closely based on horrific real-life events from within living memory?

Find out in Britcom Goes To The Movies: The Young Poisoner’s Handbook by downloading it here or listening below!

Buy A Book!

You can find much more about my love of the less critically lauded corners of cinema, from Michael Caine and Elvis Presley movies to creaky old sci-fi and ‘Video Nasties’, in my book Can’t Help Thinking About Me, a collection of columns and features with a personal twist. Can’t Help Thinking About Me is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Alternately, if you’re just feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee here. In a mug that has not been used for mixing cosmetics, obviously.

Further Listening

You can also find me talking about The Young Poisoner’s Handbook – and plenty more besides – on Looks Unfamiliar here.

Further Reading

You can find the story of how I didn’t see A Clockwork Orange in Do Not Viddy This, My Brothers! here.

© Tim Worthington.
Please don’t copy this only with more italics and exclamation marks.