I’m old enough to have lived through the events of this documentary… but young enough that it was just a pervasive news story on tv. Which is why I hopped on this doc when it showed up on Netflix. I only remember the basics… that a number of people died after swallowing cyanide-laced Tylenol. I was looking forward to the details after all these years. I remember it being scary but I wasn’t quite only enough to realize it was an actual existential threat. Something happening on tv, not in regular medicine cabinets in regular homes.

But, yeah, scary story and every time I’m fussing with a medicine bottle, I’m reminded of why. Some crazy person (probably) tampered with Extra Strength Tylenol and seven people died. Tylenol was pulled off the market and it was a great big thing for, in my kid brain where time was always distorted, months if not years.

This documentary is in three parts and really only the first one I felt you could trust. It’s a mostly just-the-facts series of interviews about what went down with the drug in 1982. It’s pretty chilling for sure and is very interesting, especially if you don’t know anything about the case at all.

The second episode introduces a creepazoid James Lewis who is credited as “Tylenol Murder Suspect”. Which is true but the doc almost seems to want to let him off the hook… while hoisting him back up on the hook for a bunch of other crimes. HIs interview will probably give you the heebie-jeebies… but it also feels far out of left field for the actual doc.

The third episode lays the blame on Johnson & Johnson to such an extent that I began thinking the doc was just a hit piece. Is J&J innocent? Maybe… but it’s in that lack of impartiality that caused me to sour on the doc. Sure, easy to blame the huge multinational corporation… it’s what’s expected. Might also be true. But it also comes around to putting suspicion on Prince of Creepiness James Lewis too. Roll the dice.

Score: 77