The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne, 1981.
Directed by Walerian Borowczyk.
Starring Udo Kier, Marina Pierro, Patrick Magee and Howard Vernon.
SYNOPSIS:
A brilliant doctor’s engagement party livens up a bit when the guests start getting raped and murdered, and every time there’s a murder the doctor is nowhere to be found.
For all intents and purposes The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (a.k.a. Docteur Jekyll et les femmes or The Bloodbath of Dr. Jekyll) was considered something of a lost film but those sneaky wizards at Arrow Films had it all the time, working away at restoring it to its shiny, soft focus glory to stand alone away from the rest of the Walerian Borowczyk box set that they released last year.
Based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, director Borowczyk adds his own flavour to the story by introducing the very prim and proper Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro – The Living Dead Girl), the fiancée of Dr. Henry Jekyll (Udo Kier – Blade), a brilliant young scientist with some radical medical theories that he discusses with his guests at an engagement dinner party, guests that include his lawyer, the local priest, a military general plus some immediate family. However, as the evening goes on and theoretical discussions get heated – and after Jekyll changes his will with his lawyer so control of his assets goes to a mysterious Mr. Hyde – it transpires that there is somebody else in the house raping and killing the various occupants, and Jekyll is conveniently nowhere to be found whenever the madman strikes – whatever could that mean?
We know what it means of course, as this is a story that has been told and re-adapted several times since it was first published in 1886 so it’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that Jekyll is also Hyde; in fact, the film doesn’t play on the mystery angle that much and it probably helps more than hinders knowing that going in. Playing as both straight horror and transgressive art-house – not too much of a stretch when you think about it – the film employs the same nightmarish feel of many a Bava or Argento giallo by being beautifully photographed but with a sense of underlying melancholy, as if bad things were bound to happen in this place full of rich pomposity. Of course, commenting on rich pomposity is what Walerian Borowczyk was intending as the slant of his storytelling is less about the struggle between Jekyll and Hyde and more about what Hyde represents and what he can get away with, and what he gets away with is the twisted and perverse decadence that the more ‘sophisticated’ dinner guests desire but cannot act upon (or cannot be seen to be acting upon). This is made all the more obvious once Miss Osbourne discovers what her beloved Henry has been up to and isn’t repulsed, instead trying a few fiendish experiments of her own to unlock her suppressed desires.
And it wouldn’t be a Walerian Borowczyk film if those desires weren’t shown on the screen, and while The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne doesn’t shy away from sex and nudity, it doesn’t overplay the eroticism in the same way as something like Borowczyk’s La Bête does, instead preferring to employ subtle filmmaking and camera techniques to give you a voyeur’s perspective. Combine that with the artistically bloody violence, an anachronistic and jarring electronic score, the expected bad dubbing and a very off-kilter atmosphere and you have a horror film that on some levels plays to genre convention and on many others pushes the envelope. It’s an odd film, a film that isn’t easy to watch. but it is rewarding as it does offer a take on horror that is, for once, horrific and unsettling, only in a way that doesn’t always sit comfortably with expectation. If you’ve yet to delve into the surreal but brilliant world of Walerian Borowczyk then this extensive package – bolstered by interviews with cast and crew, plus featurettes on Borowczyk and some shorts – is a good place to start, and don’t be put off by the European art-house tag as there is enough genre familiarity in here to appeal to less arty sensibilities.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward