THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE

It’s the engagement party for brilliant young Dr Henry Jekyll (Udo Kier) and his fiancée, the beautiful Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro), attended by various pillars of Victorian society, including the astonishing Patrick Magee in one of his final roles. But when people are found raped and murdered outside and ultimately inside the house, it becomes clear that a madman has broken in to disrupt the festivities – but who is he? And why does Dr Jekyll keep sneaking off to his laboratory?

We know the answer, of course, but Walerian Borowczyk’s visually stunning adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s much-filmed tale is crammed with wildly imaginative and outrageously perverse touches characteristic of the man who scandalised audiences with Immoral Tales and The Beast, not least the explicitly sexualised nature of Mr Hyde’s primal urges.

Reviews

“Potent and poetic, mischievous and macabre, Borowczyk’s film shows how many imaginative worlds the horror movie can open up when the right artist holds the keys.”
- Nigel Andrews, Financial Times

"A film of strange and outrageous beauty which seems to emanate from that place where our fears are also desires."
- Chris Peachment, Time Out

"Arrow Films certainly deserves praise for the film's excellent 2K restoration, scanned from the original camera negative, and the disc's scads of supplementary features."
- Stuart Galbraith IV , DVD Talk