Best movie ever!

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

When Henry Jekyll's experiments with cocaine have gotten out of control, he transforms into the hideous Jack Hyde.As Hyde he searches the London streets at night for his prey in whorehouses and opium dens.The police can't catch him, he has nothing to lose but his mind.....The illness wasn't doing Perkins any good at this late stage in his life, but thankfully he puts i a grandeur performance in what other wise is a film with all style and no substance.By day, Perkins is the mild mannered doctor, just him, his wife, and a monkey in a cage with a shed load of coke.By night he turns into some sort of New Romantic anti hero, Lipstick and all, and the film turns into some sort of Hazy Fantasy Simon Le Bon would be proud of.And this is where it loses it's way. There s no real back up as to why the doctor sees that woman from the beginning. There is a hint that he is sexually repressed, but it's never really explored enough.We are just treated to the fact that Jekyll hates women due to something that happened to him, so when he turns into Phil Oakey from the Human League, he can unleash the beast.It's not a bad movie, just too eighties, if something could be that.Worth watching for Perkins.

While watching this movie it's quite apparent that somewhere deep down in it there was a good movie and a good idea behind it all. However the overall end result it's pretty poor and really not interesting and exciting enough.It does sound like a good main premise; Combine the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story with the London killings done by Jack the Ripper, at the end of the 19th century. Yet the movie its concept and story never seems to get off the ground. It's mostly because of the dull and uninspiring storytelling that the movie and its concept fall flat. There is rarely anything good or interesting happening in this movie and it's a real problem that the movie is lacking in some good decent mystery and tension.The movie also fails to create a good atmosphere for its story. It seems so easy to create a dark and moody atmosphere, set in dark and moody London after midnight. Yet the movie is often too bright with its colors and everything is too smooth and perfect looking.Lets take the victims for example. They are all perfectly figured young girls, who are real natural beauty's, with perfectly smooth faces and hair that obviously gets treated well on a daily basis. Not very convincing, considering that these girls are supposed to be 20th century prostitutes, who were considered to be the lowest of the lowest. The story itself is also far from convincing. It's one thing that Dr. Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde, due to the use of cocaine but this doesn't really explain his odd and sudden transformation into a completely different looking person. It's also quite amazing that no one ever suspect this aggressive and creepy looking guy to be perhaps in some way connected to any of the murders of the prostitutes, that he himself was also often seen involved with by many others. no wonder that the police never caught the ripper, if they really were this stupid as well in real life.What makes this movie even more a weird watch is the fact that it can also definitely been seen as a soft-core-porn flick. There is really quite a lot of nudity in it and lots of different sexual acts get explicitly implied.It's interesting to see Anthony Perkins in this type of role but he basically gets far too little interesting or new to do with his character. Nevertheless, he was a more than great actor, so it's still a bit of a pleasure to watch him in this. He was actually a very underrated actor in my opinion and it's a bit of a shame that most people only know him for his iconic "Psycho" role, while he was much more versatile as an actor. It's still a wrong move by this movie to only purely focus on his character, while things could had been given more depth and tension if it had some other strong solid characters in it as well.A failed attempt at a potentially interesting and refreshing idea.4/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

One of the brightest directorial talents in French fornication films, Gérard Kikoïne all but disowned his "shameful" past – encompassing such genre classics as ENTRECHATTES, CHAUDES ADOLESCENTES and BOURGEOISE ET…PUTE! – when introduced to the comparative glamor of globe-trotting producer Harry Alan Towers whose dedication to the cinematic adaptation of erotic literature since the '60s (with particular attention paid to the writings of the Marquis De Sade, along with Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu and Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, of which he commissioned several randy revisions) had him consort with trash flick royalty like Jess Franco, Massimo Dallamano and the late Joe D'Amato. Having had a taste of the life outside the ever restricting confines of carnal cinema when Towers funded his coy but cute LADY LIBERTINE, adapting anonymously penned erotic novella Frank and I, Kikoïne was to burn his bridges with the intimate industry soon after, perhaps not the wisest of choices from a quality point of view, his latter-day filmography including underwhelming straight to cable fare as the ludicrous bodice ripper MASTER OF DRAGONARD HILL and the phony Poe adaptation BURIED ALIVE, the latter somewhat ironically featuring American porno princess Ginger Lynn (Allen) in a similar attempt to "go straight".Arguably the best of a sorry lot, EDGE OF SANITY proves a confusing rendition – bearing the imprint of no less than three screenwriters, rarely a good sign – of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, offering up the dubious theory that the (fictitious) good doctor's dark side and the (historical, though shrouded in larger than life myth) figure of Jack the Ripper might be one and the same. Be that as it may, the good news is that Kikoïne plays fast 'n' loose with this unnecessarily muddled narrative, largely reducing it to the framework for a multitude of cinematic references and outrageously baroque erotic tableaux, occasionally elevating its undeniably kitsch components to sublime status through sheer force of will and characteristic daredevil effrontery. One wonders whether the late Anthony Perkins had an inkling what sheer lunacy he had signed himself up for, though his previous turn in Ken Russell's equally outlandish CRIMES OF PASSION should have prepared him for just about anything. Not that there's much competition, mind you, but his over the top thesping in the classic dual role provides the movie's acting highlight, at least in a car crash sort of way. Playing things relatively straight as the earnest medic, exploring the possibilities of cocaine as an anesthetic, he cuts loose spectacularly once said experiments go awry and his suppressed alter ego rises to the occasion, with make-up and lighting subtly recalling Conrad Veidt in Robert Wiene's CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. Unbeknownst to loving wife Elisabeth (Glynis Barber, who will be forever remembered as TV's Harriet Makepeace, doing what she can in a traditionally thankless role), Doc goes out and literally paints the town red with the blood of prostitutes, making himself known to them as "Jack Hyde" moments before slitting their throats. Lured to the plush brothel of Madam Flora (veteran actress Jill Melford from John Dexter's way ahead of its time sex change drama I WANT WHAT I WANT with Anne Heywood) by the sexually ambiguous Johnny (Ben Cole, also in HOWLING V : THE REBIRTH, one of the most useless sequels ever), Hyde falls hard for sultry strumpet Susannah (alluring Sarah Maur Thorp, who was in the Towers-funded Agatha Christie adaptation TEN LITTLE INDIANS by Alan Birkinshaw) who showed up battered 'n' bruised at the doctor's office earlier and unwittingly triggered a traumatic childhood memory, which the writers predictably enough attempt to pass off as motive.The film's overriding style is that of late '60s/early '70s Hammer, meaning lots of velvety scarlet set off by sparkling gold in the color scheme whenever the naughty stuff's about to start. DoP Tony Spratling – who shot Gerry O'Hara's surprisingly effective FANNY HILL as well as Basil Dearden's massively underrated MAN WHO HAUNTED HIMSELF with a career performance by Roger Moore – has a field day in those eye-popping sequences, employing Kikoïne's trademark wide angle lenses to emphasize the distortion taking place within the doc's mind. Another Hammer trademark carried over, unfortunately, is the dreary dullness of its police procedures. A CARRY ON veteran, frequently cast as constable, late character actor David Lodge is stuck asking questions the audience has just seen the answer to as chief of police Underwood, given zero opportunity to shine next to Perkins' feverish scenery chewing. Thanks for the mammaries then ! Barber keeps 'em buttoned up, though she enthusiastically whipped them out in Michael Winner's priceless WICKED LADY. Still, lots of lesser lasses gamely bare all for their art. One indelible set piece has bleached blond Carolyn Cortez (who had a bit part in Alejandro Jodorowsky's characteristically mind-boggling RAINBOW THIEF) lured to a hotel roof where Hyde lewdly has her displaying her wares for a timid peeping tom's benefit. Look for Canadian cutie Claudia Udy (hey, it rhymes !), who was the star of Sergio Bergonzelli's exotic post card porn JOY half a decade prior, as one of the fallen women seeking sanctuary from the ripper's rampage at the local church. French composer Frédéric Talgorn, recently responsible for the sterling soundtrack to Jean-François Davy's return to respectability LES AIGUILLES ROUGES, crafted a score that's suitable opulent and ominous in keeping with the film's general mood of decadent dementia.

This is the nth variation on the Jekyll/Hyde perennial that I've watched – it's not among the better versions, but nor is it quite as bad as its maligned reputation would suggest! An unhinged Anthony Perkins (joining a distinguished roster of actors to tackle the dual role) is always worth watching: his disruption of a society dinner is quietly effective – as Dr. Jekyll expounds on his theory about the power inherent in a personality unbound by laws and traditions, and of its imminent emergence. The Hyde make-up does not extend to much other than making Perkins look somewhat younger, rather effeminate and vaguely sinister. The overall look of the film, retaining the period setting of Stevenson's original novel, is fairly pleasing – within the limitations of its budget and the exploitation angle it clearly aims for (what with the presence of blood and sleaze galore).Unsurprisingly, the narrative attaches a mother/whore complex to the main character – not to mention the fact that Perkins' Hyde adopts the characteristics one usually associates with Jack The Ripper (following in the footsteps of Hammer's DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE [1971])! By the way, the film was co-produced by Harry Alan Towers – with his wife/former starlet Maria Rohm credited as Associate Producer! I have still another version to check out – the recent 2002 production released on DVD (as a SE no less!) by Alpha, and may even get to MARY REILLY (1996) before the month is out...