j_Edge of Sanity review

In one of his last movie roles before he died of AIDS in 1992, Anthony Perkins portrays a schizophrenic who makes Psycho's Norman Bates look like the very model of well-adjusted humanity. By day, Perkins is the distinguished, respectable Victorian London physician Dr. Henry Jekyll. Bent on making cocaine into a legitimate anaesthetic (Sigmund Freud had wanted to do the same in real life), Jekyll accidentally overdoses on the substance and becomes Mr. Hyde--Jack Hyde--a pale-faced, lanky-haired crack-smoking pervert who prowls the night streets of the East End, looking for whores with whom he acts out his repressed fantasies of sex and slaughter. His vicious murders eventually earn him the notorious name of Jack The Ripper.

A British production shot in Budapest by a French pornographer, this bizarre hybrid of the Jekyll and Hyde story and the Jack the Ripper case isn't concerned with faithfully adapting Robert Louis Stevenson's novel or with presenting an accurate re-creation of the Ripper's crimes. Rather, Edge of Sanity is focused on kinky sex, bloody violence and Perkins' most off-the-wall performance since he played manic street preacher Peter Shayne in Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion (my personal favourite Perkins movie--along with this).

The film wallows in demented excess, presenting a smorgasbord of degenerate debauchery: voyeurism, spanking, masturbation, fetishism, sadomasochism, drug-induced orgies, insane hallucinations and sacrilegious perversions--all combined with the graphic, bloody murders of several intoxicatingly-sexy hookers. Not as interesting as the sex and violence is the film's depiction of the breakdown of Jekyll's marriage to Elisabeth (Glynis Barber) and the police investigation of the killings, headed by Inspector Newcomen (Ray Jewers). At first believing that Dr. Jekyll works nights at the hospital treating Mr. Hyde ("he has a strange sort of sleeping sickness," Jekyll explains), Elisabeth starts to think that her husband is either having an affair or is under the control of Mr. Hyde. She tries to enlist the help of Newcomen, but is thwarted and eventually discovers the truth on her own--with horrible, bloody consequences. The Jekyll's marital problems are depicted with soap opera melodramatics, while the police investigation subplot never really gets off the ground, and is left in limbo by the film's end. Were these story elements really necessary at all? The screenplay by J.P. Felix and Ron Raley definitely could have used some polishing in these areas.

Like its schizophrenic protagonist, Edge of Sanity exists in a world with a split personality: the prim and proper London of the daytime (which looks like something out of a Christine Edzard film) is jarringly juxtaposed with the decadent, demented London nightlife. The streets, the hookers' rooms and an upper-class bordello called Madame Flora's (all impressive creations of set designer Jean Charles Dedieu) look like Peter Greenaway's baroque high-class sleaze films crossed with Tim Burton's expressionistic nightmare fantasies. Visual anachronisms abound, diminishing the verisimilitude, but adding to the camp appeal: all the prostitutes dress in sub-Madonna lingerie and scanty outfits, and yes, I do believe those are Doc Marten boots that Hyde has on.

What really distinguishes Edge of Sanity from so many other European sex 'n' sleaze epics is Kikoine's keen eye for style. A feeling of genuine dementia is created through Tony Spratling's impressive photography: cameras tilt, turn upside down, zoom, swirl around in circles, and several scenes are drenched in primary colours, recalling the classic films of Dario Argento. Memorable atmosphere is also created by Fredric Talgorn's score, which mixes the superbly symphonic with the dementedly discordant. All these stylistic elements are combined in several noteworthy hallucination set-pieces--most memorably in which Jekyll looks into a mirror and sees himself turn into Mr. Hyde, all the while seeing bizarre images: his wife donning a prostitute's clothes and laughing at him, hookers dressed in nuns' habits, and an all-out orgy of sexual excess at Madame Flora's. Edge of Sanity is fine filth, slick sleaze--definitely worth seeing for fans of Euro-horror/sex cinema.

MGM's DVD re-release features a superb remastering job, with all the images brightened and sharpened, with surprisingly little grain in the darker sequences. Letterboxed at 1.85:1, this disc's look and sound is a big improvement over the comparatively murky print released by Virgin video. The DVD's only special feature is the American theatrical trailer, but it's excellent, one of the best trailers I've ever seen. Well edited, showing off a lot of the film's best scenes and lines, and featuring an exhilarating score, it's sixty seconds of solid gold that will make you want to watch the film all over again.

View the trailer here

STORY: 3.5 bitch-slaps
EXTRAS: 4 bitch-slaps
PICTURE/AUDIO: 4 bitch-slaps
OVERALL: 4 bitch-slaps