Linkshoch Wonderful Movie

Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

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

gavin6942 Henry Jekyll (Anthony Perkins) experiments with cocaine, and the experiments have gotten out of control, transforming him into the hideous Jack Hyde. As Hyde he searches the London streets at night for his prey in whorehouses and opium dens.Early in the film, we see a blade against an eye. This is a very impressive effect, clearly looking like a real eye and areal blade. (I mean, it is not "Un Chien Andalou", but what is?) There is one scene with a bath house full of several nude men, one of whom is in a rather suggestive pose. I am surprised this passed the censors. While not sexual, this seemed a bit provocative to me. And what purpose did it serve? Was this just a way of showing the paradoxes and contradictions in Victorian society? Is this an anti-drug film? I would say no, as it is not remotely a realistic portrayal of cocaine addiction. They could have just as easily invented a new drug for the purposes of the film. And yet, they did not do so -- so why single out cocaine?

Boba_Fett1138 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/

Paul Andrews We begin with Dr. Henry Jekyll (Anthony Perkins) waking up from a nightmare he has just had. In which as a young boy he witnesses a couple rolling around in a barn and having sex and when found the man pulling his trousers down and whipping his backside while the woman, now topless of course, just sits there and laughs, given this opening sequence I should have guessed I was in for a long 90 odd minutes. Jekyll works for the local hospital. While conducting experiments in his lab at his house a caged monkey knocks over some chemicals which mix together and create some fumes. Jekyll, while trying to clean the spill up, inhales the fumes. He instantly turns into Jack Hyde. He heads straight for the back streets of a Victorian Whitecapel in search of prostitutes. There he meets a man called Johnny (Ben Cole) who takes Hyde to a upper class brothel run by Madame Flora (Jill Melford). He becomes obsessed with a prostitute who works there named Susannah (Sarah Maur Thorpe) as she looks exactly like the woman from the opening scene. He also picks various prostitutes up from the backstreet's of London and murders them, he also constantly takes cocaine through a special pipe. When the police, Inspector Newcomen (Ray Jewers) find one of these pipes at a murder scene, and since the victim was killed with a scalpel and therefore probably by someone with a medical background it leads them to Jekyll. Jekyll's wife Elizabeth (Glynis Barber) also becomes suspicious of him as he stays out all night, when she confronts him he says he is working late at the hospital with a special patient called Mr Hyde, while at the hospital herself one night she asks to see Jekyll but is told that he doesn't work nights at all. Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde plunge even deeper into the seedy world of drugs and prostitution, but as the net begins to close on him he becomes more and more desperate to protect his identity, and carry on his reign of debauchery and murder.Directed by Gerard Kikoine this is an extremely bad film that tries to combine both Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with the real life case of Jack the Ripper, a notorious murderer of prostitutes in Victorian London. First the good points. Technically the film is fairly impressive, nice authentic looking Victorian locations, even thought he film was shot at least in part in Hungary. The sets, elaborate Victorian costumes and production design credited to Jean Charles Dedieu are also similarly impressive, Edge of Sanity is certainly a good looking film. The lighting and colour schemes look wonderful with lots of neon blues, reds, oranges to contrast against the dark browns and pitch blacks, the recently released DVD by MGM looks absolutely fantastic and the film looks sumptuous. Photography, editing and music are all very professional and give the film a very polished look about it. There is a lot of nudity, sex, perversion and some gore as well. Now for the bad points. The acting, and in particular by Perkins is laughably awful just check out his ridiculous looking make up and some of the bizarre faces he pulls, everyone is more or less just terrible. The plot, there isn't one really. Perkins turns into Hyde and goes around picking prostitutes up and end up killing them. The script by J.P. Felix, Ron Raley and Edward Simons badly under develops all of the characters, except Jekyll. The prostitutes are there merely to be used and abused, the police are there just to clean up after Jekyll and his wife is there for no good reason that I could think of. Why do these stupid prostitutes keep going off with the whacked out, doped up Jekyll on their own when it's been in all the papers that there's a maniac running around cutting up girls with a scalpel? And considering their lowly Victorian prostitutes they dress very well! There's plenty of sleaze in here as well like a scene where Jekyll commands a prostitute to masturbate his walking cane, drugged up orgies, rape, S&M, sex plus countless exposed breasts and naked flesh, including full frontal male and female nudity. After this film had finished I asked myself how could a film that looked so good, had so much sleaze, violence, sex and nudity turn out so bad? I decided that I didn't really know but I know some people who do, namely the talentless hacks who made this film. Definitely one to avoid.

Judexdot1 I've had the unrated version for this, since about the time I started buying tapes. Gerard Kikoine (once a Jess Franco disciple!) really cuts loose with this one, and he brings Anthony Perkins along for the ride! Despite ubiquitous art direction that sacrifices much for the "look" ( the lab has numerous beakers, all filled to the same level, with blue liquid. What it is, I don't know). Perkins really goes off as the respected scientist, who unleashes his inner self through experiments with the new drug, cocaine. He even somehow, apparently creates some sort of Crack, that can be lit with a wooden fireplace match!?! Production values are surprisingly high! Like a friend of mine said, I could almost buy into the idea, that Jack The Ripper was a sexually frustrated scientist experimenting with new drugs. Lush, often restrained, but also often quite gory. Probably more in tune with 70's arty euro-porn, than the history of horror films, this is often quite disturbing, and Perkins is at his best. Almost assured of a better reputation as time goes on. Don't miss, at least once.Pax--Judexdot1--