Docteur Jekyll et les femmes

Plot synopsis:
Dr. Henry Jekyll (Udo Kier), where the doctor is being feted prior to his engagement to the austere Miss Fanny Osborne (Marina Pierro). The guests arrive and are various dignitaries and officials. After a meal, the doctor is summoned to his laboratory, to get his will. He returns to the living room when a scream is heard where one of his guests has been discovered raped and murdered.
Henry Jekyll transforms to his alter ego, Mr. Hyde (Gérard Zalcberg), by taking a bath filled with a chemical cocktail. He emerges physically transformed. His alter ego has none of the restrictions of morality and he proceeds to rape and torture various guests.
Eventually Fanny witnesses one such transformation. She leaps into the bath to be transformed as well. The two transformed leave the house and in an carriage they depart, whilst undertaking blood letting of each other, and love making.

Tags: gothic, murder, violence, good versus evil, psychedelic, sadist

Review:
It is interesting to note the subtle changes this film makes on the usual Jekyll/Hyde movie formula: Udo Kier's Dr. Jekyll is not really a benefactor of humanity, but a man who revels in being able to commit horrendous crimes in the guise of his alter ego - actually moving the story closer to R.
He takes the traditional elements of the Stevenson story and turns them to his own surreal ends: the good doctor is transformed into a raving beast and then stalks the corridors of a rambling Victorian house; the inhabitants find themselves under siege from within, and the threat is largely sexual.
God knows what the raincoat trade makes of it: a film of strange and outrageous beauty which seems to emanate from that place where our fears are also desires.'  Chris Peachment, Time Out Film Guide, 1998.This succinct but intuitive review introduced me to Walerian Borowczyk's controversial adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novella but it is only now, some five years later, that I finally managed to watch the film for the first time via a dub taken from the out-of-print Belgian VHS released by the 'Hollywood' label, albeit after having had the ignominy of being detained by the local censors for nearly a month due to its 'obscene' content!
Furthermore, DOCTEUR JEKYLL ET LES FEMMES was also the third time Borowczyk had utilized the then twenty-one year old Marina Pierro, after 1977's INTERNO DI UN CONVENTO aka BEHIND CONVENT WALLS (which has just been released on R2 DVD in an English-dubbed version in the UK) and 1979's LES HEROINES DU MAL aka THREE IMMORAL WOMEN, and he would go on to use her twice more in ARS AMANDI aka THE ART OF LOVE (1983) and his own last completed film, CEREMONIE D'AMOUR aka LOVE RITES (1988).
Even though she was supposed to have partaken of Jekyll's serum, Borowczyk chose not to tamper with the actress' loveliness by transforming Fanny Osbourne into a wretched-looking creature (with king-sized boobs, perhaps?); the effect the potion had on her was more a liberating one, shedding all her sexual inhibitions and, perhaps more tellingly, severing the repressive ties which had bound her all her life to the hypocritical social mores of the ever-so respectable Victorian society by repeatedly stabbing her mother to death with a knife.
Besides writing and directing (for which he won the Best Direction Award at the Catalonian International Film Festival), Borowczyk himself was also responsible for the film's elegant but sinister décor which, confined as it is almost exclusively to the Jekyll household, imbues the proceedings with a highly appropriate feeling of claustrophobia, which not only implies the imminent danger that the guests constantly face from the predatory beast lurking within the premises, but could also reflect the chains of propriety I mentioned earlier and which had a strong hold over the British people in those Victorian times, a theme which was also explored in the classic Mamoulian/March version.
The only scene which is set away from the Jekyll mansion is the film's very opening sequence: Hyde's vicious attack on a little girl in a fog-bound alley in the dead of night is a brutally effective scene which plunges the viewer immediately into the narrative and requires that he/she be already familiar with the plot line.
I also liked the blackly humorous touch of having Hyde sign the register of congratulatory notices as if he were a regular guest to the party celebrating the engagement of Dr. Henry Jekyll to Miss Fanny Osbourne.The transformation sequences were quite different from what we were used to in other film versions by virtue of the fact that this time around Dr. Jekyll dissolves his mixture in a bathtub full of water and jumps right into it (rather than by simply drinking the potion).
The mythic 'phallus', which was perhaps the direct side effect of the potion (and I daresay intentionally so), does make its presence felt (ouch!) but not in a vulgar or gratuitous way; in fact, we see it in action only twice - on the General's oversexed daughter and, more disturbingly, on the aforementioned male guest  but, for all I know, it wouldn't really have embarrassed much any consummate male porno star!Apart from the common violent outburts and anarchic characteristics present in earlier film adaptations of the story, Borowczyk's vision of Hyde possesses a few distinctive traits like his penchant for hanging the carcasses of his victims from the ceiling - perhaps as a nod towards Leatherface's antics in Tobe Hooper's THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), a film which I haven't yet had the opportunity to watch, by the way  but also, more amusingly, his fondness for shooting poisoned arrows (an engagement present from the General, no less) at his victims, including the very same General and his daughter!
The latter also brings out another of Borowczyk's thematic attributes - which can also be found in the two other films of his which I have watched so far, BLANCHE (1971) and LA BETE (1975)  which is the eroticising of inanimate objects: in LA BETE, both Lisbeth Hummel (a rose) and Pascale Rivault (the bed-post) made unique use of such items to satisfy their lustful appetites; in DOCTEUR JEKYLL, the General's daughter lovingly caresses a sewing machine as she is being sodomized by Hyde's 'organ'.
The print utilized for the VHS transfer was a bit murky and soft on the whole, but this may have been a conscious decision on Borowczyk's part as to how the film should lookor else, it may have been the result of the various screenings that the tape underwent at the hands of those bastards at the local censorship board!DOCTEUR JEKYLL ET LES FEMMES is the eighth film version I have watched of the famous horror story: the Silent 1920 version starring John Barrymore and directed by John S.
JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE (Roy Ward Baker, 1971), which added a gender-bending twist by having Ralph Bates turn into Martine Beswick; and the inevitable Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing take on the material in the form of I, MONSTER (Stephen Weeks, 1971).Even so, there are still a handful of film versions I'd like to watch, namely the 1913 Silent with King Baggott and directed by Herbert Brenon; Edgar G.
After being very disappointed with "The Beast", I had little expectations towards Borowczyk's other entry in the horror genre "Dr. Jekyll and his Women", and ended up being very surprised.
It feels like the more serious but neglected younger cousin of Paul Morrisey's "Flesh for Frankenstein" and "Blood for Dracula", which also starred Udo Kier, and took a considerably more violent, erotic and often humorous approach at a classic horror story.
The film also works as an interesting social commentary on the decadent lives on 19th century high society, as Jekyll and Hyde seem to represent the depraved, monstrous characterstics of the bourgeoisie, hidden behind an elegant, sophisticated facade.
A surreal and disturbing retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde story from the director of the infamous art/porn movie 'The Beast'..
Cult legend Udo Kier ('Flesh For Frankenstein', 'Blood For Dracula', 'The Story Of O', 'Suspiria', etc.etc.) plays Dr Henry Jekyll, Marina Pierro (Rollin's 'The Living Dead Girl') is his fiancee, and the supporting cast includes the marvelous character actors Howard Vernon (who appeared in innumerable Jess Franco movies, 'Alphaville', 'Delicatessen' and many other cult favourites) and Patrick Magee ('Dementia 13', 'The Masque Of The Red Death', 'The Birthday Party','A Clockwork Orange').
This movie actually has a pair of balls by comparison, is equally unafraid to offend/shock, yet has an actual story worth bothering with at it's root.It's yet another potentially smutty little adaptation of classic literature, namely "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Howard Vernon is awesome as Jekyll's nosey doctor friend, Marina Pierro looks like she would have been an animal in bed with her blood red contact lenses and moist cleavage, and yes that is a different actor playing the Edward Hyde role & not just an oddly made up Udo.As for the cut/uncut considerations, try to find the English language print with the funny Scandanavian subtitles: All the others are censored to one degree or another, and this certainly is a movie with quite a bit to offend any ratings board member: Murdered violated young girls, a sex harlot being enthusiastically spanked by her father, a murdering sex maniac with a distended sex member who uses it on anything with some body heat.
It's effective art & film, easily the most provocative adaptation of the Hyde story to the screen that I can remember seeing, but what is he really trying to tell us here?
There were parts where I almost felt like I was watching a silent film, except with music and in color.The photography reminded me somewhat of Andrei Tarkovsky's boring but visually beautiful film Stalker.There were scenes in this movie, like one that took place in a bathtub, which played with the viewer's sense of time in a manner that I've only encountered in some of David Lynch's work.
I have to wonder if Lynch might not have picked up a few tricks from this movie.The closest thing I can compare it to in terms of "feel" would be to Carnival of Souls or perhaps more appropriately, to the 1964 "pink film" Hakujitsumu (Day-Dream).Even though there is a realistic, and hence viscerally unsettling, quality to much of the brutality in this film, Docteur Jekyll et les femmes is not a gorefest.
Little people know of "the strange case of doctor jekyll and miss osbourne" i brought the arrow video release of the film and watched it and really enjoyed it.
Another art-porn touchstone is Pier Paolo Pasolini, although at least Borowczyk has a detectable sense of humour in pursuit of his exploitation.The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne – to give it the director's preferred title after it was renamed Docteur Jekyll et les femmes – is a slasher of the trashiest sort (a trasher?), focusing on the relationship between Jekyll (Udo Kier), Hyde (a devilishly creepy Gerard Zalcberg), and Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro).
A strange and dream-like interpretation of the Jekyll and Hyde story that brings out the themes of sexual fantasy and violence.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981) ** (out of 4)Walerian Borowczyk's wild, over-the-top sexual fever nightmare has Dr. Jekyll (Udo Kier) and Miss Osbourne (Marina Pierro) having an engagement party but soon the entire thing leads to a disaster when a sexual predator shows up.THE STRANGE CASE OF DR.
Unusual, graphic, bizarre & different take on Robert-Louis Stevenson's Novel The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde..
I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be tenfold more wicked and the thought delighted me like wine" - Robert-Louis Stevenson (the Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).
The guests arrive one by one, Dr. Lanyon (Howard Veron), a General (Patrick Magee) & his fine looking daughter, Reverend Donald Regan (Clement Harari), a pharmacist named Mr. Moore, Dr. Jekyll's publisher Mr. Enfield &, of course, bride to be Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro).
Written & directed by Walerian Borowczyk this is one strange adaptation of Robert-Louis Stevenson's Novel the Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The film tries to tackle various issues and really goes into the psyche of Jekyll & Hyde to paint a complex picture of them both, I also loved the ending when Fanny bathes in the chemicals, turns into her alter-ego & they both head of in the back of a carriage having rough, explicit, blood smeared sex on the back seat!
He's a savage, primitive monster, through and through.What separates this version from others is its unnecessarily over the top sexual violence, a few VERY graphic scenes, and the fact (SPOILER COMING) that his 'bride to be' joins him in his debauchery at the end, becoming a Hyde-like monster herself.She's actually far more interesting than Hyde, because instead of acting like a basic sex fiend, she delves headfirst into nihilism, as does the film as a whole.
Taking part in a poll on ICM for the best movies of 1981 whilst reading the review,I noticed a fellow poster share tantalising screenshots of a Dr. Jekyll adaptation,which led to me looking at Borowczyk for the first time:The plot:Before getting married to Miss Fanny Osborne, Dr. Henry Jekyll has to host a dinner with wealthy friends/family whose approval they need.
Losing all of his morals,Jekyll/Hyde goes on a murderous and sexual rampage which Osbourne finds unexpectedly alluring.View on the film:Bringing Borowczyk's Dr. Jekyll into light,Arrow deliver a superb transfer,with the French/English dubs (the title was shot with no original soundtrack) being clean,and Arrow retaining the film grain on the picture.Opening Jekyll's eyes with Giallo black gloves and a stylised,extended first person tracking shot,writer/production designer/director Walerian Borowczyk & cinematographer Noël Véry set their sights on fetish, masochism,with Borowczyk finding an unsettling elegance in shots whirling round a drenched in blood body,and a bath of Jekyll's potion having a grubby earthy appearance.
Backed by an excellent simmering electronic score from Bernard Parmegiani, Borowczyk heightens the masochism by taking the Gothic Horror to the level of a surrealist farce,as the guests, Miss Fanny Osbourne and Jekyll become entranced in a cocktail of transgressive aggression and horror decadence.Entering this adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's book from a distinctive corner,the screenplay by Borowczyk brews a frosty nightmare horror state of Jekyll's future murder/sex attacks being threaded into the "present" dinner like a darkness on the horizon.
The story is a bit different than the novel, in that Borowczyk added Fanny Osbourne, writer Robert Louis Stevenson's real life wife, into the movie.
Violence, sex, nudity, sexual violence, and aberrant behavior abound.We all know the story of Jekyll and Hyde, so I won't go into it, but where this marvelous adaptation really excels is in its atmosphere and strong references to man's evil within himself.
Wild and raving film, in which the great Polish director Walerian Borowczyk takes the Jekyll and Hyde story and transforms it into a phantasmagorical trip into the stranger dimensions of our animal lusts.The film begins as it means to go on, with a small girl child chased through the dark Victorian London streets and then violently attacked by an unidentified gentleman.
Hyde is never condemned, and the "moral" characters are mocked and satirised mercilessly; only a brief glimpse of a black servant girl mourning over the death of the Indian butler gives us a pause to question the rampage of Hyde.With it's enveloping dark shadows, maniacal sexual beasts, stabbing pizzle and constant murmuring & throbbing electronic score, the film is finally not rational statement at all about human sexuality and civilisation; it is rather something far more terrifying, totalizing, tempting and challenging - an embodiment of a human being's wildest fantasies, a letting loose of all reigns, an admittance of the deepest and darkest of desires, when a man might look at his lover and say "my dream is to see your dead body" and find that this dream actually turns the lover on.Udo Kier has wonderful moments as the shook-up Jekyll; Marina Pierro has never been more ravishing and striking; and Patrick Magee is at the zenith of his madness, and gets put through worse atrocities by Hyde than even Alex in A Clockwork Orange could provide.
Despite being considered one of the all time great horror stories, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has a disappointing track record on film.
It's also one of the most stylish mainstream horror films of its time, featuring an innovative opening shot entirely from Jekyll's point-of-view.
In short, it's a hard act to follow, as Victor Fleming's tame remake attests to, but I believe that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne, made fifty years after Mamoulian's adaptation, is a worthy successor.There are several qualities that make Borowczyk an ideal interpreter of Stevenson's novella: he's a consummate visual stylist, at times worthy of Kubrick in the perfection of his images; his artistic occupation with transgressive eroticism ensured that he would explore Hyde's perversity to its fullest potential; and, just as significantly, he sees the humor inherent in the subject matter.
From here on out no orifice is safe, and before the film is finished both men and women find themselves fatally penetrated by his monstrously large genitals.Borowczyk confines the action of the story to a single night and in one location: Dr. Jekyll's house, where he and his fiancée, Fanny Osbourne (a tongue in cheek reference to Stevenson's identically named wife) are holding their engagement party.
I won't go too much into detail, but the way that man acts with his tongue is profoundly unwholesome.The legendary Udo Kier plays the title role, while Borowczyk's muse Marina Pierro plays Miss Osbourne.
Cult figure Udo Kier plays an unrepentant Jekyll, Jess Franco stalwart Howard Vernon is Dr. Lanyon, Patrick Magee is General Danvers Carew, Gérard Zalcberg is Hyde and Marino Pierro (who played Hélène in Jean Rollin's 'Living Dead Girl') is Ms. Fanny Osbourne.
I am not sure of this, however, as the version I watched isn't tame in any significant way - and after all, the nightmare quality of this project is not limited to any single act, rather the overall, overwhelming sense of weirdness that falls across the entirety of 'Dr Jekyll and Ms Osbourne' like a shadow..
This film has a very interesting and sleazy take on the Jekyll and Hyde story and as such is a deeply disturbing and unsettling movie that is a nightmarish vision of debauchery of Mr. Hyde, a persona of which is adopted when Dr. Jekyll embraces his dark side with a limitless appetite for sex and violence.
This stars European horror icon Udo Keir as Dr. Jekyll and is a very disturbing film that fully embodies the sex and violence that this take on the subject matter demands..