Review: Edge of Sanity

Nightmare-plagued Dr. Henry Jekyll (Anthony Perkins) is obsessively experimenting with chemicals (basically crack cocaine) as an anaesthetic. One day, a lab monkey accidentally spills all the doctor’s chemicals, which Jekyll unfortunately ingests. It results in the dark, perverted side of the surgeon’s personality – giving itself the name of Jack Hyde – being unleashed on London streets (played here by Budapest, Hungary), with Ripper-esque murderous results on anyone who gets in his deranged, kinky path. David Lodge has a small role as Jekyll’s attorney, Glynis Barber is Jekyll’s confused wife.

 

Anthony Perkins was unquestionably great and iconic as Norman Bates and his ‘Mother’ in 1960’s “Psycho”, but perhaps due to a combination of typecasting and personal issues/demons, he ended up being pretty much a one-hit wonder. I also suspect it probably prevented him from truly honing his craft over the years, as he was too erratic on a personal level and was limited to pretty much playing crazies and nervy neurotics. I’m not saying there are no other good films in his filmography (Typecast or not, 1968’s “Pretty Poison” was a fun oddity and he co-wrote the twisty “The Last of Sheila”), but more often than not he was turning up in lesser films doing ham jobs, including cheap exploitation fare like this 1989 Harry Alan Towers version of the Jekyll & Hyde story. Directed by Gerard Kikoine (“Buried Alive”), the only fun or interest here come from the rather bizarro Hyde scenes that are shot in a kind of 80s New Wave music video fashion. It’s been gorgeously lit in particular, by Tony Spratling (mostly a 2^nd Unit DOP on films like “The Saint”, “Alien³”, and “Muppet Treasure Island”), one of the few signs of decent quality in an otherwise rather cheap enterprise. It’s completely stylistically anachronistic of course, but at least it’s attractive and interesting. The music score by Frederic Talgorn (“Buried Alive”, “Heavy Metal 2000”) is strong, too. The opening scene is rather disturbing and bizarre, but for the most part this thing only wakes up when Perkins is in Hyde mode. The rest is a dreary, dry snoozer.

 

There is I suppose a plus in casting Perkins in the dual roles, in that it has you questioning if Dr. Jekyll is already a bit Hyde-esque before he’s too far gone experimenting on himself. I don’t mean that in a Norman Bates’ mother kind of way, more that there are hints that Jekyll is himself somewhat evil before he starts doing cocaine. However, for the most part Perkins plays Jekyll as incredibly stiff and frankly really boring. As the perverted Hyde he’s…more lively and interesting at least, but again one must remember that this is Perkins post-1960s and you weren’t likely to get a traditionally good performance out of him. Instead what we have is a slightly more enjoyable version of whatever the fuck he was meant to be doing in Ken Russell’s dreadful “Crimes of Passion”. Hyde (or really Jekyll I suppose) is kind of a kinky sex perv, straight out of a Jess Franco film here. I did like his rather dishevelled Lon Chaney meets Iggy Pop visage though, and it’s certainly a bit better of a performance than he gave in any of the pointless “Psycho” sequels and most of his other latter day films. It’s just not a very well modulated performance, and sadly Perkins is the best we get on the acting front. Save for the brief final appearance by veteran character actor David Lodge, the rest of the cast here are unknowns to me except Sarah Maur Thorp, who was in two other Towers films (“River of Death” and one of his far too many adaptations of “Ten Little Indians”). She’s as forgettable here as she was in those. I guess Mr. Towers was utilising the bigger names on his other hack-job enterprises (Names like Donald Pleasence, Herbert Lom, Oliver Reed, Robert Vaughn, John Rhys-Davies, and David Warner would crop up in Towers productions in the 80s and early 90s like “Buried Alive”, “River of Death”, “Ten Little Indians”, and “The Lost World”).

 

The idea of making the drug addiction aspect overt is an interesting one initially, but the treatment is just too uneven. It probably fares best if you treat it as a bizarro black comedy curio, but even then it’s pretty dull for long stretches and doesn’t deal with the Jack the Ripper aspect as well as one would’ve liked. Towers, the director, and screenwriters are more concerned with kinky shit and boring dialogue than a Hyde-as-Ripper story, really. If made in the 60s, the prospect of an Anthony Perkins-led Jekyll and Hyde film might’ve produced solid results, especially in the hands of quality filmmakers. Instead it’s the late 1980s, low-budget hack Harry Alan Towers in producing role, a director who thinks he’s Jesus Franco, and Anthony Perkins features in one of his last roles at a time where there was little chance of him giving anything more than at best a hit-and-miss hammy performance. On that note, he’s a bust as Jekyll, but his Hyde is about the best usage you could get out of what level his talents were at in this late stage in his turbulent and erratic career and life.

 

Well-scored and sometimes visually striking in music video fashion, but otherwise rather dull. With all due respect to the solid Spencer Tracy, I still think the definitive Jekyll and Hyde was Bugs Bunny. The best I can say for this one is that it’s ever-so slightly better than its dreadful reputation. The visual style and Perkins’ Hyde hold some interest for a few minutes, but not nearly enough to make it watchable even as a curio on the whole. This is a pretty lousy, very forgettable film. I guess I was expecting something even worse though, based on what I’d read about it over the years. Imaginary points off for that dreadfully unnecessary final shot. Yeah, it’s exactly what you think it is and the director should be ashamed. The screenplay by J.P. Felix (no other IMDb credits, though some suggest it’s a pseudonym for Jess Franco – I wouldn’t be surprised) & Ron Raley (2003’s “Dorian”, a version of “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, with a slumming Malcolm McDowell) is very, very loosely based on the Robert Louis Stevenson classic. 

 

Rating: C-