In short: Edge of Sanity (1989)

A very late (19)80s version of Victorian London. Genius physician and medical researcher Dr Henry Jekyll (Anthony Perkins) uses cocaine and other substances in his attempts to open the doors of perception a couple of decades early. After a monkey-related accident, he gets a full dose of his experimental concoction, and turns into a guy in bad panto make-up calling himself Jack Hyde (still Anthony Perkins, but in the aforementioned bad panto makeup, obviously). Where Jekyll simply represses his sex drive – even towards his wife Elisabeth (Glynis Barber) – Jekyll is a full-on sexual sadist. He’s heavily into prostitutes and loves to involve them in various kinky and often violent scenarios that do tend to end in him murdering them. Soon, the streets of New Wavechapel are terrorized by a certain Jack the Ripper.

Watching Gérard Kikoïne’s very weird and very 80s Jekyll & Hyde/Jack the Ripper mash-up Edge of Sanity I could never shake the impression Kikoïne really rather wanted to make Ken Russell’s Jekyll & Hyde, or possibly Ken Russell’s Emmanuelle. The problem there is of course that Kikoïne is no Ken Russell (as little as I get along with Russell as a filmmaker) but really a somewhat ambitious and highly prolific softcore filmmaker who somehow managed to get enough money out of good old Harry Alan Towers and co to hire Anthony Perkins for his very own overblown, sleazy Jekyll & Hyde movie. Perkins for his part is in all-out scenery-chewing mode even when he’s Jekyll, doing bizarre line-readings of the film’s awkward and melodramatic dialogue there, and opening up to his inner Klaus Kinski when it’s time to grab some – well, a lot of, actually – breasts, help out a young lady in her stick masturbation, and do a bit of murder. It’s still a better version of the Joker than Joaquin Phoenix did.

Anyway, thematically, this thing is probably meant to attack the always returning spirit of puritanism and sexual repression by overloading it with sleazy sexual imagery, but the plotting and writing is generally so bizarre and uncontrolled, you could just as well sell me on it as a parable on the religious impulse, or something about strikes.

While there’s little sense or characterisation or actual character exploration to be found, Edge does have a manic energy nearly as huge as the one shown by Perkins. The film’s basically cackling going from scene to scene, throwing 80s fashion not really pretending to be Victorian, lovely, ultra-artificial light, uncomfortable sex, Perkins, Ken Russell rip-off moments, sleaze and whatever else seems to have come into the filmmakers’ heads at the viewer with what feels like intense glee. All of which is shot beautifully by Tony Spratling, to make things feel even stranger, I suppose.

It’s quite the thing, really. Probably not the best movie to watch with the whole family, or to see expecting for things to come together, but certainly the kind of film worth the time of anyone who can appreciate a bit of misguided ambition and weird intensity.