It’s the engagement party for brilliant young Dr Henry Jekyll (Udo Kier) and his fiancée, the beautiful Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro), attended by various pillars of Victorian society, including the astonishing Patrick Magee in one of his final roles. But when people are found raped and murdered outside and ultimately inside the house, it becomes clear that a madman has broken in to disrupt the festivities – but who is he? And why does Dr Jekyll keep sneaking off to his laboratory?
We know the answer, of course, but Walerian Borowczyk’s visually stunning adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s much-filmed tale is crammed with wildly imaginative and outrageously perverse touches characteristic of the man who scandalised audiences with Immoral Tales and The Beast, not least the explicitly sexualised nature of Mr Hyde’s primal urges.
CONTENTS
- Brand new 2K restoration, scanned from the original camera negative and supervised by cinematographer Noël Véry
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the film, released on both formats for the first time anywhere in the world
- English and French soundtracks in LPCM 1.0
- Optional English and English SDH subtitles
- Introduction by critic and long-term Borowczyk fan Michael Brooke
- Audio commentary featuring archival interviews with Walerian Borowczyk, Udo Kier, Marina Pierro and producer Robert Kuperberg
- New interviews with cinematographer Noël Véry, editor Khadicha Bariha, assistant Michael Levy and filmmaker Noël Simsolo, moderated by Daniel Bird
- Brand new interviews with Udo Kier and Marina Pierro
- Himorogi (2012), a short film by Marina and Alessio Pierro, made in homage to Borowczyk
- Interview with artist and filmmaker Alessio Pierro
- Phantasmagoria of the Interior, a video essay on Borowczyk’s Dr Jekyll Adrian Martin and Cristina Álvarez López
- Eyes That Listen, a featurette on Borowczyk’s collaborations with electro-acoustic composer Bernard Parmegiani
- Happy Toy (1979), a short film by Borowczyk inspired by Charles-Émile Reynaud’s praxinoscope
- Interview with Sarah Mallinson, former assistant to Borowczyk and fellow animator Peter Foldes
- Returning to Méliès: Borowczyk and Early Cinema, a featurette by Daniel Bird
- Theatrical trailer with optional commentary by editor Khadicha Bariha
- Reversible sleeve with artwork based on Borowczyk’s own poster design
- Illustrated booklet with new writing on the film by Daniel Bird and archive pieces by Walerian Borowczyk and André Pieyre de Mandiargues
Yes, it's happening - Walerian Borowczyk's last truly great film, the legendary Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation that's about as close to a perfect definition of a film maudit as I can think of, is finally getting the full Arrow treatment.
Although it's been unavailable outside rare festival screenings for decades and never previously released on DVD (VHS-sourced bootlegs aside), never mind Blu-ray, we've managed to get our hands on the original camera negative (which had been sitting in a French lab vault minding its business while the film got entangled in a complicated rights mire), and it'll be getting the full James White restoration treatment - of necessity, since there are no video masters in existence that are even remotely suitable for Arrow's purposes.
That's all I can confirm for now, except to say that it'll be an absolutely stacked special edition - Daniel Bird is already working hard on the extras, virtually all of which are being created specifically for this release. And it'll be coming out in both the UK and North America.
Oh, and for the first time ever, it's being released under Borowczyk's original title - he lost a battle with producers who preferred to call it by the teasing but essentially nonsensical Docteur Jekyll et les femmes, and while it's had umpteen titles since then, nobody ever saw fit to restore the director's first choice. I daresay it was considered less marketably lurid than Bloodbath of Dr Jekyll, Bloodlust or The Experiment.