There’s No Mr. Hyde, is There?

Edge of Sanity Guest Review

Everybody knows the tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; it’s a tale that I shouldn’t even have to elaborate on, so I won’t bother boring you with the details that you already know. Instead, I’ll tell you about a small 1989 British horror film directed by Gérard Kikoïne, starring “Psycho’s” own Anthony Perkins as Henry Jekyll and Jack “The Ripper” Hyde. The movie in question is “Edge Of Sanity.”

In this version of the beloved tale, Dr. Jeykll is working on a new medicine in his lab, when a monkey spills ether on the mixture, which also includes cocaine. He then becomes insane after inhaling the fumes, taking on the form of “The Ripper” Jack Hyde. Hyde ends up using this mixture that he now calls “freebase”, to murder and torture prostitutes. The reason seems to be due to a trauma in his childhood, where he was beaten for spying on a man with a hooker in a barn, as shown in an opening dream sequence. The scene was a weird one, where the whore was giving the child a show, exposing her breasts and giggling as she watched him watch them… it was kind of an odd way to start a film.

The pacing of the film is slow and it clocks in at around 90 minutes. The kills range from simple throat cuts to cane chokings. There’s plenty of nudity, both female and male, so if that interests you, you should be happy. Aside from that, we just have Anthony Perkins freebasing and cutting hookers throats, but that’s not really a bad thing.

The movie itself is like I said, a little slow, but it kept my attention. It’s not a movie I would recommend for everybody and I might not have liked it as much as I remembered, but I still enjoyed the movie overall. Anthony Perkins plays a great Mr. Hyde, but aside from that, the acting is pretty damn bad. In addition, the hooker in the opening dream sequence, in my opinion, is rather stunning.

Overall, I have to say, if you’ve never seen this movie, I’d steer clear unless you are a huge fan of Mr. Perkins, or the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde story itself, as I am.

I give it 2.5 hooker slaps out of 5.

Raven Hunter is long time friend of Repulsive Reviews writer and webmaster, Frank Fulci. He is an underground hip-hop artist from Salisbury, MD.

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