Oh. Yes. This is something pretty fucking special.

The poster and synopsis will give you the impression of yet another stuffy, period-troped adaptation of a classical piece of gothic literature. A period piece? Yes. But absolutely nothing is conventional in this movie. The artistic statements Borowczyk is making in this film are going to alienate many people today – at the time this movie dropped, it must have confounded the hell out of everybody. I think it was considered to be a total piece of shit by most folks, and I can totally see why. But they’re wrong.

This movie confronts you on two levels – both in content and in style. If we take style first: the cinematography is hazy and devoid of sharp focus. The image is obscured more often than it’s shown. I watched the Arrow Academy blu-ray, and I am sure people are going to criticize it for not polishing up the image enough – although the restoration was done in collaboration with Noel Very, the cinematographer, and that aesthetic is entirely deliberate. The dubbing is the really jarring thing, though. Purposely out of synch and with different voice actors (although, mercifully, Patrick Magee dubs his own lines – I was worried we’d miss out on his incredible voice!) – I can’t say I know why Borowczyk wanted to do it that way, but it certainly adds to the disorientation of the whole movie.

But the content. Jesus Christ, if you think this is going to be a mannered genre piece, you’re going to be shocked. It’s not that there’s much in the way of gore, or the usual hallmarks of extreme horror of the 80’s. But the nature of the violence and the depravity on show is breathtaking in its obscenity. I mean, this is Mr Hyde. He’s supposed to represent the basest, most animalistic and cruel urges of the id, so I don’t know why this is so unexpected. I guess because, wrapped up in those period conventions, the actual horror of Robert Louis Stevenson’s story was always glossed over and presented in a very staid and cosy way. This Mr Hyde sports an enormous cock which he literally fucks people to death with. This is when he’s not killing people in more conventional ways with arrows or bullets. At one point he even tortures Jekyll’s (i.e. his own) mother by twisting her lame leg. It’s some confronting shit.

But bear with me, here, it’s also really fucking funny. Realism is not really the tone here at all and, although I don’t want to give the impression of wackiness, the satire of buttoned-up, conservative ideology is so savage, it’s positively delirious. What I really love about this movie is its fearlessness in tackling gender conventions. Hyde fatally rapes both women and men – he doesn’t care. And Miss Osbourne, Jekyll’s fiancée, while shocked at what she discovers about her man, is ultimately into it – much more than he is. Female sexuality is no less overpowering than male sexuality in this film. There’s a lot of puritanism floating around concerning notions of sexuality and what is and isn’t acceptable these days, and this movie is so transgressive of that climate, it feels like a moment of inspirational rebellion. Are we actually any more sophisticated on these matters than we were in 1981? I’m not so sure.

The performances in this movie are just off the wall. Yes, Patrick Magee is unleashed and unhinged and it’s every bit as glorious as you’d hope. But we also get the young, beautiful version of Udo Kier as Jekyll – given the way the Hyde transformation is handled, he doesn’t get to go full psychotic (Hyde is played by the truly weird-looking Gerard Zalcberg in pretty unforgettable fashion), but he has his moments. The scenes of him writhing about in that bath full of brown water are something to behold. And Marina Pierro - yes she is objectified as a sex object, magnificently so - but she is so much more than that too.

For all its weirdness, in many ways it just works as a standard, body-count slasher movie. The plot, such as it is, puts a group of people into a situation where they are getting stalked within the confines of a big old house – and they bite the dust one by one. So, it really drives along on its demented way at a rollicking pace – there’s absolutely nothing boring about this film.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne is a wildly exuberant and rivetingly outrageous slice of Euro-weirdness and it left me completely exhilarated. I’m fully aware that many people will just hate it, so I don’t know if “recommend” is the word. But I really hope it gets discovered by as many people as possible. I’m fascinated to see how other folks react to it.