FilmJuiceIt’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.
SPECIAL EDITION 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, and new interviews with cinematographer Noël Véry, editor Khadicha Bariha, assistant Michael Levy and filmmaker Noël Simsolo, moderated by Daniel Bird
- Interview with Marina Pierro
- Himorogi (2012), a short film by Marina and Alessio Pierro, made in homage to Borowczyk
- Interview with artist and filmmaker Alessio Pierro
- Video essay by Adrian Martin and Cristina Alvarez Lopez
- Eyes That Listen, a featurette on Borowczyk’s collaborations with electro-acoustic composer Bernard Parmegiani
- Jouet Jouyeux (1979), a short film by Borowczyk based on Charles-Émile Reynaud’s praxinoscope
- Introduction to Jouet Joyeux by production assistant Sarah Mallinson
- Returning to Méliès: Borowczyk and Early Cinema, a featurette by Daniel Bird
- Reversible sleeve with artwork based on Borowczyk’s own poster design
- Booklet with new writing on the film by Daniel Bird and archive materials, illustrated with rare stills
- More to be announced!
