Walerian Borowczyk was one of Europe’s most respected smut peddlers. No, really. You can find praise for his work by people such as Terry Gilliam, Angela Carter, and the Quay brothers, and his artistic influence has spread pretty wide. While readily claimed by Poland now, the bulk of his work was instead made in France, having left the former in the late ‘50s. Originally an animator, he shifted to live action with 1968’s Goto, Island of Love, about an isolated island run by a melancholic dictator in a loveless marriage to great beauty; Borowczyk was apparently quite proud that it was banned in both Franco’s Spain and the PZPR’s Poland for its critique of totalitarianism. Anyway, his earlier films didn’t set the box office ablaze, and so in the ‘70s, Nouvelle Vague-type producer Anatole Dauman suggested sexing everything up more to take advantage of recently relaxed censorship laws. It worked, I guess, though it did result in him getting a reputation as an “arty pornographer” that lasted for essentially the rest of his life. 

Oh, well, people were apparently largely over that sort of thing by the ‘80s, and so his output slowed down dramatically, and what he did put out is held in lower regard. I suppose a logical comparison would be to, say, Ken Russell or Nicolas Roeg who enjoyed similar falls from grace going into the ‘80s.

The inconsistently titled The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne tends to be the final Borowczyk film that people care much about, seemingly including to an extent, if not himself, then at least the Friends of Walerian Borowczyk. The society for preserving the man’s works manages not to mention two of his ill-fated efforts that postdate this one. We could infer that there were some problems with the production of those. Mind you, this here doesn’t seem to have been free of such issues. Even the title seems to have been a bone of contention. The title used for recent English releases, ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne’, is a translation of Borowczyk’s own preferred title, ‘Le cas étranger de Dr. Jekyll et Miss Osbourne’, however the distributor insisted it be called ‘Docteur Jekyll et les femmes’ (officially rendered in English as ‘Doctor Jekyll and his Women’) instead; a title labelled as “puerile” by lead actress and sometime muse, Marina Pierro. I suppose some compromise was reached, as the readily available versions’ title cards have ‘Docteur Jekyll et les femmes’ (or its English counterpart) in a big fancy letters with ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne’ (en anglais) in brackets underneath in the same style as the credits. To further complicate all this, as was the style with European horror films at the time, most international distributors came up with their own damn titles anyway, so there are a bunch more things it crops up as. (The original UK distributor apparently favoured ‘The Blood of Dr Jekyll’, in case you were wondering.)

Ho hum, ho hum, anyway…

As you’ve no doubt inferred, this is a take on The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. If you’re guessing from the title however that this has Jekyll turn into a sexy lady à la Hammer’s actually quite well-regarded Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) (or indeed Rank’s much, MUCH less well-regarded Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde (1995)), you’re way off. If you’re guessing that it’s something to do with Robert Louis Stevenson’s wife, well, you’re probably a bit closer, kind of. A well-known and, by most accounts, entirely apocryphal story of the writing of the original story was that the original draft of the novella, written in a cocaine fuelled mania, so horrified Stevenson’s prudish wife that she burned it. This, as I say, might not be true. Looking into it, Fanny Stevenson appears to have been quite the modern (by the standards of the day) woman, artistic and adventurous, quite removed from the prig she’s presented as; indeed, if she were, it seems unlikely that Stevenson would have become quite so besotted with her given his own active rejection of the Calvinist mores of his upbringing. She herself claimed that her actual reaction to the fabled initial draft was to point out that he was overlooking the allegorical qualities of the story prompting him to rewrite it with that in mind. There is reportedly a letter where she seemingly confirms that she didn’t care for the original draft and that it was indeed burned, though despite sensational headlines related to its discovery being to the tune of ‘that frigid bitch destroyed the manuscript’ that doesn’t seem to quite be what it says (not having read the actual letter, I cannot say for certain, but the extracts that tend to be provided seem rather ambiguous on whether she herself did it), and also appears overlooks the existence of other letters that seem to confirm the story that Stevenson burned it himself. Apparently, we need a villain. If she were the one who destroyed it, for being too unseemly, no less, perhaps it would be appropriate however; duality of nature, and all that.

Back on track, I’d say this isn’t faithful to the text of the novel, but really few, if any, of the film versions of the story are. Subtext wise, things are perhaps more interesting. To wit, the story as presented here is that a maniac is stalking about London, of course, but that’s not of great concern to the respectable society types who are descending upon the house of Dr Jekyll (Udo Kier) to celebrate his engagement to Miss Fanny Osbourne* (Marina Pierro). Wouldn’t you know it though? The maniac is inside the house, periodically appearing over the course of the night to rape and murder the guests trapped as they are in the increasingly labyrinthine house. Yeah, so, you know who it is obviously.** One of the great problems of adapting Jekyll & Hyde is that the relationship between the pair, that is, that they’re the same person, the latter unlocked by magic science, has long since entered into the general public consciousness, but this reveal is saved for the climax of the novella, a twist to pull the rug out from under readers of what had seemed like straight up sensation fiction. But with everyone knowing that twist now, you kind of have to do something else to keep it interesting. The big change here is the addition of Fanny Osbourne, based on and named for Mrs Stevenson, whom, according to Pierro, Borowczyk found an interesting figure in his research. The addition of a love interest for Jekyll is kind of standard practice at this point (the novella, for what it’s worth, is largely devoid of female characters, the largest part belonging to an unnamed maid who witnesses Hyde’s murder of Carew), often Carew’s daughter, as was the case in the first notable stage versions. Osbourne here takes a fairly active role, being the most reasonable and resourceful at figuring out what’s occurring and evading the danger, compared to the hysterical responses of General Carew (Patrick Magee) or the Reverend Guest (Clément Harari). Authority is useless. As the trapped guests devolve into panic and paranoia, in the vein of The Exterminating Angel (1962), the duality of their natures is laid forth. 

The film maintains an unsettling tone throughout, even though it's not really po-faced, with elements of black comedy cropping up not infrequently; such as when the General kills the Osbournes’ coachman, and apologises in a manner as if he’s broken a vase or something. In true Euro-horror fashion, the whole thing has an odd phantasmagoric quality, with its byzantine house that’s nigh impossible to map out, its hazy focus, and its not entirely linear storytelling, with a voyeuristic camera that always seems to be looking through openings at things that are not wholly distinct. Despite the director’s reputation, it is not as lurid as one might expect. Despite the presence of considerable amounts of sex and violence (and sexual violence), none of it feels particularly explicit by the standards of its time, much less now. It’s ultimately a fascinating slice of art horror that nevertheless remains largely accessible. The old review from Time Out caps itself off with the particularly amusing line: “God knows what the raincoat trade makes of it: a film of strange and outrageous beauty which seems to emanate from that place where our fears are also desires.”

* While prior to her marriage to Robert Louis Stevenson her surname was Osbourne, in reality, Fanny Stevenson’s maiden name was ‘Van de Grift’. The Osbourne name was from her first marriage. 



** Incidentally, this is a rare film where Jekyll and Hyde are not played by the same actor, though Kier says that that was the original plan. Hyde is instead played by Gérard Zalcberg.