The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne, 1981
Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro) has invited her fiance, Dr. Jekyll (Udo Keir) to a fancy dinner party with her mother (Rita Maiden) and a whole slew of their elite friends. The dinner party is seriously rattled when the unconscious body of a little girl who has been sexually and physically assaulted is found near the home. Later, a young party guest (Magali Noaro) is found brutally raped and murdered in the house. The guests set out to discover who is responsible, while Fanny begins to realize with fascination that her fiance may be connected to the attacks.
Okay.
There is something uniquely frustrating about a movie that flirts with greatness only to let you down via an element that could have been
so easily remedied.
Here we have a film that takes the classic Jekyll/Hyde story and views it through the lens of sexual indulgence and violence and also the fascination with those who are sexually indulgent and violent. Right from the get-go, this is a neat take.
The look of this film is fabulous. It exists in this place that's kind of gauzy and kind of grimy at the same time. If you want sheer fabrics, this is your film. At times it does border on the comical, as when a young woman is tucked into bed under a lace sheet. But overall the effect drives home the idea of sexuality simmering just under the surface for all of these characters.
There's also, at least for the first half, a really snarky look at the way that the lower/servant class is regarded as less than human by the dinner guests. Early on, one of the guests, a general (Patrick Magee) shoots and kills the Osbourne coachman. The general regretfully announces the man's death with about the same gravity he'd use to announce that he'd dropped a dinner plate. Later, a male servant's back is used as an impromptu writing surface. When servants are killed in the course of the evening, their deaths go almost unremarked upon.
The second half of the film, though, gets more into the exploration of the fascination with sex and violence, and specifically the way that Fanny is drawn despite herself to these acts. We see one extreme of this played out in another character, the general's daughter (Agnès Daems), who is also drawn to the killer. This character, though, is more akin to the kind of women who fangirl over serial killers. She essentially surrenders herself to Hyde, to the extent of helping torment her father. But despite her carnal longings, there is something childish about her, and Hyde ultimately has no use for her. Fanny's attraction, however, is more complex. This is a woman seeing another side of a person she loves, a side that both frightens and attracts her. It's the extent she'll go to in order to stay a partner to him that propels the last act.
The violence that we see is also pretty fun, with the household's large collection of swords, spears, knives, and bow and arrows getting plenty of good use from the killer and their victims. The use of the bow and arrow within the halls of a wealthy family adds a certain enjoyable absurdity.
So far so good.
But here's where the film loses me, and bear with me. This film is highly sensual and highly sexual, and that fits the lens of the story. The male gaze is highly relevant as we understand the way that the killer sees the world. So then why are we looking at close-ups of vulvas when we aren't in the presence of the killer? When the film's sexual gaze is appropriate, it's really effective. But there are just too many times that the film goes sexual when it doesn't make thematic sense.
But where the problem really lies is in the way that the film totally wimps out when the female gaze becomes critical. You know, the gaze of Fanny as she comes to comprehend what's happening with her fiance and sort through her feelings of fear and arousal? There's a great scene of Fanny watching Jekyll in the bathtub--in this version of the story, he transforms through chemical bath bombs---as he gradually disrobes and starts to transform. Shot very nicely? Yes. Kind of sexy? Yes. But watch how much tapdancing the camera and Keir do to keep from anything but brief flashes of rear nudity. Compare this with a scene where a male character watches a female character. The camera gets right up in that tub, and the character stands with the camera at waist height, once so we get a rear view, and once so we get a front view.
In other words, a film that could have been awesomely transgressive and even-handedly sexy instead comes off as a testament to the fact that even when some people think they're being out there, there's a fundamental cowardice to how male bodies are treated in horror and it's kind of pathetic. (And, no, showing a big fake penis does not count, but points for a character noting that the penis is sharp enough to actually give someone a puncture wound in their abdomen.)
So close to greatness! So stylish! Such good performances! Such cowardice! So disappointing!
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