Review of Edge of Sanity

Introduction

I love a good psychological film; the struggle and conflict from within, good versus evil, and all that. So what better than Robert Louis Stevenson`s classic story, "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", to base a film upon? The primitive duality of man showing both the good and evil within all of us has always been fascinating, if scary too. Edge of Sanity sees Anthony Perkins play the lead character of Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde and as someone who`s played repression before in Hitchcock`s Psycho, who else would be better suited?

Dr Jekyll has created a new anaesthetic using cocaine, and he`s partial to using it himself. Unfortunately for him, a monkey in his lab spilled something on the white powder, causing it to create fumes, which the good doctor inhales. This is the bad news, because his character now changes, and he`s now Mr Hyde; a prostitute killing pale-faced shadow of his real self. This is because of a childhood trauma, which has so affected him as to build a desire to kill females involved in the sex industry. The streets of Victorian London aren`t safe with this cocaine headed menace on the loose.

Video

Edge of Sanity is presented with a better than average 1.85:1 widescreen enhanced video transfer. The colours are somewhat restrained, and this dates the film back to the 80s. Otherwise, the transfer is clear with good detail and no sign of compression. The contrast has been boosted a little however, and this leads to some slight edge enhancement, but it`s not bad. Grain and dirt is kept to a minimum and I couldn`t see any other problems with the transfer.

Audio

The film comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo and as usual with back cat MGM titles there are other Euro languages too. The film doesn`t make demands from the film but the dialogue track is poor; it sounds very thin and indistinct and needs a lot of amplification in order to hear it. Murky is a word which best describes it. Don`t expect anything fancy in the surround stakes and you won`t be disappointed.

Features

None.

Conclusion

I didn`t get any sense of fulfilment from this film and was bored of it from start to finish. It`s a terrible version of the classic story and tries to titillate in a pseudo artsy way with its fancy camera placement and production design. The treatment of the story enjoys focusing on the slashing of prostitutes without exploring motive and to see this time and again is dulling. Once you`ve seen one murderous assault you`ve seen them all. With this in mind, the film is predictable without any compelling reason to watch to the end and is a waste of time.

Sadly Perkins portrayal of his characters` duality is poor as he fails to convince in the part. There`s never any progression of the character in the story in either roles and while the ambiguous ending is meant to shock, I admittedly felt relieved that I reached the end and could stop watching this voyeuristic nonsense. A film based on good versus evil can offer more than this. Directed by French pornographer Gérard Kikoïne, this is definitely one DVD worth avoiding.