The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Miss Osbourne (1981)

Walerian Borowczyk and Arrow Films strike again with a beautifully restored version of one of the director's more difficult to see works. THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL & MISS OSBORNE has been known under a number of titles over the years. I originally saw it under its on-screen title here of DR JEKYLL ET LES FEMMES. In fact the title was pretty much all I saw, as the print was so poor it was difficult to make out much else, particularly during the darker sequences.

We're in the realms of art house-horror, with the emphasis distinctly on the former. Anyone coming to this film expecting any kind of straightforward Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation is going to be disappointed, possibly shocked, and quite likely not a little bored. Mr Stevenson gets a name check, but this is essentially Borowczyk all the way, and if you're not a fan of this auteur this one's unlikely to convert you.

In Victorian London guests converge at the house of Dr Henry Jekyll (a thinner than thin Udo Kier) to celebrate his engagement to Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro, who looks as if she could quite comfortably put her screen fiance under her arm and carry him off to her cave). The guests consist of, amongst others, a doctor (Jess Franco standby Howard Vernon), a military man (beautifully bonkers Patrick Magee, all in scarlet to match his face) and a priest. There are also various ladies who are due to end up in assorted states of undress and bloodedness. As the night goes on the house is invaded by the evil Mr Hyde who proceeds to wreak havoc with his huge (prosthetic) willy. 

Of course, we all know who this fellow actually is, so Borowoczyk quite sensibly doesn't waste much time (or any special effects) detailing Udo's transformation into an entirely different actor. As Dr Jekyll's house guests end up the subject of a catalogue of rape, flogging and murder, the viewer is left to appreciate Mr Borowczyk's rather singular take on the Dr Jekyll tale, using it to not just trash Victorian society, but suggest that Mr Hyde might actually be the hero of the tale (or at least the natural result of such repression), rather than the villain.

Despite the abundance of blood, nudity, deviant behaviour and scenes that remain shocking to this day, Borowczyk's DR JEKYLL won't be for everyone, and it certainly won't be for every horror fan. Made the same year as FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, this is definitely one for the art-house rather the popcorn crowd. Conversations about transcendence ramble on over dinner, the few action scenes feel deliberately static, and the gory bits are presented with a minimum of sensationalism. Think of one of Jean Rollin's slower films set indoors and that might give you an idea of what this is like.

Arrow's presentation of DR JEKYLL on Blu-ray is, as every other review has already stated, a revelation to those of us who first discovered the film in one of its previous awful incarnations. Night scenes are clear (the opening pursuit of the little girl looks marvellous) and the action in some of the almost pitch black scenes inside the house can now be made out. There are two language options. I would suggest the French dialogue track with subtitles if you are in an art-house mood, or the English language option if you fancy revisiting the days of dodgy dubbed Euro-filth (with added genuine Patrick Magee!). Extras include a commentary that incorporates archival interviews, a couple of short films, interviews with Marina Pierro and a number of other Borowczyk collaborators, as well as a piece on composer Bernard Parmegiani. There's also an introduction by Michael Brooke, a trailer, a booklet, and a video essay.

Arrow Films released Walerian Borowczyk's THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL & MISS OSBOURNE on dual format Region 2 DVD and Region B Blu-ray on 11th May 2015

The Beast (1975)

So here we finally are - the last of Arrow's current crop of dual DVD & Blu-ray releases of the work of Polish director Walerian Borowczyk, and the most recent chronologically. THE BEAST also happens to be the work of his that first brought him to my notice and, I suspect the notice of many others as well - for better or worse.

        THE BEAST is an attention grabbing, infamous film. Based around a segment originally filmed for IMMORAL TALES which was then saved to be part of a longer feature work, its original release was met with horror, outrage, censorship and outright banning. What's interesting is that, apart from some graphic scenes of horses having sex at the beginning, for the first hour or so the unsuspecting viewer may well wonder what all the fuss is about as THE BEAST bears all the characteristics of setting itself up as something approaching farce.

Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel) travels from England to marry Maturin L'Esperance (Pierre Benedetti). They stand to inherit a considerable fortune as a result, as long as the marriage is blessed by a specific Cardinal. Behind the scenes we learn the Cardinal is still in Rome & won't accept the L'Esperance family's calls because Maturin wasn't baptised until recently. As Lucy explores the house she finds a number of weird family heirlooms - paintings that conceal obscene images of bestiality, and a corset in a glass cabinet that allegedly belonged to Maturin's eighteenth-century ancestor Romilda. Lucy isn't entirely without secrets of her own, however. She's been busy taking Polaroid snaps of horses having sex and getting off to them in her bedroom. Maturin, on the other hand, seems to have no interest in her at all. In a dream sequence Romilda (Sirpa Lane) gets chased through a forest by a huge hairy thing with a huge hairy thing. After a prolonged sexual encounter with it, she eventually proves more than a match for its sexual potency and the beast dies. Meanwhile back in 1975 the plot is about to go completely bonkers with plenty of nudity and weird hairiness of its own.

In a decade where censorship had become significantly relaxed it’s still unsurprising that THE BEAST caused quite a lot of outrage when it was first shown. Nearly forty years later, and the sexual content still feels rather over the top, so goodness knows what viewers of the uncut version must have thought back in the day. THE BEAST is, of course, all about sex, whether it's the unfulfilled desires of Lucy, the perceived impotence (or bestial leanings) of Maturin, the predilection for teenaged boys exhibited by the priest staying at the house, the inter-racial couplings of the servants (probably a lot more shocking then than we can probably conceive) or the fact that the entire movie is taking place at what one presumes is a stud farm. In amongst all this bouncing around, Borowczyk also manages to create some beautiful images, and once again shows an exquisite sense in his choice of musical underscoring (in this case harpsichord music by Scarlatti).

Arrow's Blu-ray presentation of THE BEAST is uncut and second to none. It's rare to see a European film from this era looking this good (the most recent would have been the BFI's Blu-ray of Robbe-Grillet's SUCCESSIVE SLIDINGS OF PLEASURE). Extras include a brief introduction by film critic Peter Bradshaw and The Making of the Beast which combines behind the scenes footage of the making of the film with a commentary by camera operator Noel Very. Frenzy of Ecstasy is a featurette which displays Borowczyk's original sketches of the beast, and then provides a synopsis of the perceived BEAST sequel, MOTHERHOOD, which sounds so completely barking mad I wish he'd had the chance to make it. There's also the short VENUS ON THE HALF-SHELL which features some very strange art indeed, a trailer, booklet and reversible sleeve.

As a work of film restoration on Arrow's part, and an example of the censor's current day attitude towards a movie by a director of Borowczyk's reputation, I cannot recommend THE BEAST highly enough. As an actual film I'd have to recommend it be approached with caution. It's possibly the most provocative and certainly the most outrageous of Arrow's Borowczyk Blu-ray releases. Actually, it's one of the most outrageous in the entire Arrow catalogue. Nearly forty years old, it still has the power to make you wonder what on earth was going through his mind when he made it. Which in itself should be recommendation enough.

Arrow Films released Walerian Borowczyk's THE BEAST on dual format Blu-ray and DVD on 8th September 2014

Goto, Isle of Love (1969)

        Walerian Borowczyk's second feature is a satire on totalitarianism, filmed in black and white (except for a few very brief colour inserts) and with an emphasis on weird props, grim dusty sets, and with something of an absurdist sense of humour. I know Terry Gilliam admits to Borowczyk as an influence, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if other absurd humorists of the time (including the rest of the Pythons, as well as Spike Milligan and Vivian Stanshall) were aware of and appreciated Borowczyk's work. Certainly of you're a fan of anything they did you'll find GOTO, ISLE OF LOVE fascinating.

Goto is an island (in fact an archipelago) that has been separated from the mainland by an earthquake that occurred in 1887. Since then the society has been left on its own to develop in a number of strange ways. Currently ruled over by Goto III (Pierre Brasseur from Franju’s LES YEUX SANS VISAGE) and populated seemingly entirely by people whose names begin with the letter 'G', most of the people of Goto spend their time in abject poverty and slavery. The only entertainments are executions, and recitals of music played on instruments made out of old packing crates and anything else to hand. The ageing Goto's sexy wife Glossia (Ligia Branice from BLANCHE and married to Borowczyk at the time) is being pursued by a young handsome officer, and eventually ends up in the hay with him.  Meanwhile, the petty criminal Gozo (Guy Saint-Jean) is busy working his way up the hierarchy, getting himself employed by Goto III as fly killer, dog handler and boot polisher. 

Someone mentioned that the best way to watch GOTO is by thinking of it as a work by Mervyn Peake. Certainly there's a Gormenghast feel to the proceedings, albeit filtered through an Eastern European lens. Borowczyk's directing style is often similar to that in BLANCHE, and the music score (a Handel organ concerto) merely serves to emphasise the otherworldiness of the action. GOTO is a peculiar, slightly surreal and absurdist film & if you enjoyed BLANCHE and the SHORT FILMS you'll find a lot to interest you here as well.

Arrow's fine-looking release of GOTO is the result of what sounds like a Herculean restoration job, the outline of which is presented to us before the film proper starts, and justifiably so. It looks very good indeed, and there's been an excellent tidy up job on the soundtrack as well. Extras include an introduction by Craigie Horsfield, a documentary about Borowczyk's sound sculptures - The Profligate Door, and The Concentration Universe, which features interviews about the film. There's also the usual reversible sleeve and collector's booklet.

         A significant achievement in film restoration, GOTO, ISLE OF LOVE now looks and sounds as good as it must have done on its original release. Anyone with an interest in the director's works should snap up a copy while they can.

Arrow Films released Walerian Borowczyk's GOTO, ISLE OF LOVE on dual format Blu-ray and DVD on 8th Septembet 2014

Blanche (1972)

Walerian Borowczyk’s third feature length film found the director taking on the medieval melodrama with a revolutionary approach and never less than fascinating results. As a consequence, BLANCHE was a huge critical success, and the movie was lauded at festival showings. Part of the reason for this was the film’s attempt at an authentic depiction of thirteenth century life – right down to the use of period music and instruments. Those who have come into contact with Borowczyk’s universe through their enthusiasm for the genres of either horror or erotica should therefore be warned – apart from a little bit of nudity at the beginning, and a decent bricking up scene in the middle, there’s precious little of either in this.

What BLANCHE does offer, however, is a whole lot of melodrama. The title character is the wife of the elderly Master. To his castle (a lovely, grim and threatening location in itself, surrounding by damp, freezing-looking woods) comes the King, who takes an unexpected shine to her. With him is his page, Bartolomeo, who also immediately fancies Blanche. Attempts to bed her ensue, with the movie that follows starting off almost as a bedroom farce, but quickly descending  into misery and bloodshed. 

The literary influences to BLANCHE are manifold. Based on the epic poem Mazepa by Juliusz Slowacki, most viewers will more likely be reminded of Shakespearean tragedy by the number of dead bodies lying around at the end. In the middle, the film pinches a bit from the fine short story La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac, when the husband gets Blanche to swear on the cross that there's no-one hiding in an alcove (there is) and then proceeds to have the poor chap bricked up in it on that basis. 

The directorial style of BLANCHE is certainly fascinating, and in an age where Frank and Panama’s THE COURT JESTER (1955) or Joshua Logan’s CAMELOT (1967) were what audiences commonly accepted as Hollywood’s version of medieval life, it’s easy to understand why the approach was so lauded. Many of the indoor scenes are filmed to give the viewer a sense they are watching a play, even though, oddly enough, what we see never feels 'stagey'. 

Perhaps best enjoyed on a ‘medieval misery’ double bill with Polanski's MACBETH (made around the same time), fans of Terry Gilliam (who should pick up the Borowczyk SHORT FILMS collection as well) should also find BLANCHE of great interest. Gilliam's early pictures, especially JABBERWOCKY (which almost seems to revel in the muck and filth of the period) feel like the natural descendants of Borowczyk's trend-setting original, while the director himself was busy moving on to explore others areas of wild fascination with works like IMMORAL TALES (1974) and THE BEAST (1975).

Arrow's Blu-ray of BLANCHE includes an introduction by director Leslie Megahey (whose SCHALKEN THE PAINTER is also reviewed on this site) which actually helped me to appreciate the film more. Extras include a short film called Gunpoint, which Borowczyk edited but didn't direct. It's about pheasant shooting, so if you're not keen on that sort of thing you may want to give it a miss. Otherwise there's a documentary about the film, a portrait of the director (Obscure Pleasures), and the usual reversible sleeve and collectors' booklet. 

Arrow Films are releasing Walerian Borowczyk's BLANCHE on Dual Format Region B Blu-ray and Region 2 DVD on 8th September 2014

Walerian Borowczyk - Short Films and Animations (1959 - 1984)

        Arrow’s region-free Blu-ray release of this collection of many of the shorter works of Polish film-maker Walerian Borowczyk is a veritable treasure trove of brain-frying Euro-weirdness, surrealism and twisted sexuality. Probably the best advice to give right at the beginning of a review about this particular release is that you shouldn’t try watching it all in one go, and certainly not if you’ve ingested anything that might alter your perception of reality beforehand.

There are two parts to the disc - a collection of short subjects, and the 77 minute ‘feature’ THE THEATRE OF MR & MRS KABAL, a head-spinning combination of very strange line-drawing animation intercut with colour photographs. I’ll confess that by the end of this one I was beginning to worry that if I kept watching my own sense of reality might begin to warp, but then I did go and watch all the other films first.

The short film collection is introduced by Terry Gilliam. He's absolutely the best person to front this as many of the animated shorts that follow obviously made a huge impression on him. In fact I’d go so far as to say that, apart from the obsessive Borowczyk cinephile, the individual who will get the most out of these weird pieces is someone who knows Gilliam’s films very well indeed. I could certainly spot influences on not just his Monty Python cartoons, but THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1988) and others.

The short films kick off with RENAISSANCE (1964), in which a room rots in reverse, restoring itself in a rather charming manner until it gets destroyed again at the end. Other gems include GAVOTTE (1968), in which two ‘persons of diminished stature’ dressed in 18th century costume fight over cushions in a comedy routine that’s both delightful and clever in its effective use of its harpsicord accompaniment; ROSALIE (1966) adapted from a Guy De Maupassant story about a woman on trial for the murder of her new-born infant; ASTRONAUTS (1959) a very Gilliamesque animated piece using cut outs and photography and filmed with the collaboration of Chris Marker whose own LA JETEE was the inspiration for Gilliam’s TWELVE MONKEYS. There are plenty of others, some of which I didn’t understand at all, and others which weirded me out sufficiently that I’m not sure I want to watch them again.

There’s also a documentary about Borowczyk’s animated work entitled FILM IS NOT A SAUSAGE, three commercials by the director, a visual essay by Daniel Bird and some reversible sleeve art.

Not something that is likely to appeal to the casual fan, SHORT FILMS & ANIMATION nevertheless provides an excellent showcase of macabre, surreal and reality-warping subjects from a director whose work has never been less than interesting. Well done Arrow.

Arrow Films are bringing out WALERIAN BOROWCZYK - SHORT FILMS AND ANIMATIONS on dual format Region Free Blu-ray and (presumably region free also) DVD on 8th September 2014

Immoral Tales (1974)

        Fans who like their Euro art-house weirdness to have a healthy dose of erotica can rejoice as Arrow releases rather a lot of the work of Walerian Borowczyk. They’re putting out a box set which has already sold out on pre-order, but if you haven’t managed to snag yourself a copy worry not - each of the titles in the set is being released individually, and a series of write-ups on this site is going to tell you all about them.

First up is his erotic anthology movie from 1974. I will freely admit that the only reason I tracked down IMMORAL TALES originally was because of its celebrated Erzsebet Bathory episode, widely lauded as the best cinematic version of the story of the countess who bathed in the blood of virgins in an attempt to keep herself young. Mind you, with the only real competition being Hammer’s sub-par COUNTESS DRACULA and a ponderous adaptation starring Anna Friel (2008‘s BATHORY COUNTESS OF BLOOD) it’s always been onto a winner anyway.

But what about the rest of the film? We begin with ‘The Tide’ in which a young man takes his teenaged cousin to the kind of windswept beach Jean Rollin would love in order to make her perform fellatio on him while the tide comes in. It’s a strange, bleak, sexy episode, with a quality to it akin to that found in the fictions of Robert Aickman. The rough sea, bleak cliffs, grey shale and ever-present seagulls combine to produce a weird atmosphere and the story is certainly strong on style if not on plot. 

Second is ‘Therese Philosophe’ in which a young girl is locked in a room after staying late in church to misbehave with various bits of christian iconography. Perhaps needless to say, she finds things to amuse herself with in the room as well. 

Third is the Bathory segment which, apart from featuring an abundance of female nudity, numerous shower sequences, and imagery redolent of an erotic renaissance painting, also has the best blood I’ve possibly ever seen in a film. Paloma Picasso plays the title role and gets to drench herself with it in a scene that is both repellent and obscenely erotic. It was recreated rather inferiorly by Eli Roth in HOSTEL II but if you want the genuine article, Borowczyk’s your man.

The final tale ‘Lucrezia Borgia’ is probably a bit (or actually a lot) of a pop at the catholic church, with the daughter of Pope Alexander VI getting up to all kinds of misbehaviour with her male relatives. While ‘The Tide’ is weird, and ‘Erzsebet Bathory’ horrific, this is the story that struck me as the most satirical and playful, and is as good a story as any with which to end the film.

Arrow’s Blu-ray is the usual stunning transfer, and comes with a wealth of extras. IMMORAL TALES was originally released with a fifth segment which was taken out of the finished product and developed into a full length film of its own entitled THE BEAST. Arrow have included the entire five-story version of IMMORAL TALES as an extra on the disc. There’s also an introduction to the disc by Daniel Bird that places the film in the context of the time when it was originally released, a new making of that runs for about 16 minutes, a crew reunion, a trailer and the short film A PRIVATE COLLECTION that details a whole load of peculiar bits and pieces of erotic art. 

As with so many of Arrow’s releases, this really is the best version of IMMORAL TALES out there, and if you’re a fan of the director this is the one to get.

Arrow Films are releasing Walerian Borowczyk's IMMORAL TALES on dual format Region B Blu-ray and Region 2 DVD on 8th September 2014