If you ever wanted Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic morality tale to get drunk, wander into a French art-house, and wake up the next morning covered in candle wax, velvet curtains, and regret—congratulations, Docteur Jekyll et les femmesexists. Walerian Borowczyk, patron saint of “I’m not making porn, it’s cinema,” takes the duality-of-man story and replaces moral introspection with relentless, operatic depravity. It’s part horror film, part 19th-century orgy brochure, and part fever dream that makes you wonder if the cinematographer was shooting through a jar of absinthe.
The Set-Up: A Dinner Party Nobody Should Have RSVP’d To
It all begins innocently enough—Fanny Osborne (Marina Pierro, whose every line sounds like she’s plotting either seduction or tax evasion) and her mother arrive at the stately home of Dr. Henry Jekyll (Udo Kier, who was born looking like he’d sell you an antique mirror with a demon in it). They’re there to celebrate Fanny and Henry’s engagement, but within ten minutes it’s clear this is less Downton Abbey and more Eyes Wide Shut if Tom Cruise had been replaced with a sociopathic chemist.
The guest list is eclectic: a general, his daughter, a reverend, a doctor, and various other aristocrats whose only common trait is that they will soon be dead, disgraced, or disrobed. Dinner is served, wine is poured, and within minutes a guest is found raped and murdered. Most hosts would call the police. Henry just looks mildly inconvenienced, like the cheese course has curdled.
Enter Hyde: The House Guest from Your Worst Nightmares
Before long, Edward Hyde arrives—mysteriously, violently, and wearing the permanent expression of a man who’s just been told the brothel is closed. Hyde proceeds to turn the evening into the 1880s version of The Purge: men are beaten to death with walking sticks, women are assaulted with a fervor that makes you wish Borowczyk had discovered the concept of “cut to black,” and at one point Hyde even detours to the attic for a male-on-male attack, just in case the audience was getting too comfortable.
The violence is equal parts shocking and absurd—Hyde ties up General Carew, forces him to watch the ravishing of his daughter (who is disturbingly into it), then moves on to archery murder, piano-based torture, and what feels like an endless loop of “so whose turn is it to die now?”
Udo Kier’s Moral Philosophy Corner
Once the carnage reaches a respectable body count, Henry finally admits to Fanny what’s going on: Jekyll is his “good” side, Hyde is his “bad” side, and unlike every other version of this story, he’s totally cool with it. Jekyll is nice because he chooses to be, Hyde is evil because it’s fun, and both are equally “authentic.” This is Borowczyk’s big philosophical moment—a rumination on human nature that would be profound if it weren’t sandwiched between two scenes of archery-based foreplay.
Fanny Joins the Family Business
Instead of recoiling in horror like any sane fiancée would, Fanny responds by doing what every Victorian woman apparently dreams of: hopping into the chemical bath herself. She emerges unchanged physically but now spiritually possessed by Hyde’s unhinged libido and moral bankruptcy. Then, in a twist worthy of a grindhouse Bonnie and Clyde, she and Henry/Hyde team up to kill the remaining guests, burn down the evidence, and escape in a carriage where they have violent sex until they… transform back into their “normal” selves. Because nothing says love like switching back to polite dinner conversation after a mutual slaughter spree.
Borowczyk’s Direction: Art Film with a Side of Sleaze
Borowczyk shoots the whole thing like a decadent nightmare—rich colors, ornate sets, and camera moves that feel like they’re sneaking up on you with bad intentions. But beneath the “prestige” aesthetic, this is pure exploitation. The sexual violence is so relentless it stops being titillating and becomes exhausting, like a guest who keeps bringing up politics at brunch.
And yet, there’s a strange magnetism to it. The film never apologizes for its depravity, never hides behind subtlety, and never tries to give you a breather. It’s an endurance test, yes, but one that’s oddly mesmerizing—like watching a chandelier crash in slow motion while someone reads poetry about syphilis.
Final Thoughts
Docteur Jekyll et les femmes is not for the faint of heart, the easily offended, or anyone who thought they were sitting down for a faithful adaptation of Stevenson’s novella. It’s violent, perverse, unapologetically weird, and so French-German in its sensibilities that you half-expect the credits to roll over a close-up of a half-eaten éclair.
If you watch it, you’ll either call it a bold deconstruction of sexual repression or “the most expensive Victorian-themed stag film ever made.” Either way, you’ll never look at a chemical bath—or a dinner party—the same way again.
