Perverse, ugly, extremely dark variation on Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and Jack the Ripper with Anthony Perkins once again summoning the dark side of his character to bring to life an evil psychopath deriving from a form of anesthesia, accidentally unleashed on Dr. Henry Jekyll while in his laboratory by a monkey test subject who spilled a bottle of solution into the powdery substance the scientist used to create his breakthrough in resolving pain during surgery. Smoked through an opium pipe, Jekyll loses his personality and morality as his dark half, Mr. Jack Hyde, surfaces to prowl White Chapel's lurid streets for prostitutes to slice up.

"Edge of Sanity" is practically wholly an unpleasant excursion into depravity and sadism as the movie stays mostly in the seedy underbelly of the dark section of London, rarely ever do we spend time with the "better" (although I felt even Jekyll, presented here, wasn't exactly free from the darkness that plagued his soul, as we see nightmares of a lustful hooker taking the rod from a local farmer who, after the doctor, as a child voyeur looking from the loft, slips, hooking himself upside down in the barn, takes a whipping on the tush from said farmer) half of the scientist. Since the Ripper was never caught, this film has perhaps the obvious outcome, but a certain incident which closes the film, involving Jekyll's morally upright wife (Glynis Barber), helping a church outreaching to prostitutes and the downtrodden, is rather unsettling.

This film spends a lot of time, unlike many other versions of the Jekyll/Hyde story, with Hyde instead of Jekyll, but we see, through Perkins, that battle within as the evil side of man's soul begins to control the personality, leaving a decent man adrift as darkness reigns. I guess the filmmakers decided that since Perkins is recognized as the kind of actor known for primarily showing the darker side of man's character, we should spend a great length with a really disturbing individual largely guided by a carnal incident from his childhood. The horror on Jekyll's face as that childhood memory emerges and Hyde is seeping into life, Perkins shows us a man run amok by dark forces he cannot control. To be honest, I can't imagine that many people finding this an experience worth taking, but I did think Perkins does an incredible job conveying pure evil, a true madman in search of a fresh victim worthy of destruction. The evocation of Period London (both the Victorian and especially the red light district of White Chapel where Madam Flora(Jill Melford) has a colorful house of ill repute) is affectively brought to life and director Gérard Kikoïne incorporates a visual style that allows madness to hit us right in the chops. Is this movie fun? Umm, not really. Is it good at what it does? If you mean, bringing to us a maniac on the loose in London slashing the throats of prostitutes after a few minutes of warped carnal activity (like Hyde masturbating a slut, on the roof top of a boardinghouse, with his cane as an apartment dweller looks on from his room, or slapping the ass of a tramp, putting her up against a wall on his knees, his face pressed up to his crotch, praying to God), then, yea, I think that is done with skill and ability. Included as a primary plot device is a prostitute in Madam Flora's den of hedonism, named Suzanna (Sarah Mahr Thorp), who looks exactly like the barn whore that haunts his nightmares, laughing and teasing. There's lots of that sort of thing: mocking and laughing, a tormented Jekyll unable to be separate from the woman that has continued to torture him, often in the guise of other women, remaining ever-present in the good doctor's fractured psyche.

This is basically one big just a trick of the trade for Mr. Hyde who is combined with Jack the Ripper in this Anthony Perkins film that was near the end of his career. Basically, he was taking any film offer that came along, and this just shows the desperation he was facing to work. The sad thing is that it looks like it was actually made with a decent budget, but the problem is that the script focuses on perversion rather than the story. It all starts when the future Dr. Henry Jekyll witnesses his father with a prostitute, and years later, he's a scientist experimenting with drugs who ends up transforming into a hideous looking old man whom women don't cringe and run away from. It's a disgusting, ugly promise from the start, and very unpleasant to watch.

The other big problem with the film is that the murders don't just happen. He goes out of his way to torture these women and the audience has to endure that agony along with the not too bright women he picks up. Even the non-horror scenes are very hard to watch, with Doctor Jekyll at one point working on someone's eyes with the camera too far close up. A scene where he uses a cane on one of the street girls is just too disgusting, first to pleasure her, and later to strangle her. Even with the attractive period set up, this is as much of a nightmare to get through as it is for the victims.

Prim and respectable physician Dr. Henry Jekyll (the late, great Anthony Perkins in sterling eye-rolling wacko form) transforms into the evil and deranged pasty-faced fiend Mr. Jack Hyde after a disastrous lab experiment inadvertently creates crack cocaine. Hyde terrorizes Victorian era London, England by savagely slaughtering prostitutes in the White Chapel district. Director Gerard Kikoine, working from a deliciously deviant and depraved script by J.P. Felix and Ron Raley, brings a genuinely shocking and surprising kinky sensibility to the familiar premise: The oodles of tasty female nudity (there's some male frontal nudity, too!), the startlingly raw'n'ribald perversity (a man watches from a window as Hyde pleasures a hooker with a cane in one especially lurid sequence), and the sizzling erotic sexuality all ensure that the incredibly seamy atmosphere reigns supremely sordid throughout. The sturdy acting from the capable cast rates as another major asset: Perkins has a histrionic field day in his juicy dual role, Glynnis Barber lends sound support as Jekyll's concerned wife Elisabeth, the fetching Sarah Maur Thorp vamps it up nicely as saucy tart Susannah, and Ben Cole positively oozes as slimy male hustler Johnny. The opulent set design, Tony Spratling's lush cinematography, the flavorsome evocation of the repressive Victorian period, and Frederic Talgorn's robust orchestral score give this picture an aura of class while the brutal killings draw a neat'n'nasty parallel to Jack the Ripper's notorious exploits. Good decadent fun.