The British cinema of the late sixties and early seventies tended to specialise in horror and erotica, largely because these were the two topics that were taboo on British television and the film industry was therefore able to cater for two markets that were not open to its rival. Hammer Films, the leading British producer of horror films, often tried to cater for both markets at once by making horror films with strongly erotic overtones. "Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde" is an example of that approach. It took R L Stevenson's famous novel and gave it an unusual twist; when Jekyll drinks the potion he turns into a woman. (The more recent American version, "Dr Jekyll and Ms Hyde", dealt with the story in a similar way).
In this version Dr Henry Jekyll is a brilliant young doctor in 1880s London, working on an "antivirus" that will cure all known diseases as well as an "elixir of life". Jekyll discovers that female hormones are necessary to produce such an elixir, and that these hormones can only be procured from the freshly-killed corpses of young women. He therefore decides to obtain corpses from body-snatchers, and when this supply fails takes to murdering young prostitutes, thus linking the film to two infamous British murder cases, that of Jack the Ripper and that of Burke and Hare (who in reality operated in the Edinburgh of the 1820s rather than the London of the 1880s). When Jekyll drinks his elixir, he finds that it has the effect of transforming him, temporarily, into a beautiful young woman, whom he names "Mrs Hyde" and passes off as his widowed sister. To add to the complications, Jekyll's neighbour Howard Spencer falls in love with "Mrs Hyde", whereas Howard's own sister Susan is in love with Jekyll.
Stevenson's original story was a philosophical exploration of the duality of good and evil in the human soul, but that concept is largely abandoned here. (Hammer horror films are not, anyway, the place to go if you are looking for philosophical insight into the human condition). Certainly, Sister Hyde is an evil killer, but in this version so is Jekyll even before he drinks the potion. The difference seems to be that whereas she kills for pleasure, he kills for what he believes are idealistic reasons. Jekyll's view is that a the lives of a few prostitutes are a price worth paying for advancing the cause of medical research. If the ideologically-driven mass-murders of the twentieth century have taught us anything, it is that the most dangerous type of killer is the one driven by idealism, but the film loses the chance to make this point.
Having thrown away the deeper implications of the Jekyll and Hyde legend, the film-makers settle for an odd mixture of thrills and macabre humour, mostly wisecracks of the "Burke by name and berk by nature" type, with the occasional erotic frisson thrown in. Some of the acting is reasonably good, especially from Martine Beswick as Hyde and from Gerald Sim as Jekyll's smoothly lecherous older colleague Dr Robertson. Although Beswick was a very glamorous young woman, she was here able to suggest the male persona underlying her character's female appearance. I was less impressed by Ralph Bates as Jekyll, who never seemed sure whether his character was supposed to be sympathetic or unsympathetic. The main trouble with the film, however, was that it was a dog's breakfast of horror, comedy and eroticism which never managed to be either very horrifying or very comic or (despite a couple of nude shots of Martine Beswick) very erotic. The jokes were never particularly amusing in their own right, but they were intrusive enough to prevent us from taking the horror scenes seriously. 5/10
In this version Dr Henry Jekyll is a brilliant young doctor in 1880s London, working on an "antivirus" that will cure all known diseases as well as an "elixir of life". Jekyll discovers that female hormones are necessary to produce such an elixir, and that these hormones can only be procured from the freshly-killed corpses of young women. He therefore decides to obtain corpses from body-snatchers, and when this supply fails takes to murdering young prostitutes, thus linking the film to two infamous British murder cases, that of Jack the Ripper and that of Burke and Hare (who in reality operated in the Edinburgh of the 1820s rather than the London of the 1880s). When Jekyll drinks his elixir, he finds that it has the effect of transforming him, temporarily, into a beautiful young woman, whom he names "Mrs Hyde" and passes off as his widowed sister. To add to the complications, Jekyll's neighbour Howard Spencer falls in love with "Mrs Hyde", whereas Howard's own sister Susan is in love with Jekyll.
Stevenson's original story was a philosophical exploration of the duality of good and evil in the human soul, but that concept is largely abandoned here. (Hammer horror films are not, anyway, the place to go if you are looking for philosophical insight into the human condition). Certainly, Sister Hyde is an evil killer, but in this version so is Jekyll even before he drinks the potion. The difference seems to be that whereas she kills for pleasure, he kills for what he believes are idealistic reasons. Jekyll's view is that a the lives of a few prostitutes are a price worth paying for advancing the cause of medical research. If the ideologically-driven mass-murders of the twentieth century have taught us anything, it is that the most dangerous type of killer is the one driven by idealism, but the film loses the chance to make this point.
Having thrown away the deeper implications of the Jekyll and Hyde legend, the film-makers settle for an odd mixture of thrills and macabre humour, mostly wisecracks of the "Burke by name and berk by nature" type, with the occasional erotic frisson thrown in. Some of the acting is reasonably good, especially from Martine Beswick as Hyde and from Gerald Sim as Jekyll's smoothly lecherous older colleague Dr Robertson. Although Beswick was a very glamorous young woman, she was here able to suggest the male persona underlying her character's female appearance. I was less impressed by Ralph Bates as Jekyll, who never seemed sure whether his character was supposed to be sympathetic or unsympathetic. The main trouble with the film, however, was that it was a dog's breakfast of horror, comedy and eroticism which never managed to be either very horrifying or very comic or (despite a couple of nude shots of Martine Beswick) very erotic. The jokes were never particularly amusing in their own right, but they were intrusive enough to prevent us from taking the horror scenes seriously. 5/10