This is a very strange variation on the old Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story. In this re-imagining of the Stevenson tale, Jekyll has been trying to create a serum to prolong life and reasoned that as women live longer, it must be something about the hormones. But his experiments allow him to change gender!!! There is no MR. Hyde in this one! But, to continue his work, he finds he needs to kill young ladies--and here the story seems a lot like Jack the Ripper. There's even the infamous Burke and Hare (famous for grave robbing in Edinburgh long ago) making an appearance in the film. So, we have sex changes, Jack the Ripper-style murders and Burke & Hare (who influenced Stevenson to write "The Body Snatcher")--this film has a ton of plots crammed into it. Oh, and lest I forget, a bit of a soft-core porn film, as when Mrs. Hyde appears, it's often naked time! That's because like many of the Hammer films of the 70s, they spiced it up with some nudity to try to draw in audiences--as film revenues were way down from the studio's heyday. I think this film actually suffers from too many plots. Now I would NOT have made yet another Jekyll & Hyde film---there have already been too many. But to have so many divergent ideas in the film seemed to muddle things a bit. A sharper focus would have made for a better film. It also didn't help that the acting and dialog were rather weak...especially the dialog. As a result, this seems like a rather weak horror entry by Hammer.
By the way, get a load of the way that Mrs. Hyde so easily crafts a red dress from just a curtain! It reminds me of the "Gone With the Wind" take-off from "The Carol Burnett Show"--minus the curtain rod!
By the way, get a load of the way that Mrs. Hyde so easily crafts a red dress from just a curtain! It reminds me of the "Gone With the Wind" take-off from "The Carol Burnett Show"--minus the curtain rod!