This is the fifth or sixth movie in Paul Naschy's "Hombre-Lobo" cycle that I watched and it's undoubtedly the worst so far (although, perhaps a tie with "The Werewolf and the Yeti"). Quite unfortunately, in fact, because I really wanted to reward this installment with a higher rating as it features the downright best and most inventive basic plot idea of them all. The slightly genius gimmick of this episode is that the tormented anti-hero protagonist Waldemar Daninsky receives help from no less than the grandson of the infamous Dr. Jekyll in an attempt to cure him from lycanthropy. What if Waldemar, moments before the rise of the full moon, gets injected with the serum that brings out someone's darker alter ego? Is the werewolf curse stronger than the Mr. Hyde persona? It's definitely an intriguing question and an admirable attempt to crossbreed two legendary monsters of the horror genre, but sadly – and inexplicably – Paul Naschy and veteran director León Klimovsky delivered a nearly unendurable dud of a film. The script, if there even was one, features way too many semi-processed ideas, it's incoherent beyond belief and simply just all over the place! Long before Waldemar Daninsky meets Dr. Jekyll, in the third and final act of the film, the plot already abruptly changed in tone several times and many of the initial lead characters died ingloriously! The story opens in London, where a wealthy businessman and his sexy wife are meeting some guests on the evening before their honeymoon to Hungary. They go because the man was born there, but moved to England when he's parents were brutally butchered. The husband is then suddenly slain in the cemetery by car thieves and the woman narrowly rescued by Waldemar, who takes her back to his castle. She quickly finds out about his werewolf condition, desperately falls head over heels in love with him (they always do
in all the screenplays that he wrote himself, Paul Naschy literally was God's gift to women) and offers to come back to London with her. In between, they also have to face an angry mob with torches and there's also the bizarre and unfinished sub plots about a witch and a guy with a mutilated face who lives in Daninsky's cellar. Never mind about that. Once back in London, there are several more redundant intrigues and senseless sub plots before – finally – Daninsky terrorizes the metropolis as both werewolf and evil Mr. Hyde. In spite of all the content, plot twists and numerous characters, "Dr. Jekyll and the Wolf Man" is an incredibly boring movie! The coherence and editing are abysmal and none of the performances are the least bit convincing. All of the Hombre-Lobo movies look cheap and badly dated, but this entry is presumably the tackiest of them all. The make-up effects are gruesome but amateurish. Naschy's Mr. Hyde look is effectively vile, though, and as usual there's quite a bit of gratuitous sleazy and nudity just for fun's sake. For die-hard exploitation fanatics only, I'd say.