I assume that most of you readers out there are probably at least slightly familiar with the concept of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde, born from the 1886 novella by Robert Louis Stevenson. Doctor Jekyll, engaged in strange medical research, devises a formula that when consumed transforms him physically and/or psychologically into Mister Hyde, and the subsequent battle for control. The story has been reiterated and reinterpreted hundreds of times since the original publication, from Pagemaster to the Nutty Professor to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but this is the core idea that remains. Potions, personality changes, and so on.
Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde, like those numerous others takes liberties with the source material, the most obvious being that the transformation is not only from Jekyll to Hyde but from man to woman. Which is apparently a side-effect of the elixir of eternal youth that Jekyll came up with, which is made primarily of female hormones. And since these are the days before estrogen tablets, you have to cut out the hormone-making parts yourself, from the abundant amount of corpses or, if they’re not available, from some more energetic ladies. Of course this is Whitechapel, the place where nothing bad ever happens to women, but you never know what could happen when you decide to throw an extra person into your brain like that. Also there’s a love interest or something but who cares?
So there’s a lot of implications in the line ‘man uses science and hormone treatments in order to become a woman’, but if you’re expecting this movie to be breaking down barriers then I think you’ll be disappointed. In fact, that Hyde is a woman seems rather superfluous outside of a couple scenes, and puts a bit of a krimp in motivation. I mean in the original story, point of the formula was to create Hyde so that Jekyll could act out hidden vices without inhibition, but considering the fact that Jekyll is Jack the fucking Ripper (another returning idea from Marathon ‘16s Time After Time) it undercuts the evil of Hyde. Also if you count making out with two different men as uninhibited, which it may have been in 1886, but seems rather tame given what movie audience had in the 1970s. I dunno, given the changes from the original plot there just isn’t that much of a point for Hyde to even exist much less be the ‘evil’ one in this sense, or for Jekyll to even bother taking the serum at all, considering that whole ‘eternal youth’ thing seems to be unceremoniously dropped before we’re halfway in. There’s so much potential with the original concept and specifically this version of it, but it just seems to be vastly underutilized.
Speaking of underutilized, we’ve got Susan Spencer, the girl who feels like she was shoehorned into the story to fulfill some sort of quota. Not much to say about her, because she doesn’t really do anything. She’s not really a romantic interest, because she only has one conversation with Jekyll that isn’t her being quickly rebuffed, and she spends most of her screen time defending Jekyll despite having literally no reason to do so. At least her brother Harold serves the concept as the romantic interest of Hyde, Susan fails to do the same with the almost asexual Jekyll. They even try to push her into the realm of importance near the finale, having Hyde want to kill her to punish Jekyll, but it just falls flat considering he’s barely interacted with her the entire film and has shown no romantic interest in her whatsoever.
That all being said, it’s a nice looking film (rocking the technicolor period piece look) and the acting is fine, so if you can put aside your lofty expectations you’ll find a serviceable Gothic horror film. I’d hesitate to call it a hidden gem but if you’re a fan of that era or look of scary movie than you’ll be fine with Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde. Those who are interested in seeing the best of what Hammer had to offer this Halloween however, would be better served looking into their Dracula, Frankenstein or Mummy series.
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