Hammer Studio takes a well-known and often played classic novel and goes
against all expectations that the viewer might have. The Strange Case of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886 has been adapted
to theater and film many times with its recurrent theme of the duality within
all of use. The Ying and Ying, the good and bad, the public face vs the monster
gnawing inside us. The monster that we spend much of our life keeping at
bay, perhaps letting it out to play on occasion but hiding it from others,
even loved ones. This film sticks to that but Hyde in this version isn't
so much a physical monster as he is usually portrayed, but instead a charming
sociopath. A toxic male, an Alpha male that Andrew Tate would welcome into
his lair with open arms. The film even shies away from the money shot that
most Jekyll/Hyde films exult in - the transformation from Jekyll to the hideous
Hyde. Instead, the bushy bearded Jekyll simply puts his head down and when
it reappears it is clean shaven and malicious with blazing blue eyes. Confident,
narcissistic, misogynistic, a Nietzsche superman or Übermenschcno
no longer bound by the laws of morality.
Dr. Jekyll is obsessed with this concept
and has been shunned by his colleagues and he has shut himself off from all
around him - even his beautiful red-headed wife (Dawn Adams). She in
turn has found comfort in the arms and bed of Jekyll's good friend Paul Allen,
played with saturnine glee by Christopher Lee, whose lascivious lips should
have gotten their own credit. He is a first-rate cad, a wastrel, gambling
away the money he borrows from Jekyll. His is a life of clubs, drinking and
prostitutes. Jekyll decides to experiment on himself - don't they always
- and turns into Hyde who simply wants pleasure - he wants to feel it all
- and in his unrecognized state talks Allen into taking him to every pot
of sin in London. Opium dens, prostitutes, drinking binges, high end bordellos
where the women do revealing versions of the can-can or a woman sucking on
the head of a live snake that practically made his eyes pop out. London looked
like a hell of a fun place back then.
But tragically what he really wants is his
wife. He becomes aware of her transgression with his friend and wants to
seduce her in his Hyde identity - after she rejects his attempt to sleep
with her as Jekyll. But she rejects him too, setting up the brilliant insanity
of the ending. This was directed by Terence Fisher who certainly had money
in the bank with Hammer after Frankenstein, Dracula and the Mummy. This is
really an oddball film by not giving the audience what they probably wanted.
There is no monster in this film but there is no good either. They give Lee
a terrific role which he later wrote that he very much enjoyed playing -
though apparently his fear of snakes forced Hammer to make a fake one for
his benefit. Playing Jekyll/Hyde is an unknown actor - Paul Massie - who
had impressed in a few films but was still not a draw. He is actually pretty
good in this - somber and miserable as Jekyll and cruel and alive as Hyde.
He knew how to have a good time. Give him that. But that damn Jekyll keeps
coming back.
