Dr. Hambone & Mr. Hyde

            Robert Louis Stevenson knew plenty about doctors and medicine- he wrote most of his 1886 classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in bed, coughing up blood. After reading the book in seventh grade, I would retire to my makeshift lab in the basement, trying to perfect a serum that would get me through puberty. I felt I had finally mixed the right noxious materials and tipped the vial down my throat. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Was that hair sprouting on my cheek or a leftover strand of mom’s pot roast? I stumbled upstairs and announced triumphantly to my parents, “I’ve done it!” and then threw up on the kitchen floor. Thus ending my promising career as a chemist, I devoted myself to seeking out movies on the subject. 

            This came back to me while watching the new Warner Archive Blu-ray of the 1942 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Spencer Tracy. Two things struck me right off the bat. One is the amazing way Warner Archive have been digitally restoring their films on Blu-ray. And during Tracy’s transformations into the diabolical Mr. Hyde, I thought to myself- poor Katharine Hepburn. That’s what Spencer must have looked like careening in the door after a bender.

            The Stevenson story is about a doctor who believes he can manifest the “evil” part of self through science. And when he uses himself as a guinea pig he lives to regret it. There have been fascinating early cinematic takes which get to show actors in full hambone heaven, getting to chew the drapes transforming into the malevolent Mr. Hyde. John Barrymore is amazing in his Jekyll-to-Hyde bit in the 1920 silent film version. It’s all done with twisted facial and body contortions and it’s incredibly effective. Fredric March changes while staring into a mirror after drinking the experimental elixir in the pre-Code 1932 version, and it is tricks of shadows and light while he grimaces and then the dissolve to reveal a toothy, ape-like creature. For decades the filmmakers kept secret how it all was accomplished (it had to do with special make-up and colored filters). Ten years later Spencer Tracy took on the role for MGM in a version directed by Victor Fleming and co-starring Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner. Set in 1887, Tracy plays the respected Dr. Harry Jekyll, working with patients suffering disorders of the mind. Lana Turner plays his sweet girlfriend and Donald Crisp her disapproving father. Jekyll is passionate in his desire to chemically experiment on the unfortunate, but when he dares to try the serum on himself he is transformed into a demonic figure. “Can this be evil?” he asks himself, cackling maniacally in the mirror. Ingrid Bergman is heartbreaking as a flirtatious barmaid that Hyde brutally manhandles and eventually kills. Tracy grins a lot as Mr. Hyde and speaks in a raspy whisper. I was so astounded by the moody photography and how beautiful the Warner Archive disc looked it made me appreciate the film more than I ever had in the past.

            Now, I’m not going into the qualities of all Dr. Jekyll movie adaptations. Christ, there have been over 123, not to mention movie parodies like The Nutty Professor and failed Broadway musicals. Even as a goddamn puppet in Mad Monster Party (1966) or messing with Bugs Bunny in Hyde and Hare (1955). There have been serious attempts at the characterization starring David Hemmings (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde/1980), Michael Caine (Jekyll & Hyde/1990), Jack Palance (The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde/1968) or John Malkovich in Mary Reilly (1996), but they bore me to tears. There have, however, been a few that are memorable to me for their inventiveness, nuttiness or just plain awfulness.

            Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971) In this wonderfully transgender take on the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, scientist Henry Jekyll (Ralph Bates) is experimenting with an elixir of immortality only to be transformed into an evil woman (Martine Beswick) who murders women in Whitechapel for their female hormones needed to feed the serum. Beswick is deliciously fiendish as she slowly attempts to take full control over her male alter-ego in this entertaining, perverse 1971 Hammer horror directed by Roy Ward Baker.

            Edge of Sanity (1989) A sleazy, but kind of brilliant, version of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde with Anthony Perkins as the scientist smoking a crack pipe and transforming into a sexually deviant Hyde. Jaw dropping and wildly extreme. Perkins throws himself into the role with the same demented gusto as the loony, popper-snorting, street minister in Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion. Years ago, I found a separate VHS documentary about the making of Edge of Sanity which made me insane.

            The Son of Dr. Jekyll (1951) My favorite moment in this lackluster adaptation of the oft-told story is after Dr. Jekyll is chased to a fiery death by angry Londoners in 1860 when they find his baby at the flat of his murdered wife. “He looks normal,” someone comments about the tyke. 30 years later sonny boy Edward (Louis Hayward) tries to restore his father’s reputation by proving his experiment was meant for good. Here we go again. But the press hounds him daily, people throw rocks through his windows, and a shadowy figure sets him up to be framed for murder. Less a horror movie than a dreary non-mystery, this one has yet to officially appear on home video.

            Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957) Critic Andrew Sarris said about this film: “Anyone who loves cinema must be moved by Daughter of Dr. Jekyll.” Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But it’s such an oddball horror hodgepodge you have to admire it. And it is directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour). Gloria Talbott stars as Janet, who shows up at the mansion of her benefactor Dr. Loomis (Arthur Shields) on her 21^st birthday. George (John Agar) is her fiancé who comes along on the trip. She finds she is an heiress and the offspring of Dr. Jekyll. But then it weirdly turns into a werewolf movie. Janet starts having horrible nightmares and waking with her nightgown covered in blood. She begins to fear she’s responsible for a batch of local murders. 

            The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) Stylishly directed by Terence Fisher, this gothic take on the Stevenson classic of fateful duality stars Paul Massie as the bearded, emasculated Dr. Henry Jekyll, whose wife Kitty (Dawn Addams) is cheating on him with his best friend Paul Allen (Christopher Lee). Allen is a dissolute gambler always borrowing money from his lover and her husband. “All of my experiments are directed towards the freeing of the creature imprisoned within,” explains Henry to a colleague. And when he experiments on himself he transforms into the decadent dandy Edward Hyde (even his beard disappears). “He, too, is beyond good and evil. Man as he would be. Free of all the restrictions society imposes upon us. Subject only to his own will.”  Mr. Hyde worms his way into Paul Allen’s degenerate world and swills champagne with prostitutes and is a fixture at all the gambling halls, opium dens and questionable bars. Eventually, consumed by evil, he takes revenge on his wife and duplicitous friend.

            Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype (1980) Ugly podiatrist Henry Heckyl (Oliver Reed) becomes a suave ladies’ man when a miracle diet cure goes slightly awry. “Mine is a face that spoils a sunny day,” Heckyl admits to himself. When he is transformed into Henry Hype he becomes handsome, obnoxious, conceited and murderous. He even casually dumps the bodies in broad daylight in dumpsters. This was written and directed by Charles B. Griffith, who wrote the original screenplay for Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors. Alumni of that movie- Mel Welles and Dick Miller– show up in this ghastly mess. When he reverts to the unattractive Heckyl he confides to the lady of his dreams Coral Careen (Sunny Johnson), “Shall I tell you how I got like this? When my mother was carrying me she was sniffing glue. When she was nursing me she was sniffing glue. The day I was born she was sniffing glue. So now every time I have a glass of milk I taste glue.”  

            The Adult Version of Jekyll and Hyde (1972) Another sleaze softcore exploitation film from producer David F. Friedman starring Jack Buddliner as a horny doctor who acquires Dr. Jekyll’s journals by strangling an antique dealer to get it. He drinks down the recipe he got from the manuscript and transforms into the blonde, homicidal, nymphomaniac Miss Hyde (Jane Tsentas). Miss Hyde even seduces a sailor to have sex in an alley and then castrates him. “A Tale of Hex and Sex Rated X” was the ad.

            The Man with Two Heads (1972) Staten Island exploitation auteur Andy Milligan turned out quite a few excessively talky, gory, costume epics that played on Times Square like Bloodthirsty Butchers, The Ghastly Ones and The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! This was a personal favorite of Milligan and one of the ones he shot in London. Dr. William Jekyll (a surprisingly excellent Denis DeMarne) experiments on the brain of a murderer extracting a serum. “Finally, at last, I found a cure. I found a way of removing evil from the brain.” An accident in the lab causes Jekyll to grow bushy eyebrows and become a murderous brute. This is where the director’s personal sadistic bent emerges as Hyde verbally and physically torments his victims. He even fiendishly cuts off a prostitute’s head with a cleaver and tosses it to her roommate. “A film of inhuman indignities! A man’s head is sawed in half before your eyes!” screamed the trailer.

            The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981) Another heaping spoonful of weirdness from Walerian Borowczyk (The Beast). The film begins with a shadowy figure in a top hat and waistcoat chasing an 8-year-old girl down an alley to nearly beat her to death with a cane. Udo Kier plays the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll holding an elegant dinner party to celebrate his engagement to Miss Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro). Patrick Magee plays a blowhard general, Jess Franco favorite- Howard Vernon a physician. Later the general is tied up and forced to watch Hyde fuck his daughter. The transformation happens in a bathtub filled with chemicals where Henry Jekyll (Udo Kier) submerges himself completely and up pops actor (Gerard Zalcberg) as Edward Hyde. Filled with the director’s usual dark humor and sexual outrages, like the fact that Hyde’s penis is so long when hard it punctures the victims through the abdomen. There’s a feverish pitch to all of this uniquely bizarre film.

            I, Monster (1971) Christopher Lee plays Doctor Christopher Marlowe in 19^th Century England who philosophizes in men’s clubs with colleague Doctor Utterson (Peter Cushing), “Every human personality has two sides. What’s more is that I think they can be separated.” He whips up a serum which transforms him into the toothy, disheveled fiend- Edward Blake- who merrily commits crimes, even the stabbing of a prostitute. “My friend Blake has discovered the pleasures of what the world calls evil.” The preview stated that the movie was “recommended only if your veins can stand the cold torment of evil.”

            Horror High (1973) A cult (and personal) favorite about nerdy, teen, science geek Vernon Potts (Pat Cardi), who is relentlessly bullied at school by fellow students and teachers. One night a cruel janitor makes him swallow a vial in the chemistry lab which transforms Vernon into a hulking monster. Handsome Austin Stoker (Assault on Precinct 13) plays a cop hot on his trail. Vernon gets to stomp to death a gym coach and use a paper cutter to dismember a hateful teacher. When this played on TV as Twisted Brain most of the gore was cut out and the movie was padded with boring sequences about Vernon’s absentee father. (On a personal note, I remember going home with someone just because they said this was their favorite film).

            Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde (1976) A black doctor (Bernie Casey) working at a free clinic in Watts is testing a cure for liver cancer and when he experimentally injects the serum into his own arm he turns into a homicidal white maniac. Well, actually he looks like someone blew a bag of flour in his face. Directed by Blacula director William Crain, it’s really well acted (especially by Casey) and full of snappy dialogue. One of my favorite bits is when a hooker sashays past her pimp in a bar and says, “I gotta call my momma, motherfucker.”

            Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1973) A made-for-TV musical shot in England with Kirk Douglas belting out Broadway-like show tunes in the title role. Music and lyrics from Lionel Bart (probably numbers that never made the cut of Oliver!). Kirk plays the kindly doctor who wants to cure the insane at the local asylum, but whose experiments turn him into a melodious fiend. Donald Pleasence plays a pickpocket who bursts into a rousing song and dance. Kirk gets to sing, “Rules Were Meant to Be Broken,” and Susan Hampshire, who plays Jekyll’s love interest, croons, “I Bought a Blooming Bicycle Today.” This sounds so God-awful I would kill to see it, and will not rest until I track down a copy. (I also admit I haven’t had the guts yet to watch David Hasselhoff’s version of the Broadway musical online).

            Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953) I’ve always found the comic antics of Abbott & Costello insufferable. But there’s the joy of that wonderful Universal Studios production design and the mood of fog-shrouded London streets that make this movie kind of fun. There’s also the great Boris Karloff as the respected Dr. Jekyll who transforms into a monster. After the transformation to Mr. Hyde, Boris is replaced by stuntman Eddie Parker. Lou Costello (playing “Tubby”) does get to mistakenly drink serum and sprout a giant mouse head. Later he transforms into a pudgy, mini-Mr. Hyde when he sits on an injection needle. But, by then, you’ll want to pop open a vein.

            Jekyll and Hyde…Together Again (1982) In the best scene of maybe the worst version ever made of the story, the camera moves slowly towards a grave marked “Robert Louis Stevenson” then pans down into the coffin where a skeleton spins around, crying out, “My story’s ruined!”