Two Faces of Dr Jekyll [DVD] [2010]

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Paul Massie) has no life anymore, chained to his work and stuck in a loveless marriage to Kitty (Dawn Addams), he busy's himself working on a character altering potion. Firstly testing it on primates, Jekyll ignores the warnings from his friend Dr. Ernst Littauer (David Kossoff) and experiments on himself. The result brings out Jekyll's alter ego, Mr. Edward Hyde, a debonair gentlemen who holds within a sadistic dangerous streak. Hyde spells danger for anyone who gets too close to him, particularly Kitty, Jekyll's morally bankrupt friend Paul Allen (Christopher Lee) and more worryingly, Jekyll himself.

The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll is by Hammer Film Productions. It's directed by Terence Fisher and is adapted by Wolf Mankowitz from the famous story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Tho very much a middle tier offering from the house of Hammer, this version of the often told tale puts a different slant on things to make it unique and always interesting. Jekyll here is a bland and reclusive person, the people closest to him cheat on him and he is powerless to stop it. Contrast with Hyde, handsome and charming and able to take what he wants either by cunning or brute force. This was a deliberate shift from the normal by Fisher and Mankowitz, they didn't want Hyde as some furry half man beast frothing at the mouth, they sided with evil lurking behind a charming facade. It's also notable for its ending too. Where they had the courage of their convictions to stay with a differing formula.

The problems come if one is searching for a horror film in the Hammer tradition. For although Hammer traits such as a smouldering sexiness hang over proceedings, the film is in truth lacking in terror. Something which is sure to annoy the horror purists. But if you can accept this as a more restrained psychological horror piece, one that deals in the duality of man, the pursuit of something more and the often treacherous nature of the human being, the rewards are there to be enjoyed. The cast are fine, Massie is competent without the ham, and Lee is elegantly vile to fit seamlessly into character. But the bonus is with a flame headed Dawn Addams who comes up with something more than the usual heaving bosom Hammer leading lady. The cast also features an early appearance from none other than Oliver Reed, suitably playing a night club pimp type bit of muscle. Shot in Megascope and Technicolor the film thankfully looks gorgeous and has transfered excellently on to DVD. With the sultry red lipped Addams and Jekyll's garden particularly benefiting from the pinging colours.

A dam good story with wit and cautionary observations of the human condition, this isn't one for the blood and gore brigade. But it has many other qualities just waiting to be discovered by the more literary minded horror fan. 7/10

Of all the classic horror movie staples, Hammer had perhaps their least success with Jekyll and Hyde, and Terence Fisher's 1960 effort The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll is a case in point. An original but nonetheless misconcieved departure from the premise of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novella, this film isn't all that familiar to many Hammer fans, as since its initial release (on which it flopped quite badly, particularly in the US) it has very rarely received TV screenings, and hasn't been widely distributed on VHS or DVD. It features Canadian actor Paul Massie as a bearded, socially paralysed Henry Jekyll whose experiments with his dual nature unleash his alter-ego in the form of a handsome, smooth-talking, sociopathic Edward Hyde; there's actually as much of Stevenson's plot here as there was of Mary Shelley's and Bram Stoker's in Hammer's first Frankenstein and Dracula movies (1957, 1958), which also attempted to pare down the scope and scale of their sprawling source material via very economical screenplays. However, here Dr. Jekyll himself is the one and only character who survives the translation to film, which, like all movie versions of this story, forsakes the mystery set-up of the original book in favour of putting the Jekyll / Hyde character(s) centre stage from the start.
Massie is a serviceable lead, but it seems odd that the title role wasn't given to Christopher Lee, who had recently played the Frankenstein Creature, Count Dracula, and the Mummy for Fisher, and seemed ideally positioned to continue his run of great movie monsters. By now cheesed off that Hammer had denied him the leading parts in both The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Man Who Could Cheat Death (both 1959), he was similarly unimpressed to be offered a mere supporting role here too; however, as Paul Allen, Jekyll's libertine of a friend who falls victim to the murderous Hyde, Lee gives one of his most enjoyable performances anyway, acting Massie off the screen. Dawn Addams is also very good as Jekyll's wife, a far more conflicted and morally dubious character than was usually the case with Hammer's whiter-than-white heroines.
Fisher reportedly had little enthusiasm for this project (an attempt by producer Michael Carreras and screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz to elevate the status of Hammer's output with the critics), but you wouldn't know it from the finished film, which is one of the firm's most expensive-looking of the period, with great photography from Jack Asher, and some very effective editing. However, the movie is short on outright scares (there's nothing here to match the visual effects used to transform Fredric March's Jekyll in Rouben Mamoulian's definitive 1931 version), and for all its tinkering with Stevenson's original tale, Mankowitz's script doesn't really do the business (explanations of exactly what the scientist is trying to achieve are far more muddled here than in many other adaptations, and Hyde himself is finally revealed to be nothing more than a rapist with revenge on his mind). Even so, with Lee in the title role and the Paul Allen part handed over to, say, Oliver Reed (who turns up all too briefly as a nightclub pimp), this could have been a reasonable success, but as it stands, it's considerably weaker than Hammer's later (and even weirder) take on the tale, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), which is today regarded as a minor fan favourite. As for Lee, he was to eventually have even less success with Jekyll and Hyde than Hammer did, as his only real shot at the part(s), Amicus' I, Monster (1970), was to emerge as another over-ambitious misfire.

In Hammer's 1960 take on the famous story by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll (Paul Massie) develops a personality-changing drug and transforms himself from a crusty, bearded old sod into a young, handsome, but completely immoral, man-about-town using the alias of Mr. Hyde. When Jekyll/Hyde discovers that his beautiful but unfaithful wife, Kitty (Dawn Addams), is having an affair with his friend, Paul Allen (Christopher Lee), a compulsive gambler, he plots a wicked revenge....

Directed by the great Terence Fisher, this is one of Hammer's most beautiful-looking films that is well-acted by a fine cast. Paul Massie is good in his dual roles, and solid support is provided by Dawn Addams (who looks absolutely gorgeous) and the ever-reliable Christopher Lee and look out for a young Oliver Reed in a small role. There is also a pretty good music score by Monty Norman, who was credited with composing the James Bond theme.

"The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll" (a.k.a. "House of Fright" and "Jekyll's Inferno") may not be one of Hammer's best-known films but I consider it to be one of their greatest and most enjoyable films from the early-1960s. Hammer went on to film another version of the Jekyll & Hyde story in 1971 with "Dr. Jekyll And Sister Hyde", directed by Roy Ward Baker, which had Dr. Jekyll (Ralph Bates) changing into a beautiful but murderous young woman (played by Martine Beswick).