Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971)
Directed by Roy Ward Baker

Film Review

Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is given a whole new twist in this enjoyably twisted little gem from Hammer, one of the studio's more imaginative (and most gloriously unhinged) excursions into period horror.  Hammer had already notched up one reasonably faithful adaptation of Stevenson's classic novella, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), and before this there had been The Ugly Duckling (1959), a comedy based on the same story.  Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde easily outshines both of these two films and rates as one of Hammer's all time greats, thrilling and entertaining in roughly equal measure, with enough copious amounts of the red sticky stuff to satisfy any horror enthusiast.

With a director of Roy Ward Baker's calibre on board, there isn't much that could have gone wrong.  By this time, Baker had already delivered three respectable horror offerings for Hammer, including the lurid cult classic The Vampire Lovers (1970), and had got the period horror formula down to a fine art.  Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde is arguably Baker's best work for Hammer, and a creative high point in his impressive career.  No expense seems to have been spared on the set design and, with its atmospheric lighting and deftly fluid camerawork, the film exerts an almost hallucinatory force over the spectator.  Effortlessly, it draws us into the familiar nightmare world that is Victorian London, a nocturnal diorama of Hell that is forever wreathed in fog and fear.  Has there ever been a setting that is more evocative of spine-tingling menace than this?

The mind-boggling concept of a female Hyde sprang from the fertile imagination of Brian Clemens, one of the main contributors to the hit television series The Avengers and The Professionals.  From this initially bonkers premise, Clemens developed a compelling storyline which somehow ended up roping in Jack the Ripper and grave robbers Burke and Hare, an act of wanton sacrilege for the purists but a stroke of genius in narrative terms.  The pieces fit together perfectly and by the end of it you have no difficulty convincing yourself that the infamous Whitechapel murderer was a cross-dressing mad scientist obsessed with immortality.  At no stage does Clemens fail to see the funny side of this insane enterprise, evidenced by the rich vein of comedy underlying the visceral horror.  Hammer was rarely successful when it came to bringing comedy and horror together, but here is a rare example which achieves just that. 

Having played one mad scientist in The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), Ralph Bates is back to play another, with somewhat more success.  Owing to his lack of screen presence, Bates was never going to be, as Hammer had hoped, an effective successor to the great Peter Cushing in the Frankenstein role, but as the unassuming, weak-willed and morally conflicted Dr Jekyll he is an admirable casting choice.  Martine Beswick's striking physical resemblance to Bates, to say nothing of her mesmeric sensual allure, makes her equally well-suited for the part of Jekyll's evil female alter ego, Mrs Hyde.  The physical similarity of the two actors aids not only the transformation between their two characters, which is so seamless you can hardly believe your eyes, but the viewer's acceptance that they are genuinely two sides of the same persona.  No other film version of Stevenson's novella has so far managed to pull off this feat and so in this respect, and at least five thousand others, Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde is unique.  It's a queer business this, a very queer business...

Film Synopsis

In East London of the 1880s, the young Dr Henry Jekyll is diligently engaged on finding vaccines for man's most feared diseases.  Realising that he will take several life times before he will have achieved his objective, Jekyll diverts his efforts into looking for an elixir that will prolong his lifespan.  His research leads him to concoct a serum containing female hormones, obtained from the corpses of women supplied by grave robbers Burke and Hare.  When he takes his first dose of this serum Jekyll is surprised to find himself transformed into a woman!  Restored to his old, manly self, Jekyll must explain away the presence of the mysterious woman to his neighbours by saying she is his sister, Mrs Hyde.  Disaster strikes when Burke and Hare go out of business owing to poor public relations, and so Jekyll is forced to gather the body parts he needs himself if he is to continue his research.  Convinced that the ends will justify the means, he prowls the streets of Whitechapel after dark, ready to slice up any unfortunate prostitute who comes his way.  As his female alter ego begins to assert itself and become the dominant personality, Jekyll soon finds he/she is killing not for science but for pleasure...