DR JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE (1971)

Please note we are NOT discussing 1995’s “Dr. Jeckyll and Ms. Hyde.”

This is a movie discussion group. While participants usually arrive having watched the film beforehand, you are invited to come and listen if you haven't seen the film yet.

“A Victorian scientist tests a serum that transforms him into a sensuous murderess.”

Directed by Roy Ward Baker

Screenplay by Brian Clemens

Based on the 1886 novella by Robert Louis Stevenson

With Ralph Bates, Martine Beswick and Gerald Sim

1 hour 34 mins.

Available to stream and rent in a variety of places. Check justwatch.com for details.

Hammer Film Productions can certainly be accused of recycling—actors, directors, plots, sets, costumes, etc. Indeed, this is their THIRD version of the Jekyll and Hyde story. But even if the films can look indistinguishable, under the surface daring themes are sometimes investigated. In fact it’s hard to think of another horror film from this era that slams so hard and fast into questions about gender, identity, sexuality, duality, desire and violence. If the original novella is structured around the Victorian fear of the grotesque id-driven monster inside every civilized white, wealthy, educated man, this film asks: What if that monster is a gorgeous but brutal woman? Is she all the more attractive because she’s violent? And has she been there all along? What does it say about the social conventions of a (former) world empire (19th century UK) if a kick-ass bad girl in a red dress threatens to bring the whole society crashing down to dust? Rather than trivializing the material, unapologetic camp might be the poison, and not the sugar, in the female hormones Jekyll becomes addicted to.