‘It’s a question of morality. I have to weigh an evil against an unquestioned good…’
The problem with adapting one of the classics of Victorian literature is that you’re contending with the fact that it will probably have already been adapted many times before. Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde finds a solution to this problem that flies in the face of historical accuracy but is wildly entertaining all the same…
Released in 1971, a full forty years after the celebrated Paramount version, this Hammer Films Productions take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel retains the skeleton of the story that we all know and love (mad scientist succeeds in creating an evil alter ego), but adds a feminine twist. Here, Dr Jekyll (Ralph Bates), in his quest for eternal life, creates Mrs Edwina Hyde (Martine Beswick) – an evil murderess who stalks the streets of Victorian London. The further and perhaps more ingenious twist is that this story also incorporates the real-life atrocities committed by Burke and Hare and Jack the Ripper. It’s a bold and pleasingly zany concept that immediately elevates Roy Ward Baker’s film above many of the other adaptations of this story.
Bates battles one of the worst onscreen haircuts of all time to deliver a suitably hapless performance as Jekyll, and Beswick is convincingly nefarious as his evil ‘sister’, but it is Gerald Sim as Jekyll’s sceptical friend Professor Robertson who deserves all the plaudits. He has a smoothness and an elegance that ensures that he steals every scene in which he appears – particularly his final contribution (no spoilers, but it’s a joy).
My one criticism is that because there is so much going on, the story never really fully hangs together, and genuine scares are few and far between also (although there are some pleasingly dastardly moments – a man is blinded after being thrown into a pit of lime at one point), but that one small gripe aside, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a madcap romp through the various barbarities of the era – one of the most purely enjoyable Hammer horror films on the market.
