Tampering with the Laws of Man (and Woman)

I am a big fan of classic monster films. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years watching and reviewing films from the likes of DraculaHe's the great undead fiend, the Prince of Darkness, the monster based on a real historical figure. He... is Dracula!, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, Frankenstein, and others (almost all of which you can read over on Asteroid G’s sister site, Castlevania: The Inverted Dungeon). More recently I broadened what I watched and reviewed to encompass some of the other Universal MonstersThis franchise, started off with Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931, was a powerhouse of horror cinema for close to two decades, with many of the creatures continuing on in one-off movies years later. that didn’t fit into the Castlevania theming, monsters that weren’t part of the series, didn’t have roles as major bosses for the franchise, such as the Invisible ManOriginally created by H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man is probably best known from the series of Universal Monsters featuring various versions of the titular character.. These beasts didn’t have a major role in the series (the Invisible Man only appears as a regular enemy one game, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin) but I feel like, to have a true understanding of classic monsters you have to view all that the major studios, Universal and Hammer, were making.

That, naturally, leads us to today’s subject: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Based on the Gothic novella by Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, many studios have, over the years, produced their own take on the monster. Universal made two classic versions (one a crossover with Abbott and Costello), Hammer made three during the studio’s original run, and many other studios have taken their own stabs as well. There are hundreds of adaptations of the duo, some of them that take plenty of liberties with the work. And Hammer’s third attempt, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, is no exception.

Produced in 1971, following Hammer’s previous adaptations of The Ugly Duckling (a humorous take on the material) and The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (a more grounded take), Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a rather interesting version of the story. It doesn’t just seek to adapt the basic story by Stephenson, instead mashing that story up against the historical Ripper killings of Whitechapel, as well as going with a curious gender-flip take on the monster. It has a lot of big ideas, and some potentially interesting storytelling beats, that make the film at least somewhat watchable. This isn’t one of Hammer’s best horror films, but as a curious take on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde material, it does certainly stand out.

The story begins in medias res, with a killer out on the hunt, looking for a victim he can kill. He’s stalking young women, although at this point his motives aren’t clear, but we do know that he’s the Ripper, the murderer that has been mutilating prostitutes in back alleys of Whitechapel. He claims a victim, fleeing home while the police swarm, and we soon realize that the killer is none other than Dr. Jekyll (Ralph Bates), and that’s what we go back to before all the murder and mayhem to find out just why he’s killing.

Jekyll, as we learn, is obsessed with curing disease. He talks about being able to create a kind of super-antivirus, something that could fight all diseases, but in talking about this cure-all with his friend, Professor Robertson (Gerald Sim), he has to admit that it would take decades for him to wipe out each and every virus on his own. Instead of bringing in more people to share the load, though, Jekyll decides that his best course of action is to create an elixir of life, a draught that can keep him alive forever. And, with some consideration, he devises just that.

Going to a morgue and collecting samples of hormone producing organs from dead, young women, Jekyll creates a serum that continues life. With a small drop he’s able to keep a house fly, a species that dies within hours, alive for three days. With that kind of success, how long could he keep a human alive, he wonders. So he gets more of the organs he needs, working with local body snatchers, and tries to elixir on himself. It works, but with a curious side effect: it turns him, briefly, into a woman. Jekyll realizes he has to study this more, but when the body snatchers he was working with get caught and punished, Jekyll is forced to go out on his own… and kill. And all this time, the woman living within him, the one that he created, becomes more and more powerful, and she starts to dominate his life while handling his killing as well.

By its broad strokes Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde follows the expected story along its normal beats. A doctor creates a draught that turns him into a monster, and then the monster starts to rule his life, hurting and killing and being the monster we all expect, so the doctor has to fight back and find a way to stop the monster for good. That’s all well and good and we know the story well enough to understand what it’s saying. This is a story about the hubris of man, of science unchecked, about the evil man can achieve when he toys with the powers of God.

But then the film does some curious things that certainly don’t fit into the normal bounds of Stephenson’s original novella. The first swerve is tying the film into the crimes of Jack the Ripper. Hammer, as a studio, used the Ripper more than once as a monster for their films, such as in Hands of the Ripper (which, amusingly, was also released in 1971). The Ripper is an evocative figure, and he does tie in well to the time period of Stevenson’s story, although the author never made that connection since his novella (released in 1886) came out two years before the Ripper murders (which took place in 1888).

It also ties in the case of Burke and Hare, too. These were two body snatchers, killers who used to find young women, murder them, and sell their bodies to morgues for a tidy profit. They operated for ten months in 1828 in Edinburgh, and I’m sure you can see a problem there. These two existed (and were caught) sixty years before the Ripper murders. While it is interesting to see them as characters in this film, it does remove any semblance of historical accuracy that the film might have been trying for. They could have been any body snatchers based on the historical figures and they would have been fine, but calling them Burke and Hare (played by Ivor Dean and Tony Calvin, respectively) actually ruins the vibe a little.

And then there’s the big twist on the whole formula: making Hyde into a woman. She’s “Sister Hyde” because, to explain her away to his neighbors, Jekyll calls her his “sister”. I suppose, from a certain perspective, that is accurate. The female angle allows Hammer to play with a few ideas in the Ripper story, since people are out searching for a man as the killer, so a woman is above suspicion. She can be a femme fatale, killing for sport (and to protect her secret). And, of course, having a woman for the Hyde role allows Hammer to indulge in the usual bits of nudity that marked their films. They always worked in a little T&A, especially in their 1960s and 1970s movies.

With that said, I don’t think this is really that interesting of an adaptation. It’s a fine movie by Hammer’s standards, with good acting, fine production values, and their usually solid staging and execution. But the film doesn’t really rise above the standard fare retelling of the material. Despite it layering in the female twist and the Ripper mythos, at the end of the day it does hit the usual monster movie beats that were so expected in their productions. Monster is introduced, monster does some evil, monster dies. The formula for both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as for Hammer’s horror productions in general, was already well calcified at this point, and the film does nothing to break out of it. It hits its beats, does the usual horror journey, and then ends exactly where you expect it to. It’s very staid, very standard. It’s very Hammer.

I like Hammer’s films, but I always prefer it when they find something truly new to do with the monsters. While the female twist on Hyde is nice, it doesn’t feel like enough. Just saying, “and this time Hyde is a woman,” barely feels revolutionary. She’s still a killer, still hunting for sport. She’s an under-developed character outside of being a woman, and once the initial shock of the transformation is over, she becomes just another Hyde. I would have liked more, a little sly commentary, a little more development of her femme fatale role. I wanted something.

If you haven’t seen a Hammer horror production before, or an adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde isn’t a bad one to watch. It’s fun, it’s a little odd, and it shows the things that Hammer could do so well. But at the end of the day it’s still, weirdly, a little too run of the mill to truly stand out, this despite its gender-twisted villain. It’s an interesting starting point for new monster fans, but those that have traveled the genre before will find better elsewhere.