Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

About twenty minutes in I thought I was watching a 1930s porno. Dr. Jekyll, who has a fiance he's deeply in love with, stops a guy from beating-up a hooker, Ivy. He carries her to her home to make sure she's okay. Ivy suddenly sees a decent guy with money (he is a Doctor) and starts coming on to him. She pretty much strips naked and gets into bed waiting for him to join her. This is nothing today but 80 years ago there must have been an argument over it.

Beyond the legend of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that persists, I'm really not that familiar with the story. I liked the character from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen but I'm unfamiliar with his roots in fiction. I had no idea Mr. Hyde was such a brutal, sadistic character, made all the more shocking by the normality of Dr. Jekyll. He's got the perfect life; a college professor who has time for scientific research and a beautiful fiance he's impatient to marry. The story shows you up front how much he has to loose when he makes the decision to drink a chemical concoction that goes horribly wrong.

Mr. Hyde is nearly a werewolf who is intelligent but manages to beat-up nearly every character present. He spends at least a quarter of the movie psychologically and physically torturing Ivy before finally killing her. I never expected anything this violent on screen. Even Frankenstein killing Little Maria was played as a sad, touching moment. Not Ivy, she's abused like she was in A Street Car Named Desire. But, that is the point of the story; one part civilized, one part animalistic.

I do strangely recommend the movie even though I hated most of Mr. Hyde's scenes. Not because they were bad in any way (Fredric March won the Oscar for playing both roles), he's just not someone I enjoy watching. Except when he's running away. There is actual stunt-work in the movie. He beats people and jumps around props and such, very much a physical monkey trying to run away. Not at all the lumbering mass that denotes Frankenstein.

The camera and make-up effects are the best thing about the movie. Only a couple times is it obvious a camera cut was added to a transformation scene. Most of the time his transformation is in one take as you see him become more grotesque from Jekyll to Hyde. There are a few times we experience the movie in first person. The camera is the eye of Dr. Jekyll and we see his world as it spins out of control. A very interesting technique.

The story skirts the realm of Sci-Fi just a little so I added some thoughts on the movie to my Tumblr account. I rented it on Amazon Instant Video but it is available on DVD.