[6]
Ralph Bates (The Horror of Frankenstein) stars as the infamous Dr. Jekyll, harvesting female hormones from fresh cadavers in his quest to invent a cure for all ailments. His experiments lead to an interesting result, though: a male fly becomes a female fly. Jekyll drinks the potion and turns into a lovely young woman (Martine Beswick) who he passes off to the neighbors as his sister, Mrs. Hyde. Mrs. Hyde, however, doesn’t like being just an alter-ego. She wants more, and she’s willing to kill for it — determined to defeat her male counterpart permanently.
Hammer Films is obviously cashing in on kinky, exploitation concepts with this film, but writer Brian Clemens (The Avengers) and director Roy Ward Baker (Quatermass and the Pit) make it a much more thoughtful and atmospheric film than you might imagine. The crossdressing and transsexual subtext is pretty daring for the early ’70s, including some revealing moments of ecstasy when Mrs. Hyde revels in her new female flesh. Naturally, one of the first things she does is strip down in front of a standing mirror to check out her boobs. The film never fully explains why Dr. Jekyll is compelled to keep drinking the potion and becoming a woman for brief intervals, but we have to assume it’s for some deep-rooted desire linked to repressed femininity or sexual identity.
The film’s pacing becomes problematic in the final half hour. It feels like it wants to end at least three different times, but then continues to outstay its welcome by a good ten or fifteen minutes. I find Bates underwhelming and lacking screen presence, but Beswick balances the score with her entertaining, committed performance. The supporting players are even better, including Lewis Fiander as an erudite upstairs neighbor who can’t hide his immediate attraction to Beswick. I think Fiander should have played Jekyll, but Hammer was convinced for some odd reason that Bates was their next Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee. (He wasn’t.) Gerald Sim is memorable as a professor friend of Jekyll’s who helps the police with their investigation. The film benefits from Hammer’s high production values, including great costumes, lush, fog-drenched photography, and a solid score by David Whitaker.
With Susan Brodrick, Dorothy Alison, and Philip Madoc as a creepy morgue worker who may or may not be sleeping with the corpses. Oh, Hammer.