Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll (1960) aka Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde aka House Of Fright aka Jekyll's Inferno

3.5 / 5

Tagline: N/A
Directed by: Terence Fisher
Written by: Wolf Mankowitz, Robert Louis Stevenson
Actors include: Christopher Lee, Dawn Addams, Paul Massie
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi
Length: 88 minutes
Banned: Finland
Country: UK

Review:
So this is one of Hammer's takes on the whole Jekyl Hyde thingy, and it's a pretty darned entertaining one. The story is certainly familiar, a scientist starts doing experiments about different sides of a personality. He experiments on himself, and of course he turns into a womanizing prick of a dude. According to my husband (who read the book) the actual transformation in this one is very much the same as in the book. When Hyde comes out a beard retracts and he gets younger...oh and he's actually a whole lot more likeable as the evil character than the likeable one! Although not the best adaptation I've seen as it is rather laughably cheesy in places, this was still colorful, it had a good sense of humor and it was really lovely visually. Even though Christopher Lee isn't the lead character this time around he's pretty fantastic as Jekyll/Hyde's drunken rowdy friend. Definitely not disappointing, fans of UK horror should definitely approve!

Availability:  On DVD (as part of this set)

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