El hijo del Dr. Jekyll

This movie had all the promise of being a good, old fashioned thriller, but unfortunately, the premise was wasted.

Louis Hayward plays Edward Jekyll, the son of the late Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Most of his time on the screen is spent trying to prove that his father was not the crazed killer, Dr. Hyde, but instead just the brilliant but misunderstood Dr. Jekyll.

This movie was billed as a horror movie, but there is no horror. There are just a few very brief glimpses of the mad Mr. Hyde. This movie had good actors and it could have been so much more had they spent more time with the scary element of the Jekyll and Hyde story. By the end I was just bored with the whole thing.

I thought Edward Ulmer's 1957 movie entitled "The Daughter of Dr. Jekyll", starring Gloria Talbot and John Agar, was a much better film. Even though it was cheesy in parts, it was not boring. This one will put you to sleep.

Years after the horrors of the original tale, Jekyll / Hyde's child has reached adulthood.

THE SON OF DR. JEKYLL has the titular offspring, Edward Jekyll (Louis Hayward) picking up where dear old dad left off. Mad science commences when Edward sets out to prove the merit of his father's experiments. Using his father's laboratory, he recreates the fateful formula.

What could possibly go wrong?

TSODJ is a decent follow-up to the classic DR. JEKYLL movies, with the added twist of a nefarious character who causes big trouble for Edward.

A solid entry in the SON OF... sub genre...

Although Robert Louis Stevenson fails to mention a son in his work it turns out that he does and is played by Louis Hayward. He's been raised in secret and until recently was not aware of the chaos dear old dad caused with his experiments in Victorian London.

Anyway Hayward moves back into the old family dwelling and his neighbors are not pleased. Especially when some brutal events start occuring. Can it be the monster from the Jekyll DNA Id Mr. Hyde has returned courtesy of experiments Hayward is doing. Hayward does have an aptitude for science like dad, but what else?

I think Columbia Pictures which produced The Son Of Dr. Jekyll was fortunate to secure the services of Louis Hayward. Hayward could play swashbuckling heroes and some really dastardly scoundrels with equal ability. His ambiguous screen persona aids greatly here as you don't know how this will come out.

The rest of the cast does well and it includes Jody Lawrance as the girl Hayward is courting, Lester Matthews as her titled dad who really wants no Jekylls on his family tree, Paul Cavanaugh as the Scotland Yard inspector, Rhys Williams as Hayward's butler and Alexander Knox as a colleague of the original Dr. Jekyll.

This was a well done sequel to the original story.

I realise that my one-line summary is faint praise indeed but it does reflect the quality of this film. Overall it's at best, a slightly below average story but, it does indeed get better and picks up the pace in the last one/third of the film. The black and white photography of this period piece is done very well with the street sets looking very authentic. Louis Hayward does his usual competent job and is assisted especially well by Alexander Knox and Rhys Williams. Jody Lawrence is pretty to look at but her character adds very little to the story. The identity of the real killer is divulged rather early so this film is not a whodunnit. If you start watching this movie and find yourself starting to get bored, try to stay with it for a while longer. You will eventually be rewarded with about 30 minutes of good action.

Son of Dr. Jekyll, The (1951)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Dr. Jekyll's son (Louis Hayward) goes back to the laboratory to try and prove his father wasn't a monster. This film actually gets off to a pretty good start but things quickly fall apart making this a rather poor film in the end. The performances from everyone in the cast are actually pretty good, which is shocking for this type of film. The first transformation scene is also very well effective but after this there isn't much here. The film seems to think that the viewers didn't want to see a monster but instead sit around and listen to bad dialogue. There's way too much talk going on in this film and this here makes it quite boring.