Le Fils du Dr. Jekyll

Look at the house in the background of the scene where Edward is kissing his fiancée goodbye for three months. The house looks like the Leave it to Beaver house. If you look closely you can see the gutters on the house and the electric wires going onto it.

Most of the IMDb reviews are right on. This feature is atmospheric, but except for the opening and a rather illogical closing scene, is pretty low on thrills. In between, grouchy Louis Hayward runs around and gets into little fistfights, but as Jekyll. Hyde is almost unseen in the story. Blooper highlight: as one reviewer mentioned, you do see the romantic leads-supposedly at the turn of the century-- bidding each other farewell in the front yard of an obviously 1950's suburban house a la "Leave It to Beaver."

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.

What a lovely movie to look at. Wonderful costumes and sets make this movie a real treat to the eye. Some of the best I've seen in a period horror film. The acting is also quite good. It's just too bad that this is all The Son of Dr. Jekyll has to offer.

It's easy to see why this film was titled The Son of Dr. Jekyll and not The Son of Mr. Hyde. Other than the opening scene where Hyde (I'm not entirely sure it was Hyde) has about five minutes of screen time, we see him for less than 10 seconds in the rest of the film. Very disappointing. Without Hyde, Dr. Jekyll has a tough time carrying a movie by himself.

The movie is really more of a crime mystery than a horror regardless of how it is listed on IMDb. The "son" spends the majority of the movie tying to figure out who is framing him as mad killer. While it is a decent enough idea for a movie, the killer's true identity is given away so early that there are few dramatic or tense moments later on.

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.