Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by David Winters; Executive Producers: Winters and Burt Rosen, taped telefilm for Bryna Productions, broadcast by NBC. Screenplay by Sherman Yellen; Photography by Dick Bush; Edited by Stuart Baird and Bob Best; Music and Book by Lionel Bart, Mel Mandel and Norman Sacks; Choreography by Eleanor Fazan. Starring: Kirk Douglas, Susan George, Susan Hampshire, Stanley Holloway, Donald Pleasence, Michael Redgrave and Judi Bowker.

Surprisingly successful and entertaining taped musicalization of the Stevenson perennial, with Bart's musical numbers often self-consciously recalling his "Oliver!" hit. Douglas is good with a Fredric March-style swept-up upper lip, but receives brilliant support, especially immensely sexy and evocative young Susan George, whose extreme youth is played off against a 13-year-old street moppet. Dick Bush as lighting cameraman creates classic compositions, overcoming Winters' textbook direction.

This TV production did not have songs cut from Oliver, The score was to be an original by Oliver's composer Lionel Bart. Uncredited composers were brought in to "doctor" Bart's awful score. Certainly that horrid graveyard number with Jekyll playing a gravestone shaped like a piano has to be the worst moment in the film. On the other hand some of it is so unintentionally funny you end up enjoying it anyway. Kirk Douglas' performance is pretty good, his singing isn't. Still compared to the David Hasselhoff video of the Broadway musical this could be called a masterpiece. Maybe Jekyll and Hyde shouldn't be musicalized, or at least should be given to more talented creators.

If `Oliver!' was Lionel Bart's `Sgt. Pepper,' then `Dr. J & Mr. H' was his `Let It Be.'

But I don't blame him nor the brilliant cast for the dullness of this made-in-the-UK-for-NBC production. It would never have been made in the first place if some ratings-hungry hack at 30 Rock wasn't desperate to sell an idea.

At the time PBS' `Masterpiece Theater' was scoring Sunday night ratings airing the opulent British costume serials then being made. Said hack had the idea of putting a famous Yank in that sea of British accents. They even made sure they cast Susan Hampshire, who was in just about everyone of those serials, plus some Brits the American audience knew from the movies (Donald Pleasence, Stanley Holloway, Michael Redgrave.) The guy from `Oliver!' has some other songs? And he's broke? Great! Get him, too! Have it ready by such & such date!

It was hyped to the nines in the U.S. media, only to crash in the ratings and the columns. I know of this only because of on-line research; I was fascinated why I'd never heard of such a teaming of talent. I even bought an old copy via eBay; I found myself yawning and fast-forwarding.

Apparently, great players alone don't make a team; the coach must know what he'll do with them. If they're going to play on their home ground, it helps if they play for their home crowd, too. (`Covington Cross' flopped for the same reason.)

In my opinion this is an excellent remake of the classic story. Kirk Douglas in the role of Dr. Henry Jekyll and his evil counterpart Mr. Edward Hyde, is as good as Fredric March was in the 1931 film, and better than Spencer Tracy in the 1941 version.

And Susan George is better for the part of two bit hooker than both Miriam Hopkins (1931) and Ingrid Bergman (1941).

Only blemish is the singing, which does not contribute to the atmosphere but almost destroys the tension and excitement.

Overall though a very good enjoyable film.

The concept of musicalizing R. L. Stevenson' classic horror novella must have been as strange as making Jekyll the handsomer of the two personas in Hammer Films' disappointing 1960 version. Also, the fact that I have been waiting to watch this particular (and quite rare – despite a one-off Yuletide screening of it ages ago on local TV which I missed) adaptation for 30 years – ever since I read about it in Alan Frank's "Monsters And Vampires" book, I was prepared to be let down by it. However, Lionel Bart's unmemorable score notwithstanding, it offers not just a splendid cast well engaged with the material but enough 'new' additions to make the whole affair a delightful concoction (pun intended). Kirk Douglas' Dr. Jekyll is a Canadian immigrant in London who is seeking a cure for mental illness; Stanley Holloway is his loyal butler Poole; Susan Hampshire is Jekyll's long-suffering high society fiancée; Sir Michael Redgrave is her disapproving father; Donald Pleasence is a low-life showing Mr. Hyde the ropes in the night spots of Soho; Susan George and a young Judi Bowker are Hyde's protégées/victims. There are no heated "Good vs. Evil" discussions here (Jekyll's biggest faux-pas in the eyes of society here is arriving on a bicycle for tea!); he decides to drink his own formula after he is refused to try it out on the inmates of the local asylum and, unaccountably, keeps a vial of it ready for use in his laboratory; Hyde takes to visiting the Houses of Parliament and pelt MPs with fruit and vegetables!; the arrested Hyde wakes up in prison as the good doctor and is immediately sprung; Jekyll is haunted by multiple visions of Hyde in his laboratory when he decides to kill him off; George does not expire from the beatings of her 'protector' but loses her mind (after being taken on a midnight stroll to visit her own grave!); it is footman Pleasence himself who blows Jekyll's cover – at which point the doctor has the mother of all meltdowns in front of everybody and jumps at Hampshire's throat having transformed himself one last time into Hyde.