Skip to main content

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) - John S. Robertson


Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde is probably a great movie, just don't watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari before this. German Expressionism blows American Horror out of the water. At least during the Silver Age (1915 - 1929), the longest run of great horror cinema. American Horror couldn't keep up with the Germans until the 1930's. Thank you James Whale. Anyway, I digress, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde is a so-so horror movie.
After watching and being blown away by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robertson’s Dr. Jekyll is just downright un-watchable. John Berrymore is a decent choice to play the bi-polar scientist but the movie just loses steam right out of the gate. Perhaps a better soundtrack or just a more interesting story-line would help. This is where I should tell you that I am not that crazy for Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. The best part is, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of renditions. There are countless.

John Berrymore is always a treat, he can really bring a performance all be this one is a bit underwhelming. The costumes, the set-design, the whole thing really has the potential but it just can’t make it out of the gates. The transformation in the movie is amazing. Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde is one of the better transformations and Barrymore didn’t even have to use that much make-up. He is quite the character actor.

Watching the film for a second time made me realize that my dislike for the movie comes from the soundtrack. There is no musical change to set moods or even scenes. Long, pointless, songs are played with disregard to the things going on in the movie.

This won’t be the last time we see these characters, or John Barrymore for that matter.

S!D

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ju-On (2000) - Takashi Shimizu

Watching Japanese horror is similar to watching British comedy. If you enjoy dry whit then you probably enjoy the boys of Monty Python in drag. That's the joke, they're dressed like women. Get it? Well, that's British humor. But if you're like most Americans you probably prefer Adam Sandler farting his way across a football field and hooking up with chicks that are way out of his league. Americans usually prefer this more in your face, crass brand of humor. My point is funny in England is different from funny in the US. The same goes for J-Horror. What the Japanese consider scary is very different from what Americans consider scary and it shows in this horror film. Japanese horror is generally slow (a little too slow sometimes), suspenseful and creepy. Ju-On is a creepy effing film. The movie has almost no soundtrack. It is incredibly suspenseful and the pay-offs are pretty awesome, but I think that it was done better in the American version (cultural t...
Post a Comment
Not scared yet? »

Le Diable au Convent (1899) - George Melies

Le Diable au Convent is longer than the two previous Georges Méliès ventures into short form horror. This particular French short shows the Devil himself running a convent and terrorizing the poor old nuns that live there. However he is finally vanquished by the good of Faith. This is yet another Méliès classic, showcasing the art work that really goes into his short film-making. This is one of the earliest examples of a horror movie that could rely on its elaborate set design and artistic design. Everything in this film, although horribly aged, has been packaged extremely well. If you are a fan of production and set design then I would highly recommend just about anything that Melies has his name on. Though nothing that is considered too extreme actually happens, Satan does have his way with a convent. The satanic imagery itself must have kept this film on the traveling carnival circuit. It certainly wouldn’t fit into the good moral bag that society shoved i...
1 comment
Not scared yet? »

Spookies (1986) - Genie Joseph, Thomas Doran, and Brendan Faulkner

It's impossible to get a decent movie when you take two films and just squash them together. That is essentially the story of how this movie came together. The film started as Twisted Souls. However, according to the financial backer they didn't have enough horror. So they ended up hiring another guy to come in and add a monster in virtually every scene.  This movie started out being directed by Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran. It basically is the tale of two sets of teenagers that arrive to a strange building surrounded by a strange cemetery. It was your usual tale of teenagers in a big hows with a few monsters. Then they brought in Genie Joseph and added even more. Like a haunted birthday party, a murderous cat-man, zombies, and an old wizard. It really became a smorgasbord of horror with a very thin plot-line leading it around. This movie is hard to summarize in a conventional way. It just packs so much.  The most interesting part of this movie are ...
2 comments
Not scared yet? »