As I put on this film, my wife asked me if I would watch as many Hammer Horror films if she wasn’t around. She doesn’t like horror films, you see; she can’t stand the violence, the gore, and the scares. But she enjoys the Hammer films, as they are a little bit cheesy but well produced and not all that scary. I answered in the negative, as I probably would not watch as many films from the famed studio without her. Oh, I’d still watch their films, but I do have a habit of putting them on when I want to watch a horror film with her. It is either Hammer or Universal, and I’ve seen all the Universal films.
As you have probably surmised, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is based on the novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. This was the third time Hammer Studios had adapted that novella. The previous two were The Ugly Duckling (1959) and The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960).
As the change of title suggests, this film takes quite a few liberties with the text and throws in some strong references to Jack the Ripper and Burke & Hare (the historical grave robbers/murderers).
Dr. Henry Jekyll (Ralph Bates) has dedicated his life to creating an elixir that will cure all known illnesses. But when his friend and libertine Professor Robertson (Gerald Sim) points out that it will take him more years than he has left to create such an elixir, Jekyll becomes obsessed with finding a life-extending potion. He believes that since women live longer than men on average, the solution to his problem lies in female hormones.
He at first enlists Burke and Hare to provide him with fresh corpses from which to extract those hormones, but soon enough he’ll turn to murdering sex workers. His elixir transforms him into a woman whom he pretends is his sister named Mrs. Hyde (Martine Beswick). While Jekyll is a bit reserved, and shy (especially around women, specifically his upstairs neighbor Susan (Susan Broderick)), and dedicated to his work, Hyde is wild, sexy, passionate, and a bit mad.
There is no actual indication the elixir will prolong life, but Jekyll is obsessed with it anyway. The more hormones he extracts, the more often he changes into Hyde. The more often he changes into Hyde, the more she wants to be the dominant person. Eventually, she’ll stop needing the hormones and be able to change him at will. This then becomes a battle of wills, with each personality fighting for dominance.
There are some fascinating queer/trans readings of the films that I don’t feel qualified to comment on, but they are out there if you look for them. I’m not sure the film is all that interested in diving into gender and sexual politics, but it is quite fascinating to ponder them nonetheless. There is a rather funny scene when Jekyll first transforms into Hyde where she fondles her naked breasts with curiosity. I found the gender twist to be a fascinating change to the usual Jekyll/Hyde story. Martine Beswick is quite good as Hyde, giving the character a heightened sexuality and freedom. She’s not evil exactly (well, I mean she does quite a bit of murdering), but rather she longs to be freed from the body of Jekyll and his rather oppressed nature.
Production-wise, the film enjoys Hammer’s usual excellent set designs and costumes. Director Roy Ward Baker and cinematographer Norman Warwick make great use of fog machines, making the nighttime London streets look quite eerie and beautiful. There are some wonderful transition scenes as well, making Jekyll’s transformation into Hyde quite believable.
The romantic scenes between Jekyll and Susan feel a bit superfluous and dull (Hyde’s seduction of Susan’s brother is much more fun to watch), and its attempts to either turn Jekyll into Jack the Ripper or at least make him some sort of copycat feel a bit tacked on, but mostly I quite enjoyed this film. If you are a fan of Hammer’s Horror output or Dr. Jekyll adaptations, I highly recommend it.
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