Rent The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)

Horror Romp. - The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll review by Steve

Cheerful period horror which has zero scares, but is full of the kind of sexy decadence which was standard in Hammer films around 1960. Much of the salacious subtext of Robert Louis Stevenson's eternal classic is turned into sterile dialogue in the first few minutes, after which Wolf Mankowitz's script shuffles the deck to good effect.

So while Dr. Jekyll is a bearded Victorian gentleman, his alter ego is clean shaved and blue eyed, because, of course, beauty is no guarantee of virtue. And there is the implication that Mr. Hyde's philosophical egotism equates him with fascism. But no matter, it's fun to see the mad scientist slumming around the degenerate London underworld.

There is exotic dancing with a snake and much imaginative murder. Oliver Reed is a rowdy pimp last seen having his head staved in by the angry medic. Paul Massie is too respectable to play the debauched beast of the unbridled human id, but Christopher Lee is reptilian enough as his slippery rival/victim. And Dawn Addams is deliciously hedonistic as Mrs. Jekyll.

It's a bit of a lurid romp, but well directed by the studio's main man Terence Fisher, with excellent sets and costumes. But it's a Jekyll and Hyde which omits any transformation scene. And while the vulgar cruelty of Victorian London is more conspicuous than in Rouben Mamoulian's 1931 classic, the pre-code version is far more transgressive, and disturbing.