Hammer remake another classic but the result was not a popular hit. This is slower and more thoughtful than their previous shockers – I’ve read a bit about how gee whiz the twist writer Wolf Mankowtiz came up with... but was it that great to have Jekyll as a nerd and Hyde as suave? One scratches one's head as to why Christopher Lee wasn’t given the lead role – although he’s in the film as the scoundrel having it off with Jekyll’s wife. Apparently producer Michael Carreras didn’t want to keep using Lee and Cushing in all Hammer’s films; he went instead with some guy called Paul Massey, who gives a pretty good performance, but he lacks the charisma of Lee.
It looks sumptuous (I loved the brothel/nightclub, The Sphinx), the acting is solid, Dawn Addams is pretty, there are some interesting ideas floating around. It could have done with more excitement. In his excellent book on Hammer, Denis Meikle devotes pages upon pages to discussing this movie; I’ve read the pages, seen the movie and still can’t understand why. I know Wolf Mankowitz wasn’t happy with Terence Fisher’s direction but I can’t think of this as a lost masterpiece – the ideas aren’t that clever.
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