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The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)
Topic Started: May 24 2009, 05:19 AM (578 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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What th' HELL? Has anybody ever SEEN this movie? What th' HELL? (Oh, I said that already.)

I have no clue what Hammer Studios thought they were doing with this one. If you haven't seen it, you're gonna think I'm lying.

Dr. Jekyll is a rather weird gentleman in a cheezy beard; when he drinks his li'l potion, he becomes a handsome but rather devilish chap named Mr. Hyde. Not a bad fellow, just kind of mischevious. Well, he DOES push somebody down. Anyway, Hyde discovers that Mrs. Dr. Jekyll is fooling around with Christopher Lee, and so helps Dr. Jekyll hatch a plot of revenge. In the end, Dr. Jekyll pushes somebody down too and realizes that whole potion thing isn't working out for him. The end, pretty much.

As stupid and misguided a "monster movie" as you can imagine. Paul Massie is both Jekyll and Hyde, and stinks at both of 'em. Christopher Lee is Christopher Lee, and if you can imagine Dawn Addams or any other woman being enchanted by his wooden countenance and flat delivery, you have a greater imagination than I. The most fun in the picture is watching the standard 3 Hammer Studios sets redressed again and again to try and give us the illusion of Victorian England. I am stunned by this film, which is just... I dunno, a nutty movie. Kind of.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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panzer the great & terrible
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Couldn't agree more: the bottom of the Hammer barrel. I don't have the faintest notion what they thought they were doing, but censorship must have been pretty darn severe in England then. The only two Hammers I ever really liked were Brides of Drac and The Devil Rides Out.
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Laughing Gravy
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Bingo, Mr. P. It's been a while since I read my book on Hammer, but I recall that the censors were really down on Hammer for some reason at this particular point (I think maybe because of Brides of Dracula) and this was the result. I was gonna refresh my memory by rereading this chapter before posting but decided I wasn't interested enough in the topic to bother. *L*

Agree with you on Brides, but also love The Mummy and Curse of the Werewolf. Haven't seen Devil, but will look for it.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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panzer the great & terrible
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It's a suspenser, with Chris Lee as a good guy battling a Satan-lovin' stinker modeled on Alistair Crowley. They spent a little money, rented a stately home & ran up some cool Edwardian costumes. It's based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley, who isn't well-known on this side of the pond but did a raft of supernatural thrillers with right-wing underpinnings for British boys. The Conservatives over there figured out long ago that you have to get 'em young.

By contrast, I read the other day that the average age for Rush Limbaugh's listeners is now 62. Americans who call themselves conservative lost the young vote by demonizing the weakest members of society. The kids can't figure out why gays and Mexicans are supposed to be so scary.





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panzer the great & terrible
May 24 2009, 01:17 PM

The kids can't figure out why Mexicans are supposed to be so scary.






Mexicans are scary..if you are a Canadian visiting Mexico.

In the last five years alone, numerous Canadians have been murdered, assaulted and robbed, while vacationing in Mexico.

Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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Laughing Gravy
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And the U.S. And Germany. And Switzerland, probably.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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Probably, but not in the record numbers that Mexico has been pumping out. It's like they have a hate-on for us, which doesn't make sense as we let them into our country.

Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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Vornoff
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panzer the great & terrible
May 24 2009, 01:17 PM
It's a suspenser, with Chris Lee as a good guy battling a Satan-lovin' stinker modeled on Alistair Crowley.



Crowley's life is also the basis for Karloff and Lugosi's The Black Cat
Edited by Vornoff, May 25 2009, 09:02 AM.
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panzer the great & terrible
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I may be dead wrong, but I doubt that the kind of Mexican who murders Canadian tourists is trying to move to the States, where he's far more likely to go to jail.

In The Devil Rides Out, Charles Grey as the bad guy performs the incredible feat of being simultaneously beefy and slimy (he can probably chew gum at the same time). The screenplay is by Richard Matheson, who knows a thing or two about scary.
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panzer the great & terrible
May 25 2009, 10:00 AM
I may be dead wrong, but I doubt that the kind of Mexican who murders Canadian tourists is trying to move to the States, where he's far more likely to go to jail.


Good point, Mr P. The Mexican cops are so corrupt that any of their criminals would be crazy to go to the U.S., where their activities are actually illegal.

Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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CliffClaven
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Speaking of Two Faces of Dr. Jeckyll -- That's what we're talking about, right? -- I thought it was no worse than most of the Hammers I've seen.

Besides the rushed, semi-coherent ending -- a Hammer trademark -- I sensed there was a lot of self-censorship going on.

To wit: One scene had Hyde walking over a begger. We hear the begger whining, but Jeckyll walks as if he's talking slow steps on perfectly level ground. Perhaps the thinking was they'd just shut off the sound if they got complaints. The stuff about kids playing in Jeckyll's garden seemed to be leading to something unpleasant, but they just dropped it. And preteens at the drive-in must have felt more confused than cheated by a dissolve to Mrs. Dr. Jeckyll awaking in a mellow mood, presumably after Worse Than Death.

What was clever, I recall, was that Hyde tried to frame Jeckyll for murder, and make it impossible for Jeckyll to safely assert his identity.

One Hammer I really liked was Captain Clegg, aka Night Creatures. It's based on the same source material as Disney's Scarecrow -- Hammer used an old novel, Disney a new version of the story by another writer -- but it's more about a scary bunch of smugglers instead of a masked hero (A scarecrow appears, but only as a lookout).
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andarius
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Laughing Gravy
May 24 2009, 05:19 AM
What th' HELL? Has anybody ever SEEN this movie? What th' HELL? (Oh, I said that already.)

I have no clue what Hammer Studios thought they were doing with this one. If you haven't seen it, you're gonna think I'm lying.

Haven't seen it for years - Maltin's Guide wasn't all that impressed but mentions Oliver Reed as a bouncer.

If Two Faces was an unsuccessful attempt to do something different with the story, Hammer succeeded with bells on with Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde, IMHO!
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andarius
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Laughing Gravy
May 24 2009, 09:08 AM
Agree with you on Brides, but also love The Mummy and Curse of the Werewolf. Haven't seen Devil, but will look for it.
So you *didn't* think Christopher Lee was wooden behind his Mummy makeup? :D
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Apropos for him.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer
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andarius
May 29 2009, 01:23 AM
So you *didn't* think Christopher Lee was wooden behind his Mummy makeup? :D
No, but he was probably wooden behind any of his Hammer leading ladies, ready to drive a stake into their OWWW .... I was struck by lightning just now.
It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong."
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