Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde (DVD)

There are times when I grow tired of today’s horror flicks. I don’t mind gore, I don’t mind violence but I always insist on a good story and, more often than not, this seems to get overlooked in a latent desire to make the audience squirm as much as possible. Maybe it was with this in mind that I went back in time to take in the 1931 classic “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” directed by the wonderfully named Rouben Mamoulian and produced by Paramount studios. In an era when silent movies were being overtaken by more up to date “talkies”, the film studios of those times hit a rich vein of horror stories that were made into what were to become classic movies that will always stand ...  Read the complete review

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has been filmed dozens of times. The best is certainly the version from 1931, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, and that’s what I bought this for. It also contains a much weaker version from 1941. The story, following the book up to a point, involves the kindly Doctor Jekyll whose experiments into the darker side of man’s nature lead him to create a potion which turns him into the bestial Mr Hyde. While the book teased its late-Victorian audience with implications of homosexuality, the films cast Jekyll as a sexually frustrated gentleman, unable to marry his virtuous fiancée as soon as he’d like, who transforms into ...  Read the complete review

Black and white, starring Spencer Tracy as the fallible Dr Jekyll, alias Mr Hyde, and based on the well known novel by Robert Louise Stevenson. Today we have special effects, computer graphics and multi-million pounds film industries, also latex. This film is dated, sure enough but it is still good viewing. Spencer Tracy plays an excellent and unusual role compared to others he has played...with Audrey Hepburn and such films as 'father of the bride'. Being in black and white there is a kind of aura about the film which enhances the darkness of the story. Well worth watching. ...  Read the complete review