Dr_JekyllMr_HydeI wouldn’t be me if I didn’t put Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) somewhere on this Halloween countdown.  Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of my favorite stories, and Fredric March’s Oscar winning star turn at the dual role is one of the great performances of horror.  This racy film from pre-Hays Code Hollywood is the best adaptation, so far, of the classic story, even though (like most other adaptations) it deviates from the original source quite a lot.

I’ve always been intrigued by Stevenson’s story, by the good doctor and his inner beast unleashed.  I admit, I’ve always felt a kind of kinship with Jekyll and his Hyde.  But don’t we all have that?  We all have that shadow self, that Mr. Hyde, lurking inside us, just waiting to break free, don’t we?  There is some of all of us in Jekyll and Hyde, and it’s easy to see it in black and white in this superb film.

If you don’t know the story by now, good Dr. Jekyll experiments with the duality of man.  He believes that people are capable of both good and bad, and that those two natures are at odds within us.  Through his experimentation he succeeds in getting in touch with his inner bad boy, who takes on a life of his own as Mr. Hyde.  As Frankenstein might phrase it, Jekyll good, Hyde bad.  Hyde very bad.  Very, very, bad.  Hyde is violent, lecherous, scandalous, murderous even (thanks Snagglepuss).


Jekyll is engaged to the virginal Muriel, but it’s Mr. Hyde’s object of affection, the prostitute Ivy, played by the rowdy and bawdy Miriam Hopkins, that is the real prize to keep your eye on in this picture.  She is a sweet little package of sexuality all tied up with a cute little bow.  Until she does her striptease.

Forget the Spencer Tracy version from ’42, and all other versions as a matter of fact.  This is the one.

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