Horror Classic 26 of 50: DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

-























Today I'm going to do something a little different. This week I watched Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a silent film from 1920 which stars John Barrymore (Drew's grandpa!) and is much more classic than most of the movies in my 50-film DVD set, even if it is a total rip-off of The Nutty Professor.

By an incredible coincidence, this was also the week I purchased The Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2, a fantastic DVD set which includes the 1955 Bugs Bunny cartoon Hyde and Hare, which is a slightly sillier take on the Robert Louis Stevenson book. So I'm going to compare the two to see how they... um, compare.

Dr. Jekyll
  • In the Barrymore movie, Dr. Jekyll is a selfless philanthropist who loves nothing more than taking care of sick poor people. You know the type -- he makes the rest of us feel guilty for spending our free time watching America's Got Talent instead of volunteering. He often wears a hat.
  • In the Bugs Bunny cartoon, Dr. Jekyll is a timid little man (voiced by Mel Blanc) who loves nothing more than feeding rabbits in the park. He wears a hat too.
The first transformation
  • The 1920 Jekyll invents a transformation formula because he wants to see if he can separate his evil side from his good side. When he drinks the potion, he jerks and spasms and falls down, in an impressive, extended performance from Barrymore that must have given him a headache.
  • The animated Jekyll brings Bugs Bunny home to be his pet, and initially seems like he'll be the perfect owner... but then he drinks the potion and instantly changes to Mr. Hyde.
Mr. Hyde
  • The silent film's Hyde is one ugly dude, and I think he may have gotten uglier as the film progressed and Jekyll lost control. He has long, stringy hair, bad teeth, an elongated head, and gnarled fingers that must make it really hard to shop for gloves.
  • The animated Hyde is a green-skinned, yellow-eyed, long-armed monster, although it should be noted that the other Hyde may have had green skin and yellow eyes too... We just can't tell because the film is in black and white.
Hyde goes nuts
  • Silent Hyde roughs up some women, tramples a kid, causes Jekyll to neglect his fiancee, and kills Jekyll's future father-in-law. He's a pretty bad dude, and Jekyll finds it increasingly hard to exert control over him.
  • Animated Hyde chases Bugs Bunny around a lot. He's not quite as horrible, and he does pretty well as long as he stays away from the evil-flavored Kool-Aid.
The ending
  • Jekyll, no longer able to reign in the purely evil Hyde, takes his own life by swallowing poison.
  • Jekyll decides to get rid of his formula, which is a far less drastic solution, but someone has already drunk it all. Bugs Bunny denies any culpability.

Themes
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The inherent dual nature of man, the meaning of evil, sin and its consequences
  • Hyde and Hare: Talking rabbits
Is it a good film?
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a pretty good film. As with the female lead in Metropolis, John Barrymore does a fine job at portraying two characters without the benefit of spoken dialogue. The script kept most of the best ideas from the book while making a few changes for dramatic purposes. The makeup effects were impressive for their time. Although the pacing dragged at times, this movie was much easier to watch than most of the talkies I've screened for this blog.
  • Hyde and Hare is really not one of the better Bugs Bunny cartoons. I mean, there are really no bad Bugs Bunny cartoons from that era, but Hyde is not representative of the character's best. Bugs is at his best when he has a real adversary to match wits with and ultimately get the better of, and that just doesn't happen here. Instead, it's just a series of sequences in which Jekyll turns into Hyde, Bugs freaks out, and Hyde turns back into Jekyll. The Liberace joke was okay, though. I wonder why the 1920 film didn't have any Liberace jokes.
Letter grade for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: B+
Letter grade for Hyde and Hare: B-
Next film in the 50-movie set: Bluebeard. I hope it's in color, so I can see his blue beard.

Comments

Bird of Paradise said…
A mR hyde verson of BUGS BUNNY he looks so different but so did Mr Hyde from stevensons origional novel
September 11, 2011 at 12:11 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

50 Horror Classics: The Wrap-up

-
Image
I did it! I watched 50 old public domain movies slapped together by a cheap home video label under the claim that all of them are "horror classics." So... now what? I'll get to that later, but first, how about a breakdown of all 50 horror classics by letter grade? Before you read on, try guessing which letter grade I gave out most frequently! A: 2 Night of the Living Dead, Metropolis B+: 3 The Little Shop of Horrors, The Phantom of the Opera, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde B: 9 House on Haunted Hill, The Bat, Monster from a Prehistoric Planet, Nosferatu, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Corpse Vanishes, Invisible Ghost, Creature From the Haunted Sea, Carnival of Souls B-: 9 The Amazing Mr. X, Bloodlust!, The Gorilla, Doomed to Die, The Killer Shrews, The Fatal Hour, The Giant Gila Monster, One Body Too Many, The Last Man on Earth C+: 5 A Shriek in the Night, Tormented, Bluebeard, The Vampire Bat, Nightmare Castle C: 8 Last Woman on Earth, Swamp Women, Indestructible Man, King of
Read more

Horror Classic 27 of 50: BLUEBEARD

-
Image
So, you know how I'm watching 50 old horror movies for this blog? And you know how sometimes it's been very, very difficult to find the willpower to carry on? Well, the other day I was in the Virgin Megastore, and what do you think I saw? I'll tell you what I saw. This: TWO HUNDRED FIFTY MOVIES ! And it's by the same video label as my 50-movie pack. My first thought is, where did they find 200 more crazy old horror movies? My second thought, of course, is, I sure am glad this isn't the DVD set I got for Christmas. I'd go completely bonkers before I finished watching 250 of these things. Speaking of things, (Is that a great transition or what?) this week I watched Bluebeard , a 1944 film which is not, as I expected, an adaptation of the old story of the ugly, many-wived Bluebeard . Nor does it have anything to do with Kurt Vonnegut's novel Bluebeard , other than the fact that both of them include a few allusions to the original story. Synopsis The pl
Read more

BONUS: Puss in Boots (1988) starring Christopher Walken

-
Image
Wow, it's been a long time since I watched a movie from my Drive-In Classics DVD set. I blame the rise of streaming video. With every movie ever made available at the click of a button, it's harder to find the motivation to watch Zombie Picnic or whatever when I know I could be watching a true classic. But here's something I watched recently, on DVD even. It's an obscure, low-budget movie. And it was part of a three-movie DVD I bought for about $2 at 7-11. So it's certainly in the spirit of this blog. The something in question is Puss in Boots , a 1988 film starring Christopher Walken as the titular talking cat. Yes, it's an actor playing a cat, but it's not animated, and in fact, there are almost no special effects at all. Puss starts out as a real cat, and then sometimes the camera cuts away or does a choppy editing trick, and then instead of the cat it's Mr. Walken. So he's really more of a Puss Who Looks a Lot Like a Man in Boots. For yea
Read more