Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde is a 1971 sci-fi horror film about a scientist who creates a serum that transforms him into a female murderess. It was promoted as Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde
The movie was directed by Roy Ward Baker from a screenplay by Brian Clemens, loosely based on the novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
The Hammer Films production stars Ralph Bates, Martine Beswick, Gerald Sim, Lewis Fiander, Susan Brodrick, Dorothy Alison, Ivor Dean, Tony Calvin, Philip Madoc, Paul Whitsun-Jones and Virginia Wetherell.
The film is notable for showing Jekyll transforming into a female Hyde; it also incorporates aspects of the historical Jack the Ripper and Burke and Hare cases into the plot.
Plot [contains spoilers]:
Dr Henry Jekyll dedicates his life to the curing of all known illnesses; however, his lecherous friend Professor Robertson remarks that Jekyll’s experiments take so long to be discovered, he will no doubt be dead by the time he achieves anything. Haunted by this remark, Jekyll abandons his studies and obsessively begins searching for an elixir of life, using female hormones taken from fresh cadavers supplied by murderers William Burke and William Hare, reasoning that these hormones will help him to extend his life since women traditionally live longer than men and have stronger systems.
In the apartment above Jekyll’s lives a family: an elderly mother, her daughter Susan Spencer and Susan’s brother Howard. Susan is attracted to Jekyll and he returns her affections but is too obsessed with his work to make advances. Mixing the female hormones into a serum and drinking it has the effect of changing Jekyll’s sex. Susan becomes jealous when she discovers this mysterious woman. Still, when she confronts Jekyll to explain the sudden appearance of his female alter ego, he calls her Mrs. Edwina Hyde, saying she is Jekyll’s widowed sister who has come to live with him. Howard, on the other hand, develops a lust for Mrs Hyde.
Jekyll soon finds that his serum requires a regular supply of female hormones to maintain its effect, necessitating the killing of young girls. Burke and Hare supply his needs but their criminal activities are uncovered. A mob lynches Burke, and Hare is blinded by lime. Jekyll decides to take matters into his own hands and commits the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper. Jekyll abhors this but Mrs. Hyde relishes the killings as she begins to take control, even seducing and then killing Professor Robertson when he attempts to question her about the murders.
As Mrs Hyde grows more powerful, the two personalities begin to struggle for dominance. Jekyll asks Susan to the opera; however, when he is getting dressed to go out, he unconsciously takes Mrs. Hyde’s gown from the wardrobe instead of his clothes, realising that he no longer needs to drink the serum to transform.
Susan is heartbroken when Jekyll fails to take her out to the opera and she decides to go alone. However, Mrs Hyde decides that innocent, pure Susan’s blood is just what she needs to take over Jekyll’s body. She stalks Susan through the dark streets but Jekyll’s willpower barely manages to thwart Mrs. Hyde’s attempt to kill Susan. He then commits one last murder to find a way to stabilize his condition.
Still, he is interrupted by the police after a comment by Hare leads them to realise the similarity between Jekyll’s earlier experiments on cadavers and the Ripper murders. As Jekyll tries to escape by climbing along the outside of a building, he transforms into Mrs Hyde and falls to the ground, dying as an amalgamation of both male and female.
British censorship:
The BBFC censors requested cuts to remove the inter-cutting of a murder and a rabbit gutting and to edit a bedroom murder and the stabbing of Professor Robertson. The bedroom murder was shortened though Hammer re-edited the stabbing of the doctor to comprise flash shots of earlier killings. Despite initial BBFC objections, the film was passed with an ‘X’ certificate, and all later releases feature the same edited print.
Book and contemporary reviews:
“Clemens’ script, adding Burke and Hare and Jack the Ripper to the sex-change gimmick, along with some ill-judged humour, results in an unmemorable, if good to look at, misfire.” Alan Frank, The Horror Film Handbook
” … takes elements of the film which began the cycle fifteen years earlier, The Curse of Frankenstein, and moulds them with the pop culture of a more liberated age to achieve one of the company’s most accomplished and enjoyable films of the decade and points towards the direction the company should have taken in order to survive.” Ten Years of Terror book
“It’s good to look at, well-acted and even has one or two genuinely nightmarish moments, but essentially it remains a good-natured, if slightly unhealthy caprice […] The result plays like some demented gazetteer of English Gothic clichés, and it’s put together with such verve by director Roy Ward Baker that it’s easy to share in the enjoyment Clemens had in writing it.” Jonathan Rigby, English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema
Buy English Gothic – Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk
The BFI Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: “The idea of adapting Jekyll and Hyde for the age of the polymorphous perverse could easily have misfired in the wrong hands, but for the most part director Roy Ward Baker manages the whole thing superbly. The plot is a kind of pot-pourri of Victorian archetypes, containing not just the Jekyll mythos but Jack the Ripper as well as Burke and Hare; and although there are plenty of covert jokes on Psycho lines (“He hasn’t been feeling himself lately”), the overall tone remains refreshingly straight. Ralph Bates is infinitely better at being Henry Jekyll than he was at being Baron Frankenstein, and the transformation sequences are stunning, with Bates appearing momentarily emasculated before being transformed into his seductive alter ego, Martine Beswick. Obviously the production suffers from the old Hammer problems of low budget and short schedule, but Baker and his cameraman Norman Warwick have done a lot to make the film visually attractive, and this goes some way towards compensating for the deficiencies of the script. … Admittedly, the conception is sacrificed to the usual formula, and it is Jekyll not Hyde who is hunted down in rather routine fashion by the authorities. But the film remains a welcome reminder that Hammer can still be highly enterprising myth-makers.”
Time Out called the film “enormous fun” and an “admirably successful attempt to ring new changes on an old theme”
Choice dialogue:
Byker [Philip Madoc]: “Burke by name and berk by nature.”
Blu-ray releases:
Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde was released in the USA on Blu-ray by Scream Factory on December 10, 2019. Special features:
Audio commentary with film historian Bruce G. Hallenbeck (new)
Audio commentary with director Roy Ward Baker, writer Brian Clemens, and actress Martine Beswick, moderated by Hammer Film historian Marcus Hearn
Interview with actress Martine Beswick (new)
Ladykiller: Inside Doctor Jekyll And Sister Hyde
Radio spots
Theatrical trailer
Buy Blu-ray: Amazon.co.uk
Film Facts:
Caroline Munro was initially offered the part of Sister Hyde but refused because it required some nudity.
Notes:
Husband and wife Ralph Bates and Virginia Wetherell first met in this film as they prepared to shoot the scene in it in which Bates (as Doctor Jekyll) kills a street walker (played by Wetherell)
Cast and characters:
Ralph Bates as Dr Henry Jekyll/Jack the Ripper
Martine Beswick as Mrs Edwina Hyde
Gerald Sim as Professor Robertson
Lewis Fiander as Howard Spencer
Susan Brodrick as Susan Spencer
Dorothy Alison as Mrs Susan Spencer
Ivor Dean as William Burke
Tony Calvin as William Hare
Philip Madoc as Byker
Paul Whitsun-Jones as Sergeant Danvers
Virginia Wetherell as Betsy, a street walker
Neil Wilson as Older Policeman
Dan Meaden as Town Crier
Geoffrey Kenion as First Policeman
Irene Bradshaw as Yvonne
Anna Brett as Julie
Jackie Poole as Margie
Rosemary Lord as Marie
Filming locations:
Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England
Tech specs:
1h 34m (94 minutes)
Aspect ratio: 1.66: 1
Trailer:
Free to watch online on YouTube [regions may vary – a VPN and YouTube Premium is recommended:
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