Halloween 1: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Hey there! Hi there!  Ho there!

The I’m So Glad My Suffering Amuses You Halloween Countdown of Weird Shit has shambled towards its inglorious end: we are now one day away from Halloween.

The theme of these posts is to look at stories associated with Halloween, stories of terror and horror, tales of the supernatural  but are a bit off beat, not on the expected path.

You know, weird shit.

Who needs Friday the 13th for a strange, implacable serial killer when we can turn to Marvel’s super hero book from the 1970s, the Defenders, a strange, implacable serial killer, an elf with a gun?

Horror movies with zombies are a dime a dozen. How many zombie movies have music and dance numbers like the Incredibly Strange Creatures?

Why seek out horror movies when the Star Trek franchises can present ghost stories (in SPACE), hapless people transformed into salamanders or victims of brain theft? 

Today’s post is about as straight forward a tale of fear and terror as I have covered so far in these posts. I just watched this movie Saturday afternoon  on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and I felt that it might be perfect for this series after all.

Today’s post is about a classic movie with a villain possessed with a dread and terrible power, not of vampirism or lycanthopy.

No, the dread doer of bad deeds in today’s post has the power of …. TOXIC MASCULINITY!

I’m So Glad My Suffering Amuses You presents….

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

For the record, this film version is from 1941 and stars Spencer Tracy.

Dr. Henry Jekyll is a good guy, a doctor with a kind and gentle disposition. But he believes good and evil exist in everyone. Drinking an experimental serum draws out Dr. Jekyll’s evil side in the form of a separate persona known as Mr. Hyde. It is a transformation that alters him physically, changing his hair and the structure of his face. 

Mr. Hyde’s evil nature manifest itself in terrible violence. Ivy Pearson, a young woman waitress and singer had shown interest in Dr. Jekyll earlier.  Dr. Jekyll, preparing to marry Beatrix Emery, cannot respond to her advances. But Mr. Hyde will. He rapes Ivy and then spends the rest the movie tormenting, torturing her, abusing her, sexually  assaulting her with impunity.  

Dr. Jekyll remembers what he does as Mr. Hyde and vows to never take the serum again.  Suffering from a nervous breakdown resulting from Mr. Hyde’s abuse, Ivy seeks medical help from D. Jekyll.  Jekyll promises Ivy that Hyde will never hurt her again.

It is a promise he intends to keep. He has locked away the lab with the formula and melted the key to the lock.

It is a promise he cannot keep. Later that night, Jekyll is horrified to discover he is transforming into Mr. Hyde without taking the formula.  

Hyde makes his way to Ivy’s house where he angrily accosts her for meeting with Dr. Jekyll and for daring to escape Hyde’s influence and control. In his unhinged rage, Hyde strangles Ivy, her dying horrific realization that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person.  

In response to Ivy’s screams, police are in pursuit of Mr. Hyde. Unable to access the lab, Hyde retreats to the home of  Dr. Lanyon , a personal friend. Hyde drinks the antidote to transform back in Dr. Jekyll much to Lanyon’s shock. 
 

Jekyll decides to break off  his engagement to Beatrix  in order to keep his secret. Beatrix is distraught by Jekyl;l’s decision and his refusal to explain why. Her emotional reaction triggers Jekyll’s  transformation back into Hyde.  This frightens Beatrix as she screams in horror. Her father comes to her aid only to be bludgeoned to death by Mr. Hyde.

Dr. Lanyon leads the police to Hyde’s lab where Hyde has transformed back into Dr. Jekyll. But the trauma of all that he did as Mr. Hyde has left Dr. Jekyll mentally broken. Even as he mutters over and over a reaffirmation that he is Dr. Henry Jekyll, the doctor transforms once more into Mr. Hyde. Hyde starts to attack Lanyon and the police but Lanyon shoots him. Fatally wounded, Hyde reverts to Jekyll as he dies.  

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What fascinated me about this movie as I watched it Saturday afternoon was how remarkably unflinching it was from the horrors of Mr. Hyde’s abuse of Ivy Pearson and Ivy’s struggles to cope with what this evil person is doing to her. She’s afraid to stay because Mr. Hyde hurts her. She's afraid to go because she fears Mr. Hyde will find her and hurt her even worse. 

It is, sadly, a predicament that too many women nearly 8 decades after this movie was released still have to deal with. When women do come forward to report abuse, to report sexual assault, this is part of the fear matrix they have to navigate. Ivy’s worse fears are realized. It is to her unfortunate and eternal regret that the man she sought out for salvation (Dr. Jekyll) was also her abuser.

I can’t help but think about Dr. Ford who came forth with her story of pain and fear, of how Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape her when they were teens. Then men she testified to on the Senate Judiciary committee were not the man who assaulted her. But I think the men in front of her that day were of like mind enough with Kavanaugh, it may well have been the same man. 

Unlike other horror or sci-fi films of a person being transformed into something different, there is no indication of Mr. Hyde possessing any super human abilities. Some of the acrobatics he performs escaping from Ivy’s home after murdering her do suggest a level of strength and dexterity beyond the norms of the average man. But primarily, Mr. Hyde’s “super power”  is primarily “toxic masculinity”. 


Whatever Mr. Hyde wants from Ivy, he gets. He wants sex, he gets sex. There is zero concern for the well being of the woman in front of him. She is there to serve his needs, his desires and woe be unto her if she denies him.  
 

The 1941 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde received good notices within Hollywood at the time of its release and those accolades are well deserved.

Spencer Tracy’s transformations between the kind hearted Dr. Jekyll and the sociopathic Mr. Hyde are remarkable.

Ingrid Bergman as Ivy Pearson has a harsh and brutal role to play and she is gives a heartbreaking performance.

Outside Hollywood, the reactions to the film were less enthusiastic. I think the brutal reality of the abusive relationship between Mr. Hyde and Ivy Pearson may have been a bit too much for audiences expecting a more scary experience. For audiences exposed to the fantastic like Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein’s Monster, seeing a nice guy transform into an ultimate douche bag asshole probably didn’t hold a lot of appeal.

The 1941 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde certainly looks good with very crisp black and white cinematography. Also the transformation of faces between Jekyll and Hyde are rendered with incredible detail. No soft focus dissolves here as we see individual elements of the face shift and morph from on persona to another.  This involved I’m sure some especially meticulous editing. 

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde may be classified as a horror film but it tells a hauntingly painful story that speaks to the horrors that real women still have to put up with from men who don’t need a secret formula to unleash their brutality. 

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OK, we need a lighter note to end on.

In the 1946 Warner Bros. cartoon Hare Remover, when Elmer Fudd is going through some bizarre side effects after drinking a potion he created, Bugs Bunny turns to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and remarks, "I think Spencer Tracy did it much better!".

And here’s some movie history. By the time Spencer Tracy appeared on screen in 1941 as Jekyll and Hyde, the story of  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has already been made into a movie 9 times. 

The first known version was shot in the United States in 1908 but no known copies of this film exist.

Three versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were made in 1920, two in the United States and one in Germany.  

A version was released in 1931 which netted star Fredric March an Oscar for best actor. 

The Jekyll & Hyde dilemma is mined for comedy in the 1953 film, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Boris Karloff as Dr. Jekyll.

It’s comedy again in 1963 when Jerry Lewis directs himself in The Nutty Professor, a screwball comedy with a loose connection to the story of  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  

In 1971, a British production gives us Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. Starring Ralph Bates as Jekyll and Martine Beswick as Hyde. The earliest work to show Jekyll transform into a beautiful woman. The film notably recasts Jekyll from a kind, well-intentioned man into Jack the Ripper, who uses Sister Hyde as a disguise to carry out his murders.

Blaxploitation comes to Jekyl & Hyde  with 1976’s Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, starring Bernie Casey as Dr Henry Pride.

Time to gender bend with Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, a 1995 film in which a descendant of Dr. Jekyll creates a variant of his ancestor's potion that turns him into a woman.

Jekyll is a six episode BBC television drama serial written by Steven Moffat.  

I'm of two minds on how to end this post. 

I could end it with something clever and witty. 

Or I could just end it.

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