|
Related stuff you might want!!!(commissions earned) |
|
|
|
Utterson (Cedric Hardwicke), a good friend of Doctor Jekyll's (Michael
Rennie) lpearns from Jekyll's butler Poole that a stranger, possibly the
killer Hyde, is hiding in Jekyll's laboratory and has quite probably
killed the good Doctor. Utterson helps Poole force open the door to the
lab, and when Hyde attacks him, Utterson shoots him in self-defense. Then
his eyes fall on a notebook that seem to be Jekyll's tesament ...
About two years ago, Jekyll set out to explore the human soul, to
seperate good from evil. Unfortunately, he finds a serum that can do just
that and instead of turning into pure goodness, he turns into pure evil,
his alter ego Hade. And while by day, Jekyll's doing charity work and the
like, he finds more and more pleasure in turning into Hyde at night,
roaming the dancehalls of the city, picking up girl after girl ... and
especially Estelle (Mary Sinclair) is a girl to his liking, even though
(or because) she's engaged to another man.
Hyde gets more and more ruthless, and Jekyll gets more and more
horrified of his alter ego, but he is so addicted to being Hyde by now
that he only stops taking his potion after Hyde has actually killed
someone - Estelle's fiancé by the way.
Consequently, Jekyll destroys the potion, its formula, and the
antiserum, does more charity work and tracks down Estelle and tries to
make up to her ... when he suddenly turns into Hyde again, out of nowhere
and without the potion - and almost kills her too. He can only just escape
the police and hide in his lab, but his state is extremely unstable, he
now frequently and without warning turns to Hyde and back to Jekyll again
and can now of course not leave the lab under any circumstances until he
finds the antiserum - but the chances are very slim, until eventually the
story returns to its starting point and Hyde is shot by Utterson - but
when the police arrives, the dead body turns out to be Doctor Jekyll.
Quite a literary adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, done
for TV and mostly recorded live, so don't expect anything too fancy, it's
made rather on the cheap and the special effects and special make-up are
rudimentary at best - but as early TV goes, this one's actually pretty
good, it moves along at a swift enough pace, the actors are pretty good
and the dialogue is well-written. No masterpiece perhaps, but totally
watchable.
|