Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde

A British horror film. Doctor Jekyll is running an experiment. His aim is a substance that will defeat disease and extend life; for it he needs female hormone, and the hormone can only be taken from a fresh body. What comes from the morgue is not enough. He finds another source, and the murders in the city are tied to that need. He tries the experiment on himself. The result is not what he expected: the substance turns him into a woman. From there the film is about a double life. The doctor is himself by day and someone else at night; he tells the neighbours she is his sister. The second personality grows stronger and develops wishes of its own. The idea is to rebuild the classic story through sex. Jekyll feels foreign in his body; Hyde moves easily outside, and that freedom is at the centre of the narrative. The side line is the neighbours. The young woman upstairs is drawn to the doctor, her brother to the woman he sees at night; both are talking to the wrong person. The film ties the London murders of the period and the trade in corpses into one narrative; historically those names do not fall in the same years, and the film accepts that. Ralph Bates plays Jekyll and Martine Beswick plays Hyde. The resemblance between the two faces was deliberately cast. Roy Ward Baker directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes the horror films of the Hammer studio in the 1970s. Who it is not for: anyone expecting delicacy in the handling; the idea is interesting but the execution is coarse and close to the exploitation cinema of its time.