'DR.JEKYLL AND MR.HYDE' (1941)........ID HAPPENED ONE NIGHT........

Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1941)    Everyone's got their own favorite film version of  Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale........ this one's ours.

              It's the very epitome of  MGM's Golden Age of iconic stars and high gloss........what an all-star lineup.....Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner......and directed, naturally, by the studio's in-house master of blockbusters, Victor Fleming ("The Wizard Of Oz", "Gone With The Wind")

             Tracy, ever the actor's actor, wouldn't resort to rubberized monster makeup to transform himself  from the gentle, gentlemanly Dr. Jekyll to the hideous Hyde...…

              With minimal use of facial appliances, the actor became both inhuman and all too human at the same time......an insidious Id released from the subconscious who's equally a rampaging bully and violent sexual predator.....

                You could think of him as the Victorian Harvey Weinstein.....

               Film critics of the era, a pompous bunch of cultural snobs, generally mocked Tracy's no-holds-barred, over the top performance as Hyde...…(but then these guys mostly sneered at horror movies, and they also infamously panned "The Wizard Of Oz"....so what did they know?)

                Those dolts are long gone, and the passage of decades has raised the reputation of both the film and Tracy's skilled attempts to scare you without fake fangs or blood dripping claws...….

                The other key performance here comes from Ingrid Bergman as Ivy,  the pathetic doomed barmaid who arouses passion in both the innocent Jekyll and the rampaging Hyde.....

                78 years later, the film still has the power to make you cringe...…...In Ivy's terrifying ordeal as she's trapped and emotionally and physically destroyed by Hyde......an operatic but still frightening depiction of a poisonous, abusive relationship.

                  And we're still amazed by that startling, delirious fantasy of Jekyll-Hyde, in which the tormented Jekyll imagines himself a frenzied charioteer whipping his two horses, the barely clothed Bergman and Lana Turner (Jekyll's worried, aristocratic fiancé.

                 It's far from a blood-soaked shocker, but "Dr.Jekyll And Mr. Hyde" remains a brilliant, classy artifact from a bygone era of filmmaking...….and always worth a Halloween viewing.
BQ, like the old MGM lion, roars out 4 stars (****)