Dr. Jekyll And Sister Hyde (1971) At long last......a person who really does deserve plural pronouns....
And brought to you by, of all people, by the Hammer horror factory, whose regular stable of monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy) were always aggressively heterosexual.......
Who'd have thought Hammer would end up decades ahead of their time,.....presenting the young, scowling Ralph Bates as a Jekyll who transforms himself into his....uh....twin sister "Mrs. Hyde", played the the darkly predatory Martine Beswick. (the clawing Gypsy fight girl in "From Russia With Love" and later the doomed British agent in "Thunderball")
Yes, I'm kidding about Hammer's ability to see into our transgender, non-binary current era. As the 70's began, the Golden age for Hammer was over and in their desperate efforts to stay current and afloat at the box office, they filled up their horrors with sex, skin and kink.....(not that it did them much good in the long run...)
One thing never changed about Hammer House (and I dearly love 'em for it)......their gifted ability to produce their films on rock bottom budgets and still make them look sumptuously photographed and designed.
And for anyone who dotes on eerie foul deeds committed on the dank, foggy streets of 19th century London......you cannot pass this one up. It's all here for you..... Pea Souper Fog! Stabbed whores! Body snatching! Organ snatching! Instant sex change! (Well, maybe that last one's a new additions to the London tropes....)
Let's also hear it for the tireless prolific TV and screenwriter Brian Clemens, who didn't want to waste a single opportunity when creating a fogbound London thriller. In a clever conceit he has Doc J. and his feminine alter ego slicing and dicing Whitechapel floozies, hence combining the Dr. Jekyll and Jack The Ripper legends in one neat package.
But wait...there's more! In another nifty plot turn, who else would Jekyll hire to secure him dead bodies for experimentation but those two jolly gentlemen Burke and Hare? Like their other clientele, Jekyll doesn't think to question the death-dealing duo how they always come up with fresh corpses....heh, heh, heh....
Loaded with atmosphere, the film also benefits from its casting......you can more or less believe that Ralph Bates could turn into Martine Beswick....and the moments when the two struggle over control of the body they share are priceless and every so often, truly creepy.....(including the sight of their transformation battles as viewed through the warped color of a stained glass window.....)
A must for all Hammer hounds and for anyone who can't get enough of seeing an ominous, cloaked, top-hatted figure moving through the fog, clutching that little leather bag of scalpels......
3 stars (***).
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