To anyone inured to Hollywood's long tradition of discrete evasion, the first thing that strikes one about Rouben Mamoulian's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) is how unabashedly sexual the whole thing is. The original author, Stevenson, made no bones about the fact that Hyde indulged in the unmentionable lusts that Jekyll repressed, but this film seems to delight in lurid innuendo.
Engaged to an English society lady (with a distinct American accent), Jekyll is frustrated by her father-in-law's insistence that they delay the marriage ceremony (and, by exaggerated implication, the consummation). Rather conveniently Jekyll makes a scientific breakthrough by creating a chemical concoction that 'splits' the drinker into two personalities - the virtuous and noble on the one hand, and the dastardly and filthy-minded. Anyway, Hyde inflicts all of his perverted lusts on a poor prostitute, Ivy, that he practically imprisons in a lush shag pad while his fiancé and her father are out of the country. What follows is a classic tale of addiction as Jekyll gradually loses control to Hyde who eventually kills Ivy and attempts to rape his fiancé Muriel before being apprehended and killed by the authorities.
The creature effects are hysterical in their blatant presentation of Hyde as a kind of hairy Neanderthal (low forehead included). Impure thoughts are gonna turn you into a big, hairy ape-man didn'tya know? Like masturbating gives you hairy palms. Not that Mamoulian is that clear-cut in his judgements, at least as far as the direction/mis-en-scene is concerned.
Fredric March apparently won the Oscar for Best Actor for this performance. Wowza.
