Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957)

This is How Movies Should Be Made

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This one is bad, corny and lame enough to be fun for me. Since when was Mr. Hyde ever a werewolf-vampire hybrid? Since this film of course! Dr. Lomas was a colleague of Dr. Jekyll and has been watching over Jekyll's estate and promise he can live there as long as he would like. Janet Smith and her soon to be husband George Hastings arrives at the mansion to learn that she has inherited the estate and money but is also told a dark secret - that she is the daughter of Dr. Jekyll. Now that she's learned who her father really is, she suddenly believes that it's hereditary and develops a madness with her nightmares and beliefs. But is it only her nightmare and beliefs or is she really transforming and killing the people turning up dead? 6/10

I didn't expect to find an example of the 1950's monster movie revival that could possibly be worse than The She Creature (1956 --see my review), but Daughter Of Dr. Jekyll is so bad, it makes The She Creature look like an Academy Award nominee. Daughter of Dr. Jekyll is simply awful in every department -- terrible script with insipid dialog, bad acting, draggy pacing, uninspired cinematography, papier mache sets. Not to mention shabby special effects. This movie was so cheap, they couldn't even afford a decent artificial fog machine for the what-should-have-been atmospheric outdoors on the moors scenes. At times it looked like they had simply fogged the negative to get a murky effect. Other times it seemed as if someone was sitting under the camera smoking a cigarette and letting the smoke curl upward. I would not kid about something like this! I haven't mentioned incompetent direction yet, but we're getting there. Edgar G. Ulmer has a cult following among some of the auteur worshipers which regards him as an unappreciated genius who could rise above the low budgets of his projects and put his personal stamp on them. This Ulmer mystic is primarily based on a half-dozen pretty good ones out of a gazillion crummy ones he directed. The Black Cat (1934) and Bluebeard (1944) are widely and deservedly recognized as minor horror classics, while Detour (1945) is worshiped all out of proportion to its modest merits by the nihilistic wing of the noir groupies. Personally, I thought The Strange Woman (1946), one of Ulmer's biggest budget productions, better than most rate it. But with its cast, which included Hedy Lamarr and George Sanders, it occurred to me that it would likely have been better if someone else had directed it.To get to the business at hand, Ulmer's bumbling direction in Daughter Of Dr. Jekyll must shoulder the blame for a competent cast, including John Agar and Arthur Shields, acting so poorly. It seems as if Ulmer told them they had to say their lines as quickly as possible, because they were in danger of running out of film. Maybe there was a doubtful, bought on the cheap, microphone, as well. Everyone shouts his our her lines with a frantic haste. Shields, normally almost as good an actor as his look-alike Accademy Award winning brother Barry Fitzgearald, in this turkey screeches, grimaces, and even waves his arms like one of the rejected try-outs in a high school play. Agar is even worse. He just seems angry, no matter what emotion he is supposed to be portraying. No doubt he was sore about being reduced to such penny ante productions. Well, he was an "A" actor at one time, and he should have laid off the whiskey if he wanted to stay one. Buxom female lead Gloria Talbot has her moments as the tormented title character, but it is only tall, craggy John Dierkes who rises above Ulmer's wacko direction to turn in a creditable performance as the sullen manor servant bent on righting the Jekyll wrongs.This picture is a serious stinker. Only for Ulmer cultists, die-hard fans of 'fifties horror, and desperate insomniacs. Others should avoid Daughter of Dr. Jekyll as if it were a skunk crossing the road.

"The Daughter of Dr. Jekyll" is a confused jumble of horror film clichés in which the savage Mr. Hyde is repeatedly referred to as a "human werewolf" (!) who could only be killed when a stake was driven through his heart (!!). There are lots of things wrong with that premise, but the one unforgivable sin committed here is the infliction of dullness upon the viewer: "Daughter" is truly one of the most toothless, uninteresting horror movies I've ever seen. Pretty Gloria Talbott (the titular daughter) and dignified, reserved Arthur Shields (the seemingly kindly Jekyll family retainer whose true intentions are anything but wholesome) can't save it. As Talbott's husband-to-be, John Agar is strictly phoning it in; by all accounts he hated doing this film and I don't blame him one bit. Everything about "Daughter" is utterly pedestrian. Director Edgar G. Ulmer (beware, Ulmer fans: this is a far cry from "The Black Cat" or even "Bluebeard") and his cast made no serious attempt to rise above the mediocrity of Jack Pollexfen's script. They just shot the picture, called it a day, and went home. Naturally, no one expects these little genre films to be masterpieces, but you do expect them to hold your attention. With a lack of scares and atmosphere, and laughably unrealistic action scenes to boot, "The Daughter of Dr. Jekyll" is an all-around stinker. (I've seen worse movies, but rarely have I seen a more boring one!)

I haven't seen this movie since I was ten years old, but it scared the hell out of me then. That was over forty years ago. Seeing Gloria Talbot standing in front of that mirror and see herself seemingly transform into a werewolf gave me the creeps, and then the cut to the full moon rolling through the clouds. Mighty scary stuff. It was made even more scary by that eerie music that played into the background. I thought this movie would never end. I wish I could remember more of it, but it's been so long since I've seen it. I would love to see this on DVD, it's been so long since I've seen it. It's probably tame by today's standards, but if you're a ten year old kid looking for something to give you a good scare, then this movie will do it. It did for me.