Dr. Henry Jekyll is a man who has decided to dedicate his life to curing all illnesses, but he’s about to lose a bit of his determination after his a-hole friend, Professor Robertson, remarks that his experiments are taking such a long time that he will end up dead before he manages to achieve anything of importance. Ouch. Thanks for the encouragement, buddy. Jekyll lets this remark get to his head, and he starts to obsess over the thought of some kind of elixir of life. He ends up using female hormones which he takes from fresh cadavers supplied to him by the duo Burke and Hare (obviously not caring too much about how they got their hands on these corpses in the first place). He reasons that since women, at least traditionally, lives longer than men, this will help him prolong his own life.
Above his apartment, there lives a family consisting of an elderly mother, her son Howard and daughter Susan. And Susan is head over heels attracted to Jekyll, who returns her affections in somewhat awkward ways. Too bad he’s so obsessed with work that there’s no time for romance…he’s too busy making his life-extending serum, and once he’s ready to take a sip and test it, he finds that it’s got a peculiar side effect: it changes him into a woman. And he seems to become quite fond of his female alter ego, which he calls Mrs. Edwina Hyde and claims she is his sister. While Jekyll is getting more and more in touch with his feminine side (literally), Susan becomes jealous of the mysterious woman in Jekyll’s apartment (at least until learning that she’s his “sister“), and Howard starts lusting after her. And there’s a big problem for Jekyll: in order to keep making more of the serum, he needs a steady supply of female hormones…and when his suppliers Burke and Hare are lynched by a mob once people find out what they’ve been doing, Jekyll must take matters in his own hands…with the help of Sister Hyde, who is taking over both his body and mind gradually.
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a British Hammer horror film from 1971, directed by Roy Ward Baker and based on the 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s notable for having a female version of Hyde, and also for implementing several historical incidents like Jack the Ripper and the Burke and Hare cases. There have been numerous adaptions of the well-known novella, including the 1931 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And while both the original novella and many of its adaptation are often allegories for alcoholism/drug dependency, this is the only one I’ve seen thus far that gives it a gender-bending theme.
Through modern eyes I guess it’s easy to see it as an allegory for being trans. In the first transformation scene, where Jekyll (Ralph Bates) transforms into Hyde (Martine Beswick), the reaction is one of near euphoria where the initial moment of surprise quickly transcends into one of pure joy and relief, where she touches herself and examines her new body. The Hyde persona easily becomes the most dominant, where they both try to fight for control. Just like in the original story, where Dr. Jekyll could have just stopped taking the serum and be rid of Hyde, he becomes dependent on it and just can’t stop. Martine Beswick, who earlier played a role in two James Bond movies (From Russia With Love from 1963 and Thunderball from 1965) first laughed at the premise of the film when being offered the role, but after thinking it over a bit she found the idea of a male/female inside the same person as an interesting theme to explore.
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a stylish Hammer horror film, where the scenery and sets create a convincing Victorian London era, with a misty, gloomy and gothic atmosphere. Totally Hammer-style, for sure, with it’s blood and boobs formula which where their forte at the time.
In 1995, a remake of the film was released under the title Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, which received a Razzie Award for Worst Remake/Rip-Off. And the trailer for that one pretty much speaks for itself.
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Writer: Brian Clemens
Country & year: UK, 1971
Actors: Ralph Bates, Martine Beswick, Gerald Sim, Lewis Fiander, Dorothy Alison, Neil Wilson, Ivor Dean, Paul Whitsun-Jones, Philip Madoc, Tony Calvin
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068502/
