Horror Film Review: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (dir by Charles Jarrott)

Posted on October 14, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1968, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a somewhat loose adaptation of the famous novella by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Jack Palance stars as Dr. Henry Jekyll, a mild-mannered and respected doctor who lives in Victorian-era London and who is convinced that there is a good and dark side lurking in every single person. The dark side is what forces people to break the law and fight with each other. Jekyll feels that his experiments will allow people to get closer to their dark side and, in doing so, defeat it. When Dr. Jekyll explains his theories to a medical association, he is violently jeered and booed. Jekyll returns to his home, enters his laboratory, and takes a drink of the serum that he’s been developing.

The next morning, Dr. Jekyll wakes up with a hangover and no memory of how he spent the previous night. Trying to retrace his steps, Jekyll finds himself in a dance hall where everyone is talking about a well-dressed but ugly man named Edward Hyde. Hyde showed up the previous night, spent a lot of money on a woman named Gwyn (Billie Whitelaw), and then got into a fight with two men. Hyde broke a window to make his escape. Jekyll, sensing what must have happened, pays for the window on behalf of his “friend,” Edward Hyde.

Jekyll continues to drink the serum and he continues to indulge in all of the forbidden vices as Edward Hyde. Eventually, we get to see Palance as Hyde. Unlike a lot of other actors who have played the role, Palance uses a minimum of makeup to suggest his transformation. Instead, he hunches over, scrunches up his face, and he has a unibrow. One of the stranger things about this production is that we are continually told that Hyde looks nothing like Jekyll but we know that’s not true. Instead, Hyde looks exactly like Jekyll making a funny face.

Palance gives one of his more eccentric performances as Jekyll and Hyde. Somewhat surprisingly, he’s far more convincing as the kindly and troubled Dr. Jekyll than as the villainous Mr. Hyde. (As Hyde, Palance is often trying to so hard to maintain his facial paralysis that it’s hard to understand exactly what it is that he’s saying.) With each drink of the serum, Jekyll becomes a bit more confident in himself. However, he also finds himself losing the ability to control the transformations. One morning, he wakes up in his bed and is shocked to discover that he is still Hyde. That same morning, he learns that Hyde is suspected of committing a senseless and brutal murder. Jekyll has no memory of it but he knows that Hyde is guilty. And if Hyde is guilty, so is Jekyll. (Those who make the argument that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is ultimately about drug addiction will find plenty to back up that argument in this production,) Jekyll’s anguish as he realizes what he has become is rather poignant to watch.

Produced by horror impresario Dan Curtis, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde can seem a bit creaky today. It was apparently highly acclaimed when it first aired but, seen today, it can feel rather stagey and talky. That said, the film has a strong supporting cast, with Denholm Elliott especially giving a good performance as Jekyll’s best friend. Jack Palance’s performance is so bizarre that it transcends the usual standards used to determine good and bad. It’s definitely a film worth watching.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Night Watch (dir by Brian G. Hutton)

Posted on June 24, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I recorded 1973’s Night Watch off of TCM on March 17th!

There’s a tendency, among critics, to dismiss almost every film that Elizabeth Taylor made after Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Sure, Reflections In A Golden Eye has its defenders but, otherwise, Taylor’s later films are often viewed as being overproduced and self-indulgent with Taylor giving uncertain, occasionally histrionic performances.

Those criticisms aren’t entirely unjustified. Some of it may have been due to her own notoriously poor health and her troubled marriage to Richard Burton. Even more of it was probably due to Taylor’s struggle to remain relevant as a middle-aged actress working in the 1970s. I have to admit that I’m strangely fascinated by the latter half of Taylor’s film career, just because it does feature so many bizarre films and strange performances. Taylor was always a good actress but, in her later films, it was hard not to get feeling that her stardom was her own worst enemy. Taylor was often cast specifically because of her notoriety and she often seemed to work with directors who weren’t willing to reign her in whenever she started to go overboard.

That, however, doesn’t mean that every film that she made in the 70s was a bad one.

Take Night Watch, for instance. Yesterday, as I watched Night Watch, I asked myself, “How is it that I’ve never seen or even heard of this film before!?”

Because seriously, Night Watch was really good.

Liz plays Ellen Wheeler, an apparently unstable woman living in the UK. She’s haunted by the night that her first husband was killed in a car crash, along with his mistress. Ellen has remarried but she worries that her new husband, John (Laurence Harvey), might be cheating on her with her best friend, Sarah (Billie Whitelaw). It turns out that she has good reason to be worried because that’s exactly what John is doing! It’s not that John doesn’t love Ellen. It’s just that he doesn’t know how to deal with her constant nightmares and delusions.

For instance, Ellen is convinced that she’s witnessed a murder! She says that, in the abandoned house next door, she saw a man with a slit throat. Later, she claims that she saw a woman murdered over there as well. When the police investigate, they find no one in the house. But Ellen swears she saw something. She even suspects that her neighbor, Mr. Appleby (Robert Lang), may have buried the bodies in his garden.

(Mr. Appleby is not amused by the suggestion.)

Is Ellen going crazy or did she really see something? I bet you think you already know the answer. I know that I did. But then Night Watch ends with a twist that is shockingly effective and unexpected. For once, I didn’t know how the movie was going to end and now, a day later, I’m still thinking about those final scenes.

Night Watch has its flaws. With the exception of when he played Col. Travis in The Alamo, Laurence Harvey was never a particularly sympathetic actor and he comes across as his usual cold self in Night Watch. And, as good as Taylor is, there are still a few moments where she does go a bit overboard. During the first half of the film, you have to make your way through a lot of yelling to get to the good part.

But that good part is so good that it’s worth it! Night Watch is a genuinely atmospheric and surprising film, one that catches you off guard and one in which the tension does not relent until the final credit has rolled across the screen. Ellen’s nightmares are especially well-realized and the film’s final moments are both frightening and surprisingly graphic. This is a film that sticks with you.

If you haven’t seen it yet, keep a watch for it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aao2hzmuNes

Horror Film Review: The Omen (dir by Richard Donner)

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A few days ago, Arleigh shared the theme song from 1976’s The Omen as Monday’s horror song of the day. As I sat there and listened to Jerry Goldsmith’s award-winning hymn to Satan, it occurred to me that I happen to have all five of the Omen films sitting in my movie collection. Seeing as how this is Halloween and how the world seems to be getting closer to ending with each passing day, I decided that this would be the perfect time to rewatch the entire franchise and consider whether or not The Omen films are truly as scary as a lot of people seem to think.

So, that’s what I did.

How did things turn out?

Well, in the long history of sequels and remakes, The Omen franchise is one of the more uneven collections. This is one of those franchises where things tend to get less impressive with each subsequent entry. However, 38 years after its initial release, the first Omen remains effective and, in its way, genuinely scary.

If you’re a horror fan, you probably know the general plot of The Omen regardless of whether you’ve actually watched it or not. It’s one of those films that has been so frequently imitated that it’s almost possible to watch it by osmosis.

The film opens in Rome with diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) being rushed to the hospital where his wife, Kathy (Lee Remick), has just given birth. A priest (Martin Benson) tells him that his son died shortly after being born but that he can always just go home with an orphaned newborn that he just happens to have handy. Robert agrees and decides not to tell his wife the truth about the child. Robert and Kathy raise the boy and they name him Damien. Four years later, the politically ambitious Robert is named as Ambassador to the Court of St. James.

The Thorns move to London and soon, odd things start to happen. Damien (now played by Harvey Spencer Stephens) is a quiet boy with a piercing stare who throws a fit whenever he’s taken inside of a church. When Kathy takes Damien to the zoo, they’re attacked by angry baboons. A large Rottweiler mysteriously appears on the grounds of the Ambassador’s estate. A mysterious and sinister nanny (Billie Whitelaw) shows up and explains that she’s been sent by an “agency.” A crazed priest (Patrick Troughton) starts to stalk the Ambassador, demanding a chance to speak with him and insisting that Damien’s mother was actually a jackal.

Even more mysteriously, people start dying in the strangest of ways. A young woman (Holly Palance) smiles as she shouts, “Damien, it’s all for you!” and then hangs herself, thoroughly ruining Damien’s fifth birthday party. A freak lightning storm leads to a man being impaled by a weather vane. Another person who suspects that there might be something wrong with Damien ends up losing his head in a graphic sequence that — even in this age of Hostel and Saw — is difficult to watch.

The Ambassador is contact by Keith Jennings (David Warner), a nervous photographer who fears that Damien may be planning on killing him. Soon, Thorn and Jennings are flying to Italy and to the Middle East and discovering evidence that five year-old Damien might very well be the Antichrist. Speaking of Damien, he and that nanny have been left alone with poor, victimized Kathy.

(“Oh, leave her alone,” I muttered as Damien attempted to kill Kathy for the hundredth time…)

As I watched The Omen, I tried to figure out why this film has held up so well. It certainly wasn’t due to the performance of Gregory Peck who, quite frankly, seemed to mostly be going through the motions. David Warner, on the other hand, gave such a good performance that it was almost difficult to watch. (Don’t get attached to any character who appears in an Omen film.) Some of the film’s effectiveness was undoubtedly due to Jerry Goldsmith’s intense score. Anything’s scary when you’ve got a hundred voice shouting “Ave Satani” at you.

But, ultimately, I think the reason why The Omen still works is because the film generates such a palpable sense of doom. This is one of those films that leaves you convinced that anyone can die at any minute and, considering that happens to be true in both this movie and in real life, that makes the horror of The Omen feel very real. By the time the film ends, you’re left with little doubt that nobody in the film had the least bit of power or control over his or her own destiny. Instead, they were all just pawns in a game that they had no hope of ever winning or understanding. Is there anything scarier than feeling powerless?

All I know is that, having rewatched The Omen, I will never look at a plane of glass the same way again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVK42hD9IaY