roddekker *Please note* - This version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is, in fact, a silent-era picture. It is now nearly 100 years old. If you choose to judge this picture by today's "in-your-face" standards of total over-the-top horror & gore, then, to be sure, you are going to be mighty disappointed with what you see here.But if you have an appreciation for film history, and can value this film's story in its understated form, and can forgive it for all of its obvious flaws and faults, then, yes, this old relic will definitely be worth your while to watch.From my point of view - I was actually quite impressed with the creepy, eerie and sinister atmosphere that prevailed in this production. Now, I would certainly never say that this was a great film. But, with that aside - I'll bet you that, upon its initial release, back in 1920, it must have scared the socks off of many of the viewers in the audience.

Robin Blake I won't say much about the story itself, as many of you should already know it. That is unless you you haven't read this great Robert Louis Stevenson story, and to that I say get thee to a library and check it out. Or you could probably read it online. I don't know.Anyway, this 1920 silent film adaptation stars John Barrymore as the titular characters. The movie itself was great. The acting and costumes were fine, and the Jekyll/Hyde transformations were really cool. The Mr. Hyde makeup was very well done. Hyde looked disheveled, creepy and positively evil. Also looked like he hadn't bathed in weeks. That's a stark contrast to the clean, neat, upstanding Dr. Jekyll.My only pick is the score on this version could have been better. Sometimes the music didn't match the film. Kinda odd for some happy upbeat sounding music playing over a rather dismal scene. But the version I watched was on this "50 Horror Classics" DVD set which only cost me $9, so I guess I can't complain too much. Still a great film regardless.

Robert J. Maxwell Robert Louis Stevenson's story is familiar to most of us. Dr. Jekyll is an altruistic doctor, maintaining a clinic for the poor at his own expense, "the Saint Anthony" of London, a paragon of probity and a pillar of the community. But he's doing some research on drugs that his more conservative friends believe to be dangerous.They point out to Jekyll that every man has dual sides, a buried nature that is bad, even Jekyll himself, and, well, in short, it's not nice to fool around with Mother Nature. The Greeks would have agreed and called it hubris. To demonstrate the animal instincts in Jekyll, his friends take him to a louche dance hall where the seductive Nita Naldi is doing her number on the stage. Jekyll goggles at her and undergoes what he might have called a parasympathetic reflex.Back in his home laboratory, he develops a drug that turns him for a few minutes into an evil-looking creep with long hair, a skull shaped like an ancient Peruvian Indian's, and a face that is going through spasms of theatrical torture, before another dose of the drug returns him to normal. Actually, he kind of liked how it felt to be evil. It's fun to be naughty. So he begins using the identity of Mr. Hyde regularly, hiring a shabby room, consorting with low lifes, and generally embarking on what the titles call "a sea of license" and the less literate of today would call "the hedonistic treadmill." I don't think I want to get into the plot too much further. Let's just say that any man who stomps a child in the street and bashes in the head of his future father-in-law can't be all bad.Stevenson's book was published in 1886 in Victorian England. I don't think the story would have had quite the same impact in any other period. It was such a priggish time. Lamb chops acquired little paper panties, furniture legs were draped with tiny skirts, and roast fowl had "white meat" and "dark meat" instead of b*****s and l**s. Nobody was supposed to have a Mister Hyde buried inside him. Oscar Wilde's "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" was published in 1890 and gave the public a glimpse of another Mr. Hyde. Sigmund Freud didn't invent the unconscious but he was about to popularize it and examine it in detail. He called all those buried animal impulses "das Es" -- "the id." There's a moral lesson here. Before you try your experimental drug on yourself, try it on mice first.

Lee Eisenberg One of the early adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous novel casts John Barrymore as the eponymous doctor whose potion releases his evil side. Specifically, this version has Jekyll curious about the existence of a malevolent personality in every person and wanting to be able to make said personality exist on its own...but, we all know what happens.Early on, I thought that the movie was moving kind of slowly since it seemed like the characters were merely having discussions about Jekyll's experiments. But once the good doc drinks his potion, the fun starts. As can be expected, Hyde is one nasty dude.All in all, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" has truly stood the test of time. A veritable piece of cinema history. Also starring Brandon Hurst, Martha Mansfield and Nita Naldi.