In my quest to rediscover various key moments from my youth, I had been searching for a particularly old horror movie shown on one of Elvira’s late night shows that would pop up on channel 9 (or maybe it was 5). I had only a very vague recollection of the movie in that it involved a Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde character but more importantly a scene that was hilarious that I needed to revisit later in life. Fast forward roughly 45+ years later and I managed to uncover the horror-comedy called Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype.
As implied by its title, Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype is more or less a spoof/parody of the classic Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde franchise movie. One might say it’s a little more modernized in the setting being a contemporary European and/or American environment, which is honestly confusing in itself. You have these random encounters with characters whose accents aren’t regionalized at all. In fact, the main character(s) in Dr. Heckyl/Mr. Hype flip between a kind of detective, lisp infused possibly northeastern tone to a more refined British, stately mannered gentleman as the character swaps in and out of these personas. Part of that gimmick is to reinforce what might appear to be an ideal character where the ugly Dr. Heckyl behaves more sympathetically and can be associated to a common type of person whereas the refined Mr. Hype (poorly) imitates the markings of some British-like nobleman. And while the actor dual playing this role isn’t bad, the movie, dialog and failed attempts at comedy make this movie a real chore to get through.
Part of the problem is that this movie obviously is very low budget. When we first encounter Dr. Heckyl, we see someone in a horrible make up job. While the movie enjoys pelting this character with the denigrating title of a monster, it’s difficult accepting him as some horror as opposed to someone with a very bad make up job. And that alone makes much of the movie very hard to accept. Beyond the lame make up job, the sets themselves are limited and almost prop-like in feeling. The movie attempts to be atmospheric especially in outdoor night shots where odd lighting and fog permeate. However, these effects only do disservice to make it impossible to discern anything, considering that this was done way back when.
There is an attempt at a plot too and message where the trope of the ugly bad guy is turned on itself such that the physical deformity of this person makes him more of a Quasimodo type of character. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the elegant Mr. Hype, who ends up being some conceited, overly sensitive loon whose personality comes almost out of nowhere. But the problem is that the movie takes a great deal of time to establish both sides of these two characters because scenes are drawn out and muddled by garbled dialog and cheesy punch lines. I can see the jokes but they aren’t really funny most of the time.
Of course, the character really is meant to be Freudian with the idea of the Id and Ego at play. Obviously, Mr. Hype represents the Id with his innermost desires and compulsions becoming externalized in this gentlemanly form while Dr. Heckyl is the more repressed Ego. None of this is truly complex psychology as much of the characteristics are explained especially towards the end where Dr. Heckyl describes the potion’s actual mechanics (as opposed to the creator’s original purpose of helping fat women lose weight). But beyond perhaps the original ideas from the character from which this movie parodies, there’s little depth that gets explored in the complexities of Freudian psychology here.
And I call attention to this issue because of how Mr. Hype overreacts when his fragile ego (pun partly intended) is shattered by slim, poignant yet truthful remarks about any slight flaw over his appearance. For instance, in his first outing, he encounters a woman who lives below him. We don’t get much detail on this woman nor her relationship to Dr. Heckyl. All we know about her is that she has a mediocre looking husband who returns home at 5am. She says one slightly negative thing about Mr. Hype and Mr. Hype ends up twisting the idea into a murderous thought that causes him to plug her toe into an electric lamp’s socket (which is the main thing I sought from this movie). But it’s such a ridiculous development and leap in logic to go from ugly frogs to “you can burn to a crisp” (sic) that the only thing one can comment on with regards to Mr. Hype is that he’s purely insane.
There’s more of these random escapades, including a car theft, another murder where Mr. Hype uses a very realistic looking lion hand puppet mouth to bite into a woman’s neck and his encounters with the police. I read on imdb that the movie felt as though the writers were coming up with things as they filmed and I wouldn’t disagree that it felt this way. There’s just a lot of random, bizarre encounters and characters that appear out of nowhere, most which are played up for laughs. But again it’s not really a funny movie outside of the light bulb socket scene.
On top of that, it’s not really much of a horror film either. It’s super cheesy with bad effects. Like one woman has her slammed into a mirror but it’s not gory nor graphic. The sex scenes aren’t lewd and more dramatic as though you were watching some theater play rather than a movie.
The main actor of Oliver Reed actually isn’t bad. He looks like he’s trying. His delivery is generally good outside of the fact that the audio is wretched and makes everyone sound like they’re mumbling. But the material itself mostly is downright rotten and he has a limited amount of things to work with. But he does try to make the performance matter such as his terrible singing that triggers the town or how he rubs the woman’s face across his nose. Everyone else pretty much just exist to support the environment and there’s no one really of note that stands out beyond whatever costume or make up they’re provided. Maybe the main actress in Sunny Johnson is notable in that she’s incredibly attractive. But this movie is so ugly in general that any positive quality in her is immediately negated by the wretched filming, material and her voice/character.
The ending itself is surreal and another victim of low budget/cheap effects. We get these montage of characters that Dr. Heckyl/Mr. Hype transmogrify into with the last one being what looks like a set of lips (although I really couldn’t tell because this movie is practically indiscernible). He ends up concluding with a statement he had made earlier in the movie in that, “I’m still a virgin.” I suppose that epiphany would have more impact if not for the lack of pathos for this character as well as the bizarre build up leading to that point. Then it abruptly goes to credits.
But beyond that last psychedelic montage of meaningless tossed together faces, the only other really stand out moment that I must reiterate is the first victim’s death. As I mentioned previously, this movie lacked anything really notable beyond this scene and the last one, which is most likely why I had a very hard time identifying it (I mean a lot of bad movies I’ve learned end up being like this). Nonetheless, seeing the woman with her hair sprayed out, being imbued in a strange blue with off blue make up and her tongue wagging in and out of her mouth as her eyes stick straight up into her head and doing some shrill shriek is one of the funniest fucking things I’ve ever witnessed. When I originally had seen this scene, I had an impossible time ascertaining why Mr. Hype had jammed a broken light socket over this woman’s toe. Upon watching this movie in the present, I figured it was merely because the actor really mumbled the entire dialog and the film maker didn’t see that the audio was problematic. But the other thing is that the leaps in logic as Mr. Hype slowly grows more demented in rationalizing why he should shove a light socket over the woman’s toe had nothing memorable nor any sense to it.
I think when I originally had seen this scene the show cut to Elvira who made her usual flippant commentary. But I recall my mom and I sharing a hearty laugh over the ridiculous image of this woman’s hair and her tongue. I mean, I guess this part would be the key scene that moved this movie into a horror type of genre but it’s too poorly done and comedic to take seriously for good reason. Honestly, it’s the only reason to watch this movie at all. Everything else is plain rotten and a waste of time sadly. I really was hoping to find other good moments in the movie but nothing stood out and the humor never tickled me once outside of this one particular scene.
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