Daughter of Dr Jekyll (1957)

Daughter of Dr Jekyll (1957) is, infamously, the film of which critic Andrew Sarris noted as having a scenario so atrocious that it took forty minutes to establish that the daughter of Dr Jekyll is indeed the daughter of Dr Jekyll.   To be fair, he exaggerated somewhat - it doesn't take quite that long to establish the leading lady's parentage, but the film does take an inordinate amount of time to build up to something that the title has already revealed.  That the film is poorly constructed should come as no surprise as it is a painfully cheaply made Allied Artists co-feature, eventually destined to form half of a double bill with another low budget horror feature from the same studio, The Cyclops (1957).  The film's real problem lies with Jack Pollexfen's script which, despite invoking the name of Dr Jekyll, strays far from its inspiration, furnishing the titular scientist with a whole new backstory.  No longer a lone scientist toiling in secret in his lab, it now seems that he had a whole roster of medical colleagues who all seemed to know what his experiments were about.  Moreover, rather than transforming into Mr Hyde after taking his elixir, he instead turned into a werewolf, carrying out a series of bloody murders before being staked through the heart.  Most of this is related to us via a voiceover in a prologue which ends with a very poorly made up werewolf in a lab who, after the narrator declares that Dr Jekyll is dead, cackles 'Are you sure?'  The rest of the backstory is filled in by Jekyll's former colleague Dr Lomas (Arthur Shields) as he reveals to his orphaned ward Janet Smith (Gloria Talbott) - who has travelled to his house with fiancé George Hastings (John Agar) on the occasion of her twenty-first birthday - that she is actually the daughter of the late Dr Jekyll and heir to his fortune, which includes the house.

The situation that Janet and George walk into - a remote spooky old house complete with secret rooms, a surly groundskeeper, frightened maid who doesn't like to be out when the full moon shines, a family mausoleum and some creepy woods out back - seems to promise some sort of Gothic melodrama, full of mad women and nefarious goings on.  In this respect, it doesn't disappoint as, after a number of werewolf killings, Janet begins to suspect that she has inherited her father's lycanthropic tendencies, (despite these having been chemically induced).  Despite the best efforts of Dr Lomas and George, she can't be dissuaded from her suspicions - fuelled by some weird dreams in which she sees herself as a monster, murdering women - and hovers on the brink of madness.  But, of course, nothing is as it seems and, as just about everyone has guessed long ago, mild-mannered Dr Lomas is actually the werewolf and is trying to frame Janet, in order to gain control of her inheritance, just as he had her father.  (Which rather implies that Jekyll's experiments had actually been a failure, as, in that case, he hadn't transformed into a werewolf, let lone Mr Hyde).  Having hypnotised Janet, hidden her in the mausoleum and murdered another local woman, werewolf Lomas is shot and wounded by a mob of angry villagers, before fleeing back to the mausoleum, where he fights George before that surly groundskeeper turns up and stakes him through the heart.  Finally, with the narrator intoning that the werewolf is dead, that lycanthrope in the lab reappears and asks again (albeit in a deeper voice) 'Are you sure?', implying a sequel, which thankfully never materialised.

This utterly confused and confusing scenario, substituting a werewolf for Hyde then having him behave like a vampire (he drinks blood) before dispatching him like a vampire, with a stake rather than a silver bullet, completely scuppers Daughter of Dr Jekyll.  Interestingly, writer/producer Pollexfen had previously co-scripted a similar film for Columbia: Son of Dr Jekyll (1951).  The two films share many plot elements, most obviously the central idea of a child of Dr Jekyll uncovering that their father had, in fact, been innocent of the crimes he had been accused of, framed by a colleague who is the one who really transforms into a monster.  The crucial difference is that whereas Jekyll's son proactively investigates his father’s legacy in order to prove his innocence, his daughter is a victim of circumstance, an innocent caught up in a melodrama over which she has no control and is manipulated by men throughout the film.  Indeed, this would, superficially, seem to reinforce the view of some critics that Daughter of Dr Jekyll is essentially a story of patriarchal domination, with its main female character alternately subjugated to the whims and desires of her fiance, who wants her to conform to the 'ideals' of womanhood, ie becoming an obedient wife and her guardian, who tries to turn her into a bestial (ie sexual) force that only he can control.  Whether such a sub-text is intentional, or simply the construct of some viewers, is open to debate.  What isn't in doubt is that Daughter of Dr Jekyll is an astoundingly strange film, full of crackpot ideas and plot developments, which completely subverts its source material.  It is almost saved by Edgar G Ullmer's typically moody and stylish direction, which is particularly impressive in the strikingly shot dream sequences, which, overall, gives the film a suitably dark and downbeat feel.  Moreover, it is difficult to dislike any film insane enough to cast Barry Fitzgerald's brother as a werewolf...