Of course we all know the story and we’ve probably all seen various filmed versions of it over the years. This was a version done for the BBC and it’s actually one of the better versions I’ve seen. David Hemmings plays the title roles and he’s really good. One of the things I really responded to here was the way they used the makeup. Hemmings was only around forty when he played this part, so they use makeup and prosthetics to create Dr. Jekyll as a corpulent, bearded, sixty-something scientist; then when he becomes Hyde, they just take all of that away and Hyde is then, not a repulsive monster, but a dashing, handsome man just under middle age. That really worked for me. Despite the fact that this is a TV movie from the 80s, it gets as disturbing as I’ve seen one of these stories gets. We follow Dr. Jekyll on an early visit to a brothel where we get to see his dark side before he’s even taken the substance that creates Mr. Hyde. I appreciated that; most adaptations play Jekyll as a saintly character, but Hyde is a part of Jekyll from the very beginning of course. Then when Mr. Hyde is loose, the first thing he does is go downtown and pick-up an incredibly young-looking prostitute and the script just flatly tells us that she’s underage. Of course, there’s nothing graphic on display, but their conversation in Hyde’s filthy hotel room is . . . horrifying. The rest of the cast is variable. I have to give special notes to Toyah Willcox as Janet, Jekyll’s kind-hearted and utterly doomed maid. Her scenes with Hyde are the best in the show, I think. Clive Swift and Lisa Harrow are quite good as concerned friends of Dr. Jekyll and, if you don’t blink, you’ll catch Desmond Llewelyn of Q fame being bludgeoned to death by Mr. Hyde. The video quality is not that great unfortunately which is to be expected of a television production of this era, so that’s a problem. The bigger problem is that, well, like just about every other adaptation I’ve seen of this story, it really has no idea how to end and I found myself increasingly bored for about the last fifteen minutes until it just kind of coasts to a stop. Of course, the original novel was a mystery with the true identity of the terrifying Mr. Hyde only being revealed at the climax of the story. You can’t do it that way anymore, of course, but if you don’t, then where’s your climax? Well, nowhere really. So is this an overlooked gem? I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I really enjoyed it. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – a great lead performance and great make-up work recontextualizes these well-worn characters; smart and disturbing, though there are dull bits as well. 3 ½ stars.