Review of Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971) by Stephen C — 28 Aug 2012

What do you get when you cross Jack the Ripper with Burke and Hare and Jekyll and Hyde?

Well you get this horror classic from Hammer ,that conatains some gender bending as well.

Ralph Bates plays Jekyll who is looking to rid the world of all knows diseases and find the secret to eternal life.

During this quest he discovers that Women and certain parts of thier bodies hold the secret which leads hin to recruit Burke And Hare to gehter his bodies.

He then carries out and Experiment on himself which turns him into Sister Hyde played by Martine Beswick a beautiful woman but with danger and muder in her soul.

Whne Jekylls source of corspes dries up he is forced to muder him self and of course he lives in Whitechapel in the 19th century so of course he becomes Jack the Ripper.

I hope you can follow all that because writer Brian Clemens has chucked every Victorian gothic cliche in here and by some miracle it works wonderfully.

Beswicke and Bates do look alike so that a big plus and we get lashings of Hammer blood and boobies and a serious gay undertone and questions about sexual identity.

Director Roy Ward Baker is clearly having a blast with all this nonsense and how can you not lovea film where a person satring at a corpse merley says "Burke By name ,Berk by nature".

Glorious stuff and one of Hammers best films of the 70s.