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3
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3 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Review
originally appeared in
ROGUE
CINEMA 2/01/05 |
Already
filmed a gazillion times, Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde received two cinematic treatments in
1971: Hammer's gender-bending Dr.
Jekyll and Sister Hyde starring Ralph Bates and Martine
Beswick, and I, Monster, one of
the 22 onscreen teamings of horror film legends Christopher
Lee and Peter Cushing. I, Monster
wasn't a Hammer production, though. It was made by Amicus, the
rival British studio best known for its horror anthologies (The
House That Dripped Blood, Asylum)
and which often purloined Hammer's most famous stars for its
projects. Despite the presence of heavyweights Cushing and Lee,
Amicus easily lost the round... The film, actually a more faithful
adaptation of Stevenson's tale than the majority of those that
came before or after it, is a real dud.
London,
1906. Psychologist/experimental scientist Dr. Charles Marlowe
(Lee), an early acolyte of Freud, is obsessed with unlocking
the secrets of Man's dual nature. What makes one human good
and another evil? When not debating the issue with members of
his social club, Marlowe is testing a new serum he's developed
to break down inhibitions and free repressed thoughts. With
the drug he hopes to learn chemically what hours of tedious
and often unsuccessful therapy sessions fail to: exactly what
hidden aspect of his patients' psyches is the source of their
problems. To this end he's also created an antidote which restores
a person to their 'normal' self.
The trial injection
of Marlowe's cat turns the docile feline into a snarling, violent
beast, forcing him to kill it. Undaunted, he recalibrates his
formula and is soon confident enough to test it on humans. A
female patient whose therapy isn't getting anywhere agrees to
try it. (He neglects to tell her about the incident with the
cat.) A shot of the stuff morphs the prim young lady into a
sex-crazed nymphomaniac, eager and willing to shed her knickers
for the good doctor. Marlowe injects her with the antidote,
returning her to normal... but not until after he's taken
her to bed. (This is implied, not explicitly shown. She apparently
doesn't remember having sex with him so Marlowe can count this
is as an incredibly successful experiment!) Later, after reducing
another patient — a gruff, hard-nosed businessman — to the mindset
of a whimpering child, Marlowe develops ethical pangs and concludes
that for now, he should only test the drug on himself. (Not
a good idea, either, it turns out.) Over the course of a series
of injections, he gradually becomes addicted to his own drug
and takes on the persona of the evil Mr. Blake — the 'Hyde'
of our story. As the antidote yields diminished returns the
Blake persona takes more and more control of the doctor's body,
causing his face to become increasingly ugly and bestial. Theft
and murder follow; eventually Marlowe's friend and attorney,
Utterson (Cushing), puts two and two together and realizes that
Marlowe is Blake under the influence of a psychoactive
compound. (No Sherlockian deduction needed here; the fact that
Marlowe told him at the club that he'd created a personality-altering
drug is a big help.) But Blake knows that Utterson knows. So
he tries to kill him.
As mentioned,
despite the inexplicable altering of the main characters' names
("Marlowe" and "Blake" instead of Jekyll
and Hyde), this is a relatively faithful retelling of Stevenson's
novella. It's also pretty damn dull. The script is intelligent
but talky. Visually static and a bit cheap-looking, the film
is further compromised by sluggish, even clumsy pacing. To wit:
instead of being shown a key moment via flashback, the information
is related entirely verbally to Utterson in a long, drawn-out
scene in which a mutual friend, Enfield (Lust
for a Vampire's Mike Raven), describes a street encounter
with Blake to Cushing's character. Radio plays do this better,
for heaven's sake! (A possible explanation for this ham-handed
scene is that I, Monster was originally
to be filmed in 3-D, using a technically troublesome process.
The novice director wasn't up to the task [nor was the story,
actually], so the 3-D footage already shot was tossed out.)
There's really very little to recommend in a film so dry and
lethargic. We've seen this all before, whatever the names of
the characters, and much better staged. Yet despite the poverty
and blandness of the production, Christopher Lee rises to give
one of his better performances. The outwardly aloof and proper
Dr. Marlowe is the kind of role Lee can play in his sleep, but
he gets to let his hair down a bit as the brutish Mr. Blake,
a much more animated and emotional monster than he'd essayed
for Hammer. Peter Cushing, of course, lends his typical yeoman
support. His underwritten part doesn't permit him to command
the proceedings so it's Lee who gets to shine, and deservedly
so. It's just too bad it wasn't in a better movie. This is perhaps
the duo's most obscure pairing and it's very easy to see why.
|
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| I,
Monster
is available on DVD from Retromedia (for North American Region
0/1, reviewed here) and Warner Home Video (European Region 2).
The Retromedia print is matted to 1.85:1 while Warner's is cropped
fullframe. Retromedia's edition was culled from various video
sources, however, and is the more inferior-looking of the two
(appearing quite murky and muddy); a few extras — a small black
and white still gallery, an extremely ragged theatrical trailer,
a reproduction of the film's English press kit as an insert booklet
— are tossed in as consolation.
4/04/05 |
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