Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Doctor Jekyll and the Werewolf - 1972

Man, I was off by one year when I guessed. Shit.

Paul Naschy returns to the set in this bizarre crossover that I didn't know existed. I haven't seen many werewolf movies, and I haven't seen a single Jekyll movie. So I'm a noob.

In the beginning of this one, there is a werewolf terrorizing a small village. For me this was the best part of the film. For the first 20 minutes or so there is a real atmosphere, there is some excellent tone and dark, eerie images. We don't see the creature and naturally I forgot which movie I'd put on so I was pleasantly surprised when the werewolf shows up, but I was also loving the not-knowing before it did.

Once the werewolf does show up and the movie takes it's plot forward, we see the werewolf has his identity known and is trying to rid himself of the curse. He knows someone who had heard of Dr. Jekyll and Jekyll's formula of transformation and soon enough they decide to give the fomula to the werewolf. Apparently I guess the two curses will duke it out and both will no longer affect him? Of course, we know that won't be the case though. We know that instead he'll have BOTH curses!

So yeah, once the whole Jekyll thing starts to happen, the movie gets way less interesting, and I was checked out for sure. The atmosphere gone, we instead get plenty of lab scenes. This movie is the one where the Pure Terror DVD menu music comes from, a weird sciency theme. It's not great, but it's not bad. Which is generally how I'd describe the entire film.

There's a few well known sequences and good parts, but it's also obviously low level B movie entertainment in general. So, it serves it's purpose. Great beginning though.

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