Robert Louis Stevenson's classic book has been adapted for the big screen countless times with varying degrees of success. Unfortunately John Carl Buechler's 2006 film, The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde sinks quickly towards the bottom of the barrel.

Tony Todd (best known for his performance in The Candyman plays Dr. Henry Jekyll who of course invents a serum that brings out the beast in man. He experiments on himself and turns into the sinister Mr. Hyde, an animalistic looking monster of a man who runs around for the bulk of the film terrorizing the local coed population as a cop named Karen Utterson (Tracey Scoggins) tries to figure out exactly what is going on and just as importantly what she can do to stop it.

Okay... where to start with this turd of a film... how about Tony Todd's make up? That seems as good a place as any. Todd, who really isn't a bad actor at all despite the fact that he seems to continually get stuck with bad material, looks ridiculous here. His make up job ensures that he looks more like a dopey caveman than any sort of intimidating monster and in the later part of the film, when he's running around with a cape, a top hat, and a cane, well it's honestly hard not to laugh at the poor guy. Todd doesn't do too badly when he's playing Dr. Jekyll, but the reality of the situation is nobody watches a movie like this for Dr. Jekyll, they watch it for Mr. Hyde and Tony Todd's Mr. Hyde is terrible.

On top of that, the script is awkward. The dialogue between Karen Utterson and the chief of police (who doesn't even have his own office - he's stuck in a cubicle) feels like it was taken from a Dirty Harry movie only Scoggins doesn't have the conviction to pull off the tough talk the same way that Clint Eastwood does. Mr. Hyde's dialogue, what we can hear of it at least, is meant to sound intimidating and eerie but instead it's either unintelligible and mumbled or, when we can hear it, so riddled with cliché after cliché that it becomes unintentionally hilarious ruining the intended effect of the film.

If the movie looked good, maybe we could excuse it as an exercise in style over substance but sadly the film doesn't even have that going for it. The cinematography is bland and uninspired and the picture looks very plain from start to finish. The score is generic, the gore quite mediocre, the whole thing is just poorly done and really the only feeling it evokes is one of sadness for Todd.

Video:

The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde arrives on DVD in a 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The image shows some grain and noise but these are mild issues and for the most part the progressive scan picture is quite clean and clear. A few mild compression artifacts creep into the darker scenes but color reproduction looks reasonably accurate and there aren't any serious problems with edge enhancement or alising to discuss. Flesh tones look good, and detail is fine throughout.