Aided greatly by the impressive music of David Heneker and Monty Norman, The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll gets off to a rousing start. No, the title theme is not sung by Lou Christie, although I can imagine a heck of a good music video montage. This interesting Dr. Jekyll experiment is certainly better than Hammer's other 'transformation' movie The Man Who Could Cheat Death. The twisted screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz (Expresso Bongo, The Day the Earth Caught Fire) plays fast and loose with Robert Louis Stevenson's famous story but can't be said to have come up with an interesting variation. Mankowitz's bearded, dour Henry Jekyll (Paul Massie) is a lone researcher attempting to define and control the duality of man. He wants to liberate mankind's potential from the restraints of conscience and morality, which in this movie's view leads immediately to horrible behavior. Jekyll's wife Kitty (Dawn Addams of The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse) proves to be equally two-faced. She's having an affair with the wastrel gambler Paul Allen (Christopher Lee), on Henry's money.

Jekyll uses a potion to split his personality, but the Hyde that emerges is not a traditional monster. Audiences in 1950 may have tuned out right then and there. Hyde is instead a handsome and amoral cad eager for sensation. Faster than you can say Julius Kelp, Hyde beds Maria (Norma Marla), a snake dancer at a bawdy night club-bordello. Hyde becomes furious when he fails to seduce 'Jekyll's' wife Kitty, and instead discovers that Kitty actually loves Paul. The remainder of the narrative uses tragic mistaken identity-and-coincidence situations more suitable for a bedroom farce. Mankowitz's mean-spirited series of machinations and twists are lacking in irony or character identification: Bad Stuff happens and that's about it. Paul has a fateful date with Maria's snake, while Hyde maneuvers Kitty and Maria into each other's bedrooms. As the song goes in The Band Wagon, everyone ends in mincemeat.

Director Terence Fisher's pace sometimes slackens -- a fairly dull shot of Jekyll injecting his potion lingers in stasis seemingly forever, with the music working hard to maintain our interest. The almost uniformly bright lighting enforces a rather artificial, theatrical atmosphere. Ace editor Eric Boyd-Perkins enlivens several decorative dance scenes in the London fleshpots -- and adds a couple of jarringly inappropriate wipe transitions. Let's assume they were somebody else's idea.

Dawn Addams may well be dubbed but gives an effective performance as a woman leading a double life. In her own way Kitty is trying to accomplish the same identity split as her husband -- playing an upright society missus nabbing some thrills on the side. For once given a character role with some meat on it, Christopher Lee proves that he can play a wholly convincing cad. Paul Massie is a Glloomy Gus as Jekyll, with some really bad makeup and hair. His blonde, clean-shaven Hyde always seems a twitch away from breaking into a crazed grin. Jekyll insists that his dual-man theories have nothing to do with good and evil, but Mr. Hyde's deeds are almost uniformly reprehensible. When Hyde's chemical transformations begin to get out of control, we don't sympathize with him. There's nobody to root for in this clutch of selfish people.

The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll is short on actual horror content, but reaches for a level of cruel sexuality that the censors would never allow anyway. It's easy to see why the movie would need cutting for American release, as Hammer seems to be reaching for salacious sex to replace censor-forbidden sadism and violence. It was bad timing for more salacious mix of horror and sex, just when the British censors were coming down hard on the company and its imitators. Some of the snake dancing by Norma Marla (or her double; she wears a mask) is pretty vulgar, including a shot of her plunging the head of a large boa constrictor into her mouth. The club harlots talk a bawdy streak, with the word "bitch" used prominently at least twice. And the film teases us with some near-nudity in the Hyde-Maria seduction scene. Columbia pawned the film off on A.I.P., but it can't have been appropriate kiddie matinee material, even when cut.

The picture gives us a nice bit from Oliver Reed as an irate pimp (!) and a too-brief couple of moments with the talented child actress Janina Faye (Horror of Dracula). When the plot requires a London detective, we're not surprised to see stalwart Francis De Wolff enter the scene. David Kossoff (The Mouse that Roared) is Henry's moralizing friend. He has a welcome moment at the finish, rejecting the Coroner's facile conclusion that Henry Jekyll "ventured too far into God's domain" explains exactly nothing.

The Gorgon
1964 / 1:66 widescreen / 84 min.
Starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Richard Pasco, Barbara Shelley, Michael Goodliffe, Patrick Troughton, Joseph O'Conor, Prudence Hyman, Jack Watson.
Cinematography Michael Reed
Film Editor Eric Boyd-Perkins
Original Music James Bernard
Written by John Gilling, J. Llewellyn Devine
Produced by Anthony Nelson Keys
Directed by Terence Fisher

The Gorgon is one of Terence Fisher's more interesting horrors. Its pointedly female monster is pursued not by a strong Van Helsing-type character but by men weakened by their interest in women. Paul Heitz (Richard Pasco) wants to discover what killed his brother and father, but the authority figures in the tiny town of Vandorf seem intent on hiding the source of a series of unsolved murders. Asylum doctor Namaroff (Peter Cushing) submits false death certificates to hide the fact that all of the victims have been literally turned to stone, or "gorgonized." (It sounds like a cheese-making process, frankly.) Paul sends for his professor friend Karl Meister (Christopher Lee) to help solve the mystery.