Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957)

As Good As It Gets

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I saw this movie when it was originally released in 1957. I was eight years old and I think I was a little frighten when I saw "Daughter Of Dr. Jekyll" on the big screen. I rented the video recently and now I am fifty-eight years old in 2007 and I found the movie to still give me a little bit of chills. I think I understand other reviewers did not like the movie,yet it was a low budget film and I think the performers did it good job. Actress Gloria Talbott did it good job in her role as the daughter of Dr. Jekyll; actor John Agar may have not liked playing his role in the film, but he did not do a bad job. Actress Gloria Talbott plays Janet Smith who discovers she has inherited her late father's estate. She discovers her late father was the infamous Dr. Henry Jekyll;I like the dream sequence where she looks like a vampire on a rampage in the village woods. There is a comical sequence when Dr. Lomas transforms into a werewolf and runs through the village woods and peers in a neighbor's open window and sees a woman in her undergarments putting on her nylon stockings. finally, the hero and heroine help the villagers stop the murderous Dr. Lomas and put a stake in his heart to stop his full moon werewolfism.

Edgar G. Ulmer began his career as a set designer to the famous theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt; by 1920 he was working in films, and although often uncredited labored on such legendary films as Fritz Lang's DIE NIBELUNGEN and METROPOLIS. By 1927 he was in Hollywood, and set design work led to assignments as a director. In 1934 Ulmer brought the full force of his talents upon Universal's THE BLACK CAT--a brilliantly realized film that many consider among the finest horror films of that decade. But Ulmer's affair with script girl Shirley Castle, wife of a studio executive, resulted not only in his termination at Universal but placed him on an industry-wide blacklist as well. He would never work at a major studio again.But Ulmer had a knack for getting the most out of a tiny budget, and he soon found himself in demand as a director at second-string studios and for independent productions. Between his dismissal from Universal in 1934 and his death in 1972 he would direct more than forty films, and he was often noted for his ability to bring a remarkable artistic vision to the screen in spite of low budgets and questionable casts.All that said, the 1957 DAUGHTER OF DR. JEKYLL was, according to daughter Arianne, a project undertaken for the sake of a paycheck; it is far from Ulmer's most memorable. Even so, as 1950s B-horror flicks go, it is far from the worst--in spite of tenth-rate special effects Ulmer manages to endow the movie with an entertaining atmosphere and the occasional jab of humor, and it is considerably more coherent than most of its kind.The story concerns orphaned Janet Smith (Gloria Talbott), who has now reached her twenty-first birthday and arrives at the home of her guardian Dr. Lomas (Arthur Shields.) She brings with her future husband George Hastings (John Agar), who soon wins Dr. Lomas' approval, and all seems pleasant. But Janet is in for a surprise: Dr. Lomas tells her that she is heiress to the estate, left to her by her father, the notorious Dr. Jekyll, and no sooner is Janet in residence than corpses begin to crop up. Has she somehow inherited her father's chemically-induced evil? The script here is extremely transparent, and you'll know what's going on long before Janet does. It is also more than a little odd, managing to wrap ideas about vampires and werewolves into the whole Dr. Jekyll package. Add to this extremely obvious miniatures awash in dry ice, mediocre special effects, and a cast that tends toward the obvious at every possible turn--well, the overall effect is somewhat hooty, to say the least.THE DAUGHTER OF DR. JEKYLL will never rank along side the likes of Ed Wood's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE in the "so bad it's good" cult movie derby--Ulmer is too much of an artist to permit tipsy tombstones--but it is actually amusing in its low-rent efforts. Recommended to fans of the genre.GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This is a low-grade horror film which has been culted into a reputation beyond its worth because of its director's involvement. The plot is strikingly similar to that of another notorious potboiler - SHE-WOLF OF London (1946) - but, at least, here the monster is seen (albeit ineffectively made-up): despite the titular reference, the script pays little to no credit to previous cinematic incarnations of the R.L. Stevenson novella - opting, instead, to indiscriminately incorporate elements of lycanthropy and vampirism which make no sense at all...but which lend the film value as a unique curio and one which, in view of its sheer audacity, it is difficult to hate (indeed, the whole misguided enterprise reminded me of the contemporaneous FRANKENSTEIN 1970 [1958])! Despite the ultra-cheap production, the film makes the most of its foggy atmosphere and the hallucination sequences are effective in a naïve sort of way. Casting is below-par but, at least, Arthur Shields (who also appears in a silly book-end in full monster make-up - but, then, as Gloria Talbott's legal guardian spends the rest of the film trying to convince her that she is the werewolf!!) and John Dierkes (as a particularly vehement believer in the Jekyll 'legend' despite being in their employ - or, so it seems, since he's always hovering about the estate!) enter gleefully into the spirit of the thing.I had been toying with the idea of purchasing the All Day DVD of this one ever since it was released; I'm glad I managed to catch up with it eventually without having to purchase the disc - being shown on late-night Italian TV, as part of a Jekyll & Hyde marathon which included snippets from a variety of films based on the venerable tale (I was especially gratified by the inclusion of a couple of scenes from Jean Renoir's THE TESTAMENT OF DR. CORDELIER [1959], which I've been yearning to see forever, and also ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE [1953], which I haven't watched in ages - I really ought to get down to purchasing either the R1 or R2 DVD releases of the films featuring the comic duo!)...

Most of the time this movie is creepy and decently shot reminding me at best of "Night of the Hunter" and at worst of atmospheric fog machine filled horror. I thought of "Night of the Hunter" during the scene where the Daughter waits outside her father's tomb while in the same shot we see the big village man carving a stake. Very ominous. That said, the stake death is the worst I've seen.The technique of superimposing one shot over another for action/dream sequences worked well in my opinion, but others may find it unoriginal. Monster make-up and blood effects were pretty good. Over all the movie is serious with a comic moment I liked with the Monster showing obvious joy as he views a women in her night clothes through an open window. The narration at the beginning and the Monster's ridiculous line don't fit the mood of the picture.