Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912)

To me, this movie is perfection.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Do not let age fool you. This is one of the scariest movies around. Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920) is scarier. But still this is a very scary movie. Great special effects. Great acting. Great story line. It is not as scary as Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). But that one is hard to top. It is still very scary. Far more scary then silence of the lambs ever could be. Not quit as scary as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941). But still very scary. I just watched now and I have the h.e.b.e.j.e.b.e.s I am on vacation in Florida now. It's night time and I 'm in my condo. This is a very scary movie. Very scary very scary very scary very scary very scary. If you like to get scared you should see this movie.

Lucius Henderson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is the second movie adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, and the oldest surviving version. There was a 1908 version of which no prints are known to exist, making it a lost film. This movie is only about 11 minutes long, so they only adapted the most basic things about the story. Most of it's pretty anticlimactic.The Thanhouser Company, which made the movie, produced about 1,000 movies between 1909 and 1918. This is the first one that I've ever seen, and I watched it on Wikipedia. Apparently, Florence La Badie (Jekyll's sweetheart) got killed in a car wreck a few years after the movie got released.I suspect that most of my generation first learned of the story from Looney Tunes cartoons. For example, there was "Dr. Jerkyl's Hide", in which Sylvester is running from some dogs. He accidentally swallows some of the formula and turns into a monster who makes mincemeat of the bulldog but always reverts to his normal appearance when in the presence of the small dog. And then of course there was "The Nutty Professor" (both the Jerry Lewis version and the Eddie Murphy version).This is an OK version. Nothing impressive. You're just not going to end up with any great adaptation of a classic novel if you only have eleven minutes. The best adaptations are the ones with Fredric March and Spencer Tracy.

"The taking of certain drugs can separate man into two beings---one representing EVIL the other GOOD" the story begins by telling us. Jekyll tests that theory on himself one night by downing an elixir, which instantly turns him into a clawed, slobbering ogre. A different elixir returns him to his normal state. More studies are needed.He later marries. His repeated use of the elixir causes uncontrollable changes in him, back into the clawed, slobbering ogre, who ransacks his own house and then takes to the streets to assault people, and ultimately kill a man.Followed by police, Hyde retreats to his home, for another dose of elixir. But when it is gone, he realizes he is now stuck as Hyde. Police chop down the door to Jekyll's study with an ax, only to find Hyde, and Jekyll, dead. Or, incredibly sleepy.Industrial look throughout helps give it a more gritty feel, but compressing the story down to a handful of minutes makes it seem like they only adapted a couple of paragraphs of the story. This is the earliest existing film version of this tale, as a 1908 version appears to be lost.

This is one of seven short films included on a DVD entitled "The Thanhouser Collection". Thanhouser was an early film studio in New York that was a rival to American Biograph and Edison.Considering the subject matter, this film should have been a lot better. If you compare it to the famous 1920 version with John Barrymore, it's not even close--being too abbreviated and with an amazingly limp transformation scene. Whereas John Barrymore put on some fun histrionics as be went from the kindly doctor to Mr.Hyde, in this film the change is instant (stopping the camera and then substituting the other actor). I guess you can't fault them too much for this, but the rest of the film is also pretty dull--showing little of the plot (instead using intertitle cards too much) and the sets were not especially good (filming most of it either in the lab or outside). While the film gets kudos for using a short Mr. Hyde (like in the book), the rest of it just isn't that great--and I usually LIKE films from this era.