Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976)

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Another horror classic receives the Blaxploitation treatment; wisely, the producers recruited for the task the director of the most sustained effort in this vein, namely the original BLACULA (1972). While not emerging a success on a similar level, the film under review is still a reasonably interesting one. The main reason for this is that it keeps a generally sober approach throughout (apart from the caricatured depiction of pimps) and the central performances (notably Bernie Casey and Marie O'Henry) are as committed as can be expected under the circumstances. As in the horrid BLACKENSTEIN (1973), the script contrives to incorporate some half-baked form of social commentary: the effects of substance abuse (since here the doctor injects himself rather than drinks a potion) and – less successfully, given Stan Winston(!)'s ludicrous make-up – race relations (Dr. Pride, as the protagonist has been renamed, turns white as a result of the drug!). Perhaps the most unexpected trait allotted the transformation in this case is "Hyde"'s unearthly shriek, which is effective at first but does begin to grate with the repetition! Unlike in previous versions, too, this monster (apart from the typical savagery of his depredations, at one point, he is made to throw a prostitute clear across the street!) proves remarkably resilient in being put down – necessitating attacks by police dogs, innumerable gun-shot wounds and, finally, a leap from L.A.'s oddly-shaped Watts Tower. Rosalind Cash (from THE OMEGA MAN {1971}) appears as Pride's conservative colleague-cum-neglected fiancée.

***SPOILERS*** Updated version of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyell and Mr.Hyde" in the Watts ghetto of L.A. with the understanding and gentle Dr. Henry Pride, Bernie Casey. Henry through his experimenting with a serum would cure hepatitis and regenerate liver cells. It in fact turns him into the brutal and ruthless Mr.Hyde! A much better movie that one would guess with Casey and the supporting cast lifting the film well above the standards that one would expect from this black exploitation movie of 1976.Henry had a lifelong dream of curing damaged liver cells and related diseases, like hepatitis, since his dear mother died of liver disease right in front of him and his sister Dr. Billie Worth, Rosalind Cash, when he was a little boy. Henry also has over the years developed a deep hatred and resentment against prostitutes whom he holds responsible for his mothers death. Henry's mother worked as a maid in a local bordello, where she and her son and daughter were given a place to live by the owner, and the night that she fell ill and died none of the "ladies", as Henry called them, would come to her aid or call for medical help. Coming up with a serum that he thought would cure liver disease Dr. Pride needed someone to try it on but if it was ever found out that he did that, as his sister warned him, it would destroy everything that he and his sister worked for. Which is the free clinic that they founded and ran in the Watts ghetto for the poverty stricken people who lived there. Trying the serum on himself turned the sweet and kindly Henry into an albino-like monster where his hatred of prostitutes and those who employ and support them, pimps and johns, came to the surface with deadly and destructive results. Linda, Marie O'Henry, a local prostitute who Henry fell in love with, and was treating for hepatitis, once tried to use the serum on her to see if it would work but without success, Linda refused to be injected with it. Dr. Pride then tried the serum on himself where, to Linda's shock and horror, he turned into murderous Mr.Hyde! With the body count of his victims raising at an alarming pace Linda begged Henry, while he was still normal, to turn himself over to the police so that the killing would stop and that he could get help. Henry wouldn't listen and continued with his murderous rampage until the police finally tracked him down and cornered him in the Watts Towers. After holding the police off, with Linda as a hostage, Henry doing a King Kong imitation climbed to the top of the towers and is then killed by a barrage of police bullets. As Henry fell to his death the terror that he unleashed on the ghetto of Watts, and the people that live there, came to an end. Much better then one would expect with Bernie Casey and the supporting cast rising up the movie where it's entertaining as well as thought-provoking. You really feel for Dr. Henry Pride to the point where your both sympathetic as well as outraged at what he was and what he became. With an ending that makes you see that Henry's obsession with curing liver cells and hepatitis was indeed a noble and righteous effort, for the good of all humanity. It's the way that Henry went about it and with the consequences that resulted from it destroyed, like his sister warned him, everything that he ever worked for and in the end even himself.

--Don't take it seriously and you'll have a great time with this film.--Here's another point of view about the "quality" of this movie. If you're the kind who doesn't take life too seriously, enjoys b-movies and/or blaxploitation flicks, and doesn't mind a classic bad movie every now and then for a good laugh, then you'll enjoy this film. But the point is to not take the film seriously. After all, what film do you know of with a character named Silky the pimp will be a contender for an Academy award!No, this movie is not *that* scary, though there is lots of suspense. But it *is* funny (make your own jokes as the movie rolls), with lots of action, crazy blaxploitation-style music, kitschiness. . . did I mention Silky the pimp? It is not meant to be a commentary on race relations. It's bad film entertainment at it's worse, er, I mean best! It ranks up there with "Blacula;" it's quality comes from the fact that it is played so "straight."I recommend this to all other fans of bad b-movies and blaxploitation films like myself. Kick back with this film, some friends, some snacks, and laugh all night!

If anyone actually takes this as a serious commentary on race relations, they need counseling. Immediately.The tale, as you can probably take from the title, is more or less a riff on the "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" storyline, only this time a black doctor's (Casey's) experiments turn him into a rampaging albino-skinned monster!Pretty thinly-veiled commentary, eh?The monster attack scenes look like they should be played for laughs. The ZAZ (Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker) brothers would have had a field day with this. Indeed, if you watch this, you'll find yourself laughing at every scary and/or racially-motivated moment.But no, it's played straight and all the sadder. Casey is a good actor, an important actor, even. Unless he was intentionally playing this for laughs, there's just no excuse for such inanity. The least they could have done was have Casey morph into Leslie Nielsen. Now THERE we would have known where we stood.One star.Great; I probably just gave Hollywood an idea for a remake.