DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
(1913)
Notes: Universal
Dr. Henry Jekyll / Mr. Hyde: King Baggot
Dr. Lanyon: Howard Crampton
Lawyer Utterson: William Sorrel
Summary: Henry Jekyll sends a letter to Alice excusing himself from the opera date and telling her to go with her father. Dr. Lanyon and Lawyer Utterson ridicule Jekyll’s experiments when he’s not tending charity patients.
At night he “plans to set free his evil self.” After dramatic swilling, he turns into a spastic Jerry-Lewis-like dork, and then into a buck-toothed crouching weirdo with a big hat. He gives a note to his servants telling them to treat his friend Hyde well. He terrorizes a bar and finds alternate lodging.
Hyde attacks a boy and the crowd pressures him to pay for the injuries. He takes a drink and transforms back to Jekyll, vowing, “Never again shall I tempt fate.” But he transforms into Hyde spontaneously now.
[Part 2] The lawyer is told to make Hyde Jekyll’s heir. Alice leaves just at the verge of Jekyll’s next transformation. She retrieves Lanyon and Utterson, who see Hyde at the window one minute and Jekyll the next. “Dr. Jekyll is a martyr to science,” reads the card as he sees altar boys after church and escorts Alice home. About to enter her house, he transforms and beats up her father at the front stoop.
Hyde makes a boy deliver a message to Lanyon telling the latter to meet him with boxes from his drawer at midnight. Hyde mixes the antidote and transforms to Jekyll, suffering “Remorse” at the stoop. But he transforms to Hyde again. He is pursued to his lodging place but makes the mix again and, with the mob carrying boards and weapons, emerges safely as Jekyll.
Now it’s down to “The last of the antidote.” But Hyde spills it. Passing a note to his female servant, he cannot seem to help but wreck the lab. Lanyon and Utterson show up and knock the door down with a chair. They place a curtain over the body before Alice also appears and Jekyll dies in her arms. A church bell rings.