DrBlackMrHyde

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976)

This movie is a retelling of the classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story, only with a Blaxploitation twist! Dr. Henry Pride is working on a serum to repair damaged livers. He has a break thru that allows the organs to be regenerated, but there is a terrible side effect. The serum temporarily turns the person into an evil homicidal maniac. We know this because they also turn white! God I love movies from the ‘70s… Any way Dr. Black becomes addicted to the rush of being evil and goes on a killing spree, taking out many prostitutes along the way. Why does he target the “pros”? Well we get a chance for the man to tell us the story of why he works to fix livers and hates prostitutes as the same time. Eventually his activities catch up to him and Dr. Black meets with a bad end.

I have a large collection of Blaxploitation movies, but this is one that I hadn’t seen before. This is also one of the retellings of the classic movie monster with an exploitation twist (like Blacula or Blackenstein). When I got the DVD in the mail from VCI to review I was pretty excited to check it out. For the most part I wasn’t disappointed.

The story is solid and the runtime of less then 90 minutes is brisk. The characters are set up quickly and Dr. Pride character is shown to be a gentle and caring man. Then the serum shows up and the fun stuff starts. Hyde cruises around the hood in his vintage Rolls Royce stopping long enough to toss people thru plate glass windows, start bar fights, and kill hookers. When we aren’t seeing his mayhem we get a bit of a story about the one prostitute, Linda that he does like. Though in a neat twist we see that at their core Linda is a much better person then Pride, who revels in his dark side. Okay then again maybe I’m thinking too much about this one. One of the best characters in the movie is a detective that is chasing the killer. He drops all kinds of funny lines and has a running gag where he uses words that no one else knows, so he immediately has to explain their meaning.

I wanted to talk about the special effects. Now the kills are all pretty tame. Hyde tends to grab and strangle his victims, so no blood or gore there. But the creature effects used to turn actor Bernie Casey into Hyde are really well done. It looks to be a simple bit of makeup to lighten the skin and hair with some additional appliances to the face. It is very effective and memorable. It is also some early work from effects wizard Stan Winston. Between this and Gargoyles (also starring Bernie Casey as the creature) he did some fantastic work early in his career.

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde is a good time that I recommend to everyone. For more information on where to get a copy head on over to the VCI website here.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer