Jekyll & Hyde – Together Again (1982/Legend Films DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: D
The most
confused adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Jekyll
& Hyde – Together Again (1982) admits it knows it is bad, but that
cannot save it from being the film that killed the famous book on the big
screen for decades to come. The doctor
(Mark Blankfield of the failed Saturday
Night Live knock-off Fridays)
finds a formula that turns him from a dork (read white) to a party animal (read
black and Hispanic in a sort of black/brown face Al Pacino would make famous a
year later in Brian De Palma’s Scarface
remake) including the desire to boogie and shove his butt in the face of others
Eminem-style.
An early
Joel Silver production (with the also successful producer Laurence Gordon) the
film is hoping to ape Airplane! and
other counterculture comedies, but it has too many potential ideas and follows
none of them. This is what Paramount did
with Jerry Lewis’ The Nutty Professor
before Eddie Murphy found a way to make it a hit, but this is far more
politically incorrect and stupid than most Murphy films of late. Even Horror fans skip this one.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is soft, with problematic color and poor
detail, while the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is a little better; even Barry
DeVorzon’s score has nowhere to go.
There are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
