Lucius Henderson | Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde / 1912

drugs destroy doctor

by Douglas Messerli

 

Thomas Sullivan (screenplay based on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson), Lucius Henderson (director) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde / 1912

 

Apparently written by Thomas Sullivan, who also penned the 1887 play based on Stevenson’s work, the one-reeler 12-minute first film of the horror story titled Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is precisely that and little else: a moralistic horror tale presented as a melodrama with very little psychological depth. We know virtually nothing about this Dr. Jekyll (James Cruze) other than he is a doctor evidently intrigued by a text he has been reading by a man named Graham “On Drugs” who argues apparently that “taking certain drugs can separate man into two beings—one representing evil the other good.  Presumably Jekyll is good.

      He must be “good” since we soon discover he is the accepted suitor of the local minister’s daughter (Florence La Badie). And despite the actions that we have just observed of Jekyll, after mixing up a serum, quickly turning into fanged monster and back, we later witness the two gently kissing as they encounter the girl’s father.

     From there on there is very little in the way of action: as in the original the fiendish Mr. Hyde knocks down a young girl in the street as in the original, and unlike the original continues to court the minister’s daughter, on one such occasion turning unwillingly into Hyde and killing his fiancée’s father as in the 1920, 1931, and 1941 remakes. In this work there are no other friends to warn or chide him, and the minister and his daughter know nothing about Jekyll’s risky research. 

     His butler, the Poole role in the later films, encounters no one but his master Jekyll, discovering only at the end of the film that Jekyll may be locked away with the monster.

    As critic Troy Howarth are rather humorously commented, Hyde’s “reign of terror” is confined to the brief encounter with the girl on the streets and his future father-in-law, and otherwise acts more “like an unrestrained child who is allowed to run amok by a distracted parent.”

     As he madly tears apart his studio Hyde/Jekyll grabs a bottle of poison and swallows it, unlike some of the later Jekylls who still insist that they can win the battle with Hyde. And unlike the dying Hydes of the 1931 and 1941 film who transform back into the goodly doctor, this Hyde surely has defeated Jekyll as he dies with the face of the monster alone.

      Since we are presented only with the outlines of the horror tale that allows no entry into personality or intention or even ideas of pleasure, this version is utterly impervious about any sexual identity except for the normative heterosexual pairing of Jekyll and the minister’s daughter. And even after her father’s death, Jekyll, accidently meeting her on his way to leave, still shows love for her with no sense of consequence for Hyde’s actions other than his recognition that the monster within himself can no longer be contained.

      Except for a doctor who experiments with drugs to create a monstrous being, this work has almost nothing to do with Stevenson’s tale other than using his character’s names. The movies might be best expressed in something like a prohibition headline: “DRUGS DESTROY DOCTOR.”

 

Los Angeles, December 7, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2021).