Doc­tor Jekyll review – gives Christo­pher Lee and Peter Cush­ing a run for their money

In a deli­cious exam­ple of nom­i­na­tive deter­min­ism, British hor­ror pow­er­house Ham­mer Film Pro­duc­tions was recent­ly acquired by the­atre pro­duc­er John Gore. He will over­see a revival of schlocky, low-bud­get British hor­ror – start­ing with a new adap­ta­tion of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 Goth­ic novel­la Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It is well-worn ter­ri­to­ry for the stu­dio, includ­ing Ham­mer sta­ple Ter­ence Fisher’s The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), and Dr. Jekyll and Sis­ter Hyde (1971) direct­ed by Roy Ward Baker.

The lat­ter ver­sion rode on a wave of gen­der-swapped hor­ror remakes, play­ing to the sus­pense poten­tial of an oh-so-inno­cent female secret­ly veil­ing the mon­ster inside. As with big­ger-bud­get hor­ror movies from Hitchcock’s Psy­cho to De Palma’s Dressed to Kill, Dr. Jekyll and Sis­ter Hyde played to the most ter­ri­fy­ing trope of all – the man whose alter-ego is a woman. It’s impor­tant to have all of this in mind when watch­ing Joe Stephenson’s Doc­tor Jekyll, which goes one step fur­ther than pre­vi­ous iter­a­tions by chang­ing the gen­ders of both Jekyll and Hyde, now Nina and Rachel.

Both good Nina Jekyll and evil Rachel Hyde are played by Eddie Izzard, who has spo­ken vocal­ly about her own gen­der tran­si­tion and how she has been treat­ed by a fierce­ly trans­pho­bic Britain. Izzard’s char­ac­ter is nev­er dis­cussed as hav­ing tran­si­tioned in the film, and in a flash­back to child­hood is played by a young girl, delib­er­ate­ly ques­tion­ing the assump­tions that an audi­ence might make about the sto­ry of her char­ac­ter. We see her ver­sion of the past, and while we know that scan­dal has forced her into exile, much of her his­to­ry is enshroud­ed with mystery.

Hav­ing just fin­ished her one-woman ver­sion of Great Expec­ta­tions in London’s West End, Izzard once again shows off her the­atri­cal ver­sa­til­i­ty in the lead. The con­trast between sweet, car­ing Nina and scenery-chew­ing Rachel is con­sis­tent­ly a joy to behold, and with a minus­cule bud­get, the film’s hor­ror is sole­ly con­veyed through her per­for­mance. Join­ing her for the ride is Scott Cham­bers as Rob, who does an excel­lent job of play­ing foil to Izzard’s Jekyll/​Hyde as he takes on a post as her car­er. Mean­while, Lind­say Dun­can makes for a delec­tably sin­is­ter house­keep­er, chan­nelling her best Mrs Dan­vers to sus­tain the air of mys­tery under­neath the rau­cous orches­tral score by Blair Mowat.

Doc­tor Jekyll revives a miss­ing ele­ment of British cin­e­ma – you can see the walls shak­ing, the cheap­ness of the props, the ham­mi­ness of the act­ing. But that’s what Ham­mer is all about, the sort of hor­ror that has you laugh­ing one minute and throw­ing your pop­corn in the air in fright the next. Izzard also sub­verts the fear of gen­der that has long haunt­ed hor­ror cin­e­ma by both play­ing to and away from the ongo­ing ​‘trans scare’. It looks like Ham­mer has returned from the dead.