'Butchering the classics', a term thrown around alot in the 80's by film critics fed up with the endless droth of low budget horror movies saturating an already over saturated market for gore hungry movie fans, much like myself! Dracula, The Mummy, Frankenstien and of cause not forgetting that timeless classic Dr Jekyll & Mr Hide, aka the mad scientist theme, have all been rehashed and regurgitated on screen so many times, original ideas have become desperately thin or just woefully wrong: Frankenweenie, Blackenstien, Frankenpenis!!! =D
The Jekyll Experiment is certainly no diamond amoung the ruff, but it does at least retell the Jekyll & Hide story in an up to date lurid, sleazy, violent and distasteful 80's 'video nasty' style which bar Andy Warhol's Frankenstien (a movie I personally think of as too glitzy and well made, despite its gore, to be dragged into the cinematic sewer of the video nasties) few of the classic horror villians seem to have fallen victim. Jekyll Experiment is not a direct retelling of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic novel, infact our Dr Jekyll equivilant, known as Dr Jekyll, is more Mr Hide than he ever is Jekyll. Instead of a serum that mutates Jekyll into the raging monster, 80's Jekyll's serum simply turns its victims into psychotic violent killers with the soul intent on massacuring anyone within fighting distance, through wild displays of intense martial arts. The opening 30 mins of the movie is bascially just a relentless fisticuffs battle, interspliced with segments of flimsy storyline and shilly-shally acting performances, as Jekyll salivates over his macabre experiments in action.
There's definately a fair share of lurid salivation throughout the movie, as we later discover through Jekyll's lustful obsession with his female researcher who he keeps chained to a bed upstairs, from which he proceeds to frequently grope and drawl over her sedated body. Inbetween pervering over his captive assistant, duelling chained experimenties to the death in his basement, and beating or burning his feeble minded and disfigured servant, Jekyll finds time to entertain an esteemed fellow scientist (and father of his captive researcher) visiting for the purpose of seeing Jekyll's 'incredible' breakthrough serum. Unsuprisinly disgusted and outraged by Jekyll's experiments he firmly condems any further continuation of the serum. Jekyll, outraged, turns his anger onto his visitor, his mind finally totally snapped.
Though lacking in on screen gore, the general overtone of the entire film is truly one of the gutter, with the elabourated violent death duels thrown in at random purely for visual titilation and handfuls of sleazy groping and beardy salivating thrown in for good measure. Its not quite the scale of needing to have a shower after watching, but there's no denying its lurid intent. Narrowly avoiding DPP but making a firm entry on the section 3 list, Jekyll Experiment is a must for fans of bottom of the barrel, foul smelling, distateful, trash. Not to be missed.