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An Academy Award-nominated classic horror film will hit a major streaming platform next month. Starring the legendary Fredric March, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde debuted in 1931 to critical acclaim and was commercially successful.

Old and new audiences will now experience the 93-year-old masterpiece when Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde arrives on Max on Feb. 1. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, the movie adapts the famous Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which tells the tale of a man who takes a potion that turns him from a mild-mannered man of science into a homicidal maniac.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tweaks the classic source material into a grim portrayal of an abusive and controlling relationship, portraying Hyde as a monster through his destruction of a young woman. Alongside March, the film stars Miriam Hopkins as Ivy Pierson, Rose Hobart as Muriel Carew, Holmes Herbert as Dr.

Still by far the best adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson story, Paramount’s glossy pre-Code is also one of the most prestigious horror shows on record. Fredric March won an acting Oscar and it’s one of Miriam Hopkins’ best performances. The film is sexually daring and technically astute — with the help of cameraman Karl Struss director Rouben Mamoulian makes use of every cinematic trick he can conjure. The horrible Mr. Hyde is conceived as a near-simian primitive man, equating unrestrained lust and desire as something ‘society’ must repress. The disc packaging says it’s two minutes longer than the 2004 Warner DVD . . . but it’s not.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1931 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 98 min. / Available at Amazon.com / General site Wac-Amazon / Street Date October 25, 2022 / 21.99

Starring: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Holmes Herbert, Halliwell Hobbes, Edgar Norton, Tempe Pigott, Douglas Walton.

Cinematography: Karl Struss...

Hey, did you know that Tod Browning made a vampire movie in the 1930s? And that it starred Bela Lugosi as the titular vampire? And that said vampire was doggedly pursued by a professor with knowledge of vampires that stretched credibility? Oh, and did you know that I’m not talking about Dracula?

Since you’ve read the title above, I’m guessing I didn’t just make your head explode. But you can see where I’m going with this. The similarities between Browning’s quintessential vampire film and his 1935 not-so-quintessential vampire film Mark of the Vampire would make it seem like the latter is a pretty blatant attempt by MGM to cash in on his bloodsucker success. But is that indeed the case?

Well, let’s look at the premise for Mark of the Vampire. Although set in “modern day” early 20th century, the setting certainly looks familiar.

Fox’s first official monster movie is a terrific-looking but mostly flat mystery that tries its utmost not to be a horror film at all. It’s a head scratcher that will interest fans of the expressive John Brahm, and help completists scratch another werewolf film off their gotta-see lists.

The Undying Monster

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1942 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 62 min. / Street Date December 13, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring James Ellison, Heather Angel, John Howard, Bramwell Fletcher, Heather Thatcher, Aubrey Mather, Halliwell Hobbes, Alec Craig, Holmes Herbert, Eily Malyon, Charles McGraw.

Cinematography Lucien Ballard

<Film Editor Harry Reynolds

Original Music Emil Newman, David Raksin

Written byLillie Hayward, Michel Jacoby from a novel by Jessie Douglas Kerrruish

Produced by Bryan Foy

Directed by John Brahm

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

After the heyday of Universal horror in the first half of the 1930s, horror pictures went on the decline for over twenty years.

Randolph Scott fights to let the railroad go through in this old-fashioned rip-snorting action adventure movie, the kind where shooting bad guys means never having to say you're sorry. Jane Wyatt gets top billing but the big burner on this prairie is newcomer Nancy Olson, who puts more sex appeal into her homegrown heroine than all of her later roles combined. Canadian Pacific Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1949 / Color /1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / Street Date August 9, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Randolph Scott, Jane Wyatt, J. Carrol Nash, Victor Jory, Nancy Olson, Robert Barrat, Walter Sande, Don Haggerty, Grandon Rhodes, John Hamilton, George Chandler, Holmes Herbert, Norman Jewison, Chief Yowlachie. Cinematography Fred Jackman, Jr., Film Editor Philip Martin Art Direction Ernst Fegeé Original Music Dimitri Tiomkin Written by Jack DeWitt, Kenneth Gamet story by Jack DeWitt Produced by Nat Holt Directed by Edwin L. Marin Reviewed by Glenn Erickson All Randolph Scott movies aren't created equal,...

Women suffrage movie 'Mothers of Men': Dorothy Davenport becomes a judge and later State Governor in socially conscious thriller about U.S. women's voting rights. Women suffrage movie 'Mothers of Men': Will women's right to vote lead to the destruction of The American Family? Directed by and featuring the now all but forgotten Willis Robards, Mothers of Men – about women suffrage and political power – was a fast-paced, 64-minute buried treasure screened at the 2016 San Francisco Silent Film Festival, held June 2–5. I thoroughly enjoyed being taken back in time by this 1917 socially conscious drama that dares to ask the question: “What will happen to the nation if all women have the right to vote?” One newspaper editor insists that women suffrage would mean the destruction of The Family. Women, after all, just did not have the capacity for making objective decisions due to their emotional composition. It...

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

Greta Garbo movie 'The Kiss.' Greta Garbo movies on TCM Greta Garbo, a rarity among silent era movie stars, is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” performer today, Aug. 26, '15. Now, why would Garbo be considered a silent era rarity? Well, certainly not because she easily made the transition to sound, remaining a major star for another decade. Think Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, William Powell, Fay Wray, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, John Barrymore, Warner Baxter, Janet Gaynor, Constance Bennett, etc. And so much for all the stories about actors with foreign accents being unable to maintain their Hollywood stardom following the advent of sound motion pictures. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star, Garbo was no major exception to the supposed rule. Mexican Ramon Novarro, another MGM star, also made an easy transition to sound, and so did fellow Mexicans Lupe Velez and Dolores del Rio, in addition to the very British...

'The Letter' 1940, with Bette Davis 'The Letter' 1940 movie: Bette Davis superb in masterful studio era production Directed by William Wyler and adapted by Howard Koch from W. Somerset Maugham's 1927 play, The Letter is one of the very best films made during the Golden Age of the Hollywood studios. Wyler's unsparing, tough-as-nails handling of the potentially melodramatic proceedings; Bette Davis' complex portrayal of a passionate woman who also happens to be a self-absorbed, calculating murderess; and Tony Gaudio's atmospheric black-and-white cinematography are only a few of the flawless elements found in this classic tale of deceit. 'The Letter': 'U' for 'Unfaithful' The Letter begins in the dark of night, as a series of gunshots are heard in a Malayan rubber plantation. Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) walks out the door of her house firing shots at (barely seen on camera) local playboy Jeff Hammond, who falls dead on the ground.

Joan Fontaine movies: ‘This Above All,’ ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ (photo: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine in ‘Suspicion’ publicity image) (See previous post: “Joan Fontaine Today.”) Also tonight on Turner Classic Movies, Joan Fontaine can be seen in today’s lone TCM premiere, the flag-waving 20th Century Fox release The Above All (1942), with Fontaine as an aristocratic (but socially conscious) English Rose named Prudence Cathaway (Fontaine was born to British parents in Japan) and Fox’s top male star, Tyrone Power, as her Awol romantic interest. This Above All was directed by Anatole Litvak, who would guide Olivia de Havilland in the major box-office hit The Snake Pit (1948), which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nod. In Max Ophüls’ darkly romantic Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Fontaine delivers not only what is probably the greatest performance of her career, but also one of the greatest movie performances ever. Letter from an Unknown Woman...