The Son of Dr. Jekyll

Although Robert Louis Stevenson fails to mention a son in his work it turns out that he does and is played by Louis Hayward. He's been raised in secret and until recently was not aware of the chaos dear old dad caused with his experiments in Victorian London.

Anyway Hayward moves back into the old family dwelling and his neighbors are not pleased. Especially when some brutal events start occuring. Can it be the monster from the Jekyll DNA Id Mr. Hyde has returned courtesy of experiments Hayward is doing. Hayward does have an aptitude for science like dad, but what else?

I think Columbia Pictures which produced The Son Of Dr. Jekyll was fortunate to secure the services of Louis Hayward. Hayward could play swashbuckling heroes and some really dastardly scoundrels with equal ability. His ambiguous screen persona aids greatly here as you don't know how this will come out.

The rest of the cast does well and it includes Jody Lawrance as the girl Hayward is courting, Lester Matthews as her titled dad who really wants no Jekylls on his family tree, Paul Cavanaugh as the Scotland Yard inspector, Rhys Williams as Hayward's butler and Alexander Knox as a colleague of the original Dr. Jekyll.

This was a well done sequel to the original story.

Look at the house in the background of the scene where Edward is kissing his fiancée goodbye for three months. The house looks like the Leave it to Beaver house. If you look closely you can see the gutters on the house and the electric wires going onto it.

I realise that my one-line summary is faint praise indeed but it does reflect the quality of this film. Overall it's at best, a slightly below average story but, it does indeed get better and picks up the pace in the last one/third of the film. The black and white photography of this period piece is done very well with the street sets looking very authentic. Louis Hayward does his usual competent job and is assisted especially well by Alexander Knox and Rhys Williams. Jody Lawrence is pretty to look at but her character adds very little to the story. The identity of the real killer is divulged rather early so this film is not a whodunnit. If you start watching this movie and find yourself starting to get bored, try to stay with it for a while longer. You will eventually be rewarded with about 30 minutes of good action.

Rather than following in father's footsteps, this (obviously lookalike) progeny takes it upon himself to clear the old family name – but is misunderstood at every turn. Ponderous offshoot of a well-worn formula (pardon the pun), acted for more than its worth; nowhere near as wacky as Edgar G. Ulmer's DAUGHTER OF DR. JEKYLL (1957), but just as watchable under the circumstances. Indeed, the fanciful kinsmen of famous literary monsters were a staple from the 1930s onwards and, while some of the end results were not only commendable but remarkable, it generally meant that the rot had set in that particular source and that exploitation film-makers were milking a catchpenny moniker for all it was worth. To spice things up a bit here, Louis Hayward (as the titular character) is brought up by Jekyll's attorney Utterson (Lester Matthews) as his own son and is only told of his heritage – by Jekyll's duplicitous(!) colleague Dr. Lanyon (Alexander Knox) – when he is – here it comes again – booted out of college for his unorthodox experiments! Familiar character actors Paul Cavanaugh and Rhys Williams – as, respectively, the investigating Inspector and the proverbial butler – also put in an appearance but have fairly little of note to do. Curiously enough, although Hayward does get to don the "Mr. Hyde" make-up in the film's prologue, the actual monster in the film proper is somebody else – though contriving to expire in the exact same new way devised by the film-makers earlier on: falling to his death from a window ledge!!

Son of Dr. Jekyll, The (1951)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Dr. Jekyll's son (Louis Hayward) goes back to the laboratory to try and prove his father wasn't a monster. This film actually gets off to a pretty good start but things quickly fall apart making this a rather poor film in the end. The performances from everyone in the cast are actually pretty good, which is shocking for this type of film. The first transformation scene is also very well effective but after this there isn't much here. The film seems to think that the viewers didn't want to see a monster but instead sit around and listen to bad dialogue. There's way too much talk going on in this film and this here makes it quite boring.