It’s not surprising the 1980s would give us not one but two movies showing Dr. Jekyll’s secret for becoming Mr. Hyde was cocaine.
Cocaine was dazzlingly hip in the 1980s. The drug the beautiful people partied with in Studio 54. A drug that perked you up, giving you a rush of energy, perfect for the young, urban professional to keep going night and day. Fewer nasty side effects (or so it seemed) than uppers. It was not only chic, it dominated the movies: guys who’d have been smuggling in heroin in the 1970s were now bringing America its cocaine fix.
And it’s not as if “Mr. Hyde is on drugs” was a radical reinterpretation of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Henry Jekyll, after all, is a man who takes drugs and undergoes a personality change. When Spencer Tracy signed up for MGM’s 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (a remake of the 1932 Fredric March film), he proposed making Jekyll a drunk (Tracy himself was alcoholic): the guy took a mistress while on a bender and kept up a double life even after he sobered up. MGM was not down with that — not only would it have pissed off anyone coming to see Mr. Hyde, it’s unlikely that would have passed the Production Code.
Jack Palance’s 1968 turn as Jekyll and Hyde (as I say on my own blog, an amazing film) captures some of that. When Jekyll wakes up after taking the formula the first time he discovers that as Mr. Hyde he was funny, charming, flirtatious, a wow with women — it’s not that far off what drink does to some people. Of course, like so many heavy drinkers Jekyll soon discovered there were drawbacks, but not enough to make him walk away (in many of the movies, as I’ve learned working on my Jekyll and Hyde book, it’s being Edward Hyde that’s the real addiction). Making the drug cocaine simply adapts the addiction aspect to the decade (which had more convential takes on Stevenson’s story too, I should add).
The movie titles for Jekyll and Hyde … Together Again (1982) make it clear where the movie’s going: the words are spelled out in white powder which someone snorts up through a rolled dollar bill. Jekyll’s (Mark Blankenfield) wonder drug is a powder the brilliant surgeon hopes will liberate our repressed animalistic side. Once that happens, surgery can be consigned to the trash can — we’ll no longer need it because …. well, you’ve got me. There’s no explanation whether he thinks our animal side has Wolverine’s healing factor, the instincts to avoid accidents or what (it sounds weirdly reminiscent of some of the natural-health “woo” we see so much of today).
When Jekyll tests his drug on himself, he becomes a hyperkinetic, sex-crazed Hyde and gold chains materialize on his chest. Which makes no sense but the film seems to borrow its tone from Young Doctors in Love, which came out a few months earlier. This film has similar logic-defying humor and goofball moments such as strange intercom announcements (“We need a proctologist in admitting. There’s an asshole in need of treatment.”) or having the climax take place in a Victorian streetscape.
The film has good moments, but not enough of them. However it does manage an enjoyable twist on one of the tropes used in multiple films (starting with the March version), of giving Jekyll a Madonna to love, Hyde a Whore to bang. The Madonna is Jekyll’s fiancee Mary (Bess Armstrong), who seems to be a stock rom-com type — a spoiled, rich woman who uses sex or the promise of sex to keep her man on the hook and who’ll dump him at the first sign of problems.
The Whore (seen in the photo above), sex worker Ivy (Krista Errickson), is the kind of sweet, blue-collar woman who in many films would wind up stealing Jekyll’s heart. And she does indeed adore him after he helps her out and doesn’t demand sex in return. Hyde, by contrast, is so randy and eager for sex, Ivy eventually decides killing him is the only way to stop him harassing her.
Mary, defying her stock character type, turns out to be loyal, likable and a lot more interested in sex than Jekyll; in a parody of the Saintly Dr, Jekyll cliche (which isn’t accurate), the doctor’s so chaste, he’s virtually asexual. At the end of the movie, as the two women learn about the doctor’s double life, Mary admits she’d kind of like to meet Jekyll’s randy goat of an alter ego and get a little action between the sheets. Ivy confesses she loves Jekyll because he doesn’t want sex from her. The women’s eyes meet for a second … why yes, there is an obvious solution, isn’t there? (“Ladies, I don’t think—” “That’s right, don’t think. Thinking’s how you got into this mess.”).
Edge of Sanity (1989) is not only the second Hyde As Cokehead film, it’s the second Hyde As Jack the Ripper film (after Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde) and like Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976) shows Jekyll using Hyde as a way to relieve his childhood trauma.
It’s based on the historical fact that cocaine became a miracle anesthetic in the late 1800s. Earlier drugs, such as chloroform or ether, could make patients insensible to pain, but they came with side-effects; cocaine appeared to have none. The scene early in the film, where Jekyll (Anthony Perkins) numbs an eye so he can operate on it, is based on a real event. Though the film never used the word “cocaine” (perhaps because it sounds too mundane?), it’s obvious what Jekyll’s working with. The movie’s darker take on the drug may partly reflect that America was officially a lot more anti-drug at the end of the decade.
Unfortunately when one of Jekyll’s lab monkeys spills chemicals on the coke, the fumes transform Jekyll as seen above. The change unleashes Jekyll’s pent-up rage at the trauma I mentioned. As a kid he spied on his father making love in the barn (not to Jekyll’s mom) only to get caught in a rope, and wind up hanging from the roof in front of the lovers. His father tanned his hide while the woman laughed. As Hyde, Jekyll’s going to pay her back by finding other whores and slitting their throats. It’s Jack the Ripper time (Hyde’s first name is “Jack” to ram home the point) and in keeping with the era’s slasher films as much as cocaine culture.
The underlying misogyny is creepy. Nothing in that childhood memory shows the woman is a sex worker rather than a randy milkmaid or tavern wench banging Jekyll’s dad for fun. Jekyll takes it as a given that she’s a whore. At no point does Jekyll lash out at his father, or at any man who’s not getting in his way. Even after a pimp steals Jekyll’s money, there’s no thought of retaliation. Where Bernie Casey’s Dr. Pride in Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde is dealing with grief over his mother’s death (she died while working as a brothel housekeeper; none of the women there responded to her dying cries, or young Pride’s), Jekyll’s lashing out over a woman mocking him, nothing more. He embodies Margaret Atwood’s line that women’s greatest fear is that men will kill them; men’s greatest fear is that women will laugh at them.
