Sunday, December 2, 2012

Favorite Story- Jekyll & Hyde


Jekyll & Hyde sort of has the opposite problem in Favorite Story to Wuthering Heights:  as a novella without much of what you’d call a plot, it’s a bit of a feat to stretch and shape it into something for this time slot.  Nevertheless, as (avowedly) Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite story, the team do their best, with William Conrad once again taking on the main male lead.  The results are mixed, to say the least.  For one thing, everyone keeps referring to it as “Jeeekyll and Hyde,” which I have never heard before in my life, and it casts a slightly ridiculous tint to the proceedings.  Conrad makes an passable Jekyll and although he has flashes of brilliance as Hyde, he doesn’t really go the whole hog which the part demands.  The scene in which Hyde kills Sir Danvers Carew is plaintive but awfully censored, and there’s no reference to the little girl Hyde tramples.  The woman playing Sir Danvers’ “Cockney” maid needs to go back to accent school, and I think for the first time in my life I actually recognized coconut shells as such.  Nevertheless, the performance of Poole, Jekyll’s butler, was the sympathetic glue that bound the whole thing together.

I’ll absolutely continue to listening to Favorite Story for curiosity’s sake.

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