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.
No comments:
Post a Comment