Dr Chris Leeder (Jack Buddliner) doesn’t seem to have a very busy medical practice. Most of his time is spent either with his rich fiancée Cynthia or having sex with his glamorous and very willing nurse Debbie (played by Rene Bond). On a shopping excursion with Cynthia they check out a rather dusty antique shop and they both find books they want, both of which the owner is unwilling to sell. The book Dr Leeder wants is an old journal. It is nothing less than the journal of Dr Jekyll. Dr Leeder is prepared to do anything to get the journal. Even commit murder.
Having obtained the journal he naturally wants to try out the potion that Dr Jekyll used. It has unexpected results - he turns into a glamorous woman (in which guise he is played by Jane Tsentas). At this point it becomes very obvious that this movie has ripped off the central idea of Hammer’s extremely interesting 1971 Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde.
The movie jumps back and forth between the adventures of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in Victorian London and the adventures of Dr Leeder and Miss Hyde in the present day.
Since the police are wanting to question him about the unfortunate demise of that bookstore owner Dr Leeder figures it might be a good idea to disappear for a while. And he comes up with a brilliant idea. That potion tuned him into a woman (Miss Hyde) for fourteen hours. If he drinks a whole lot more of the potion it should turn him into a woman for maybe a week or so. He’ll be able to hide in plain sight with no risk of the police finding him because they’re not looking for a glamorous blonde babe. After a week the cops may have given up. It really is a very clever plan. The only problem is that it will only work if Miss Hyde keeps a low profile but Miss Hyde represents the evil side or Dr Leeder’s personality - she’s a sex-crazed psycho killer and sex-crazed psycho killers are notoriously bad at keeping a low profile. So there are some quite cool ideas in this movie.
Miss Hyde wants to jump into bed with just about everyone she mets, including both Debbie and Cynthia. She’s a rather rough bed partner. She also tries to bed the cop who’s investigating the murder. The cop strongly suspects Dr Leeder. He can’t find him but he does find Miss Hyde.
There’s some very brutal violence - not so much graphic but incredibly brutal in concept. A red-hot poker inserted into a very delicate part of the female anatomy and the castration of a sleazy sailor are pretty gruesome concepts.
As you’d expect from an early 70s movie distributed by David F. Friedman there are lots of softcore sex scenes. There’s copious nudity including both male and female frontal nudity.
Technically this was not actually a David F. Friedman production. Lee Raymond (who had a day job as an airline pilot) and frequent Friedman collaborator Byron Mabe came up with the idea, Raymond directed and Mabe produced, and they persuaded Friedman to pick it up.
Byron Mabe directed a number of films for Friedman, including A Smell of Honey, a Swallow of Brine (one of the greatest of all sexploitation flicks) and the notorious Space Thing (which I actually enjoyed quite a bit).
A major selling point for this movie today is the presence of Rene Bond, who had quite a career in sex movies in the 70s and has a considerable cult following among sexploitation aficionados. She’s actually not too bad as an actress.
This is actually a reasonably competently made movie, for a low-budget sexploitation feature.
The Adult Version of Jekyll and Hide is kind of like a roughie (a sexploitation movie sub-genre emphasising violence that thrived briefly in the mid-60s) crossed with a gothic horror film but with the added sex and nudity that had become fairly standard by 1972.
Something Weird’s DVD release offers a transfer that is fullframe (which is in fact the correct aspect ratio) and remarkably good. There’s a bit of very minor hiss on the soundtrack at times but it really is very minor. The highlight is, as so often, the audio commentary by Friedman and Mike Vraney.
Not a classic but an interesting oddity and it would be fascinating to watch it back-to-back with Hammer’s much classier Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde. The Adult Version of Jekyll and Hide is recommended if you like sexploitation weirdness and you can handle the sexual violence.
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