Daughter of Dr. Jekyll
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Edgar G. Ulmer
John Agar
Gloria Talbott
Arthur Shields
John Dierkes
Mollie Mccart
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
In England, in the 1920s, Janet Smith and her fiancé, George Hastings, travel to a small village to celebrate her twenty-first birthday with her guardian, Dr. Lomas, the village's resident physician. On their arrival, housekeeper Mrs. Merchant welcomes them and advises them to ignore stories and superstitions spread by the villagers, including handyman Jacob and maid Maggie. When Janet introduces George to Lomas as her fiancé, Lomas seems unhappy about their engagement and so George reassures him that they will no longer be expecting him to support Janet. Lomas surprises them by telling them that Janet has not been living on his money, but on her own, and that she is the heiress to a sizable estate. Janet also owns the house and land, although her father's will stated that Lomas could live there until he dies. Lomas tells Janet that he had not informed her of her wealth as he wanted any potential husband to be interested only in her and not in her money. The doctor adds that he is duty-bound to reveal certain other facts to Janet on her birthday, the following day. The next morning, after Janet and George explore the house and discover a secret, dust-filled laboratory, Lomas insists upon talking with Janet alone. At the end of their conversation, a stunned Janet approaches George and tells him that she cannot marry him and that he must leave immediately and forget her. When George demands to know why, Janet asks Lomas to explain and he leads them both to a mausoleum containing the remains of four centuries of Janet's family and shows them her father's tomb, engraved with the name Henry Jekyll. George is familiar with Jekyll and his experiments to separate good and evil elements within a single personality. Lomas explains that he and Jekyll were medical students and friends until madness overtook Jekyll. The local villagers believe that Jekyll lives on as a werewolf that appears every time a full moon rises. George, who does not believe that madness is hereditary, will not permit Janet's family history to stand in the way of their marriage and insists that they leave immediately and marry. Lomas advises them that they should stay the night and hypnotizes Janet to calm her. Maggie, anxious to return to her home as it is already dark and the moon is full, sets off for the village. During her troubled sleep, Janet dreams that she chases after Maggie and kills her. Later, Janet finds blood on her hands and nightgown and, while looking in a mirror, briefly sees a distorted, evil version of herself. At breakfast the next morning, Jacob suddenly appears carrying Maggie's dead body and asserts that a werewolf killed her. Lomas tells George that Janet is in no condition to leave, so that night Janet is given a sedative and locked in her room with the window sealed shut. Again, Janet has a dream in which she kills a young woman and again finds blood on her hands. The next morning Jacob reports that another woman has been found with her throat ripped out and accuses Janet of being a werewolf. After Lomas dismisses Jacob, Mrs. Merchant quits, forcing him to go to the village to hire another housekeeper. While Lomas is gone, an hysterical Janet begs George to kill her but she soon regains her reason. Lomas returns with news that Janet is to be summoned to an inquest on the latest victim and has been forbidden to leave the area. That night, Lomas hypnotizes Janet, then leads her out of the house. George follows them to the tomb where he observes Lomas instructing Janet to hang herself over her father's grave when she wakes up, then witnesses Lomas' transformation into a werewolf. The werewolf knocks George out and runs toward the village where he kills a young woman. Patrolling villagers hear the woman's cries and chase the werewolf back to the house. Meanwhile, George recovers and breaks Janet's hypnotic trance just as she is about to hang herself. He explains to her that Lomas is the real murderer and may have framed her father for earlier killings in order to gain control of the estate. When the werewolf returns to the tomb, George attacks him and the villagers, led by Jacob, arrive and thrust a stake through the beast. As the werewolf dies, he regains Lomas' features.
Director
Edgar G. Ulmer
Cast
John Agar
Gloria Talbott
Arthur Shields
John Dierkes
Mollie Mccart
Martha Wentworth
Marjorie Stapp
Rita Greene
Marel Page
Crew
Mowbray Berkeley
Joseph Boyle
Louis Dewitt
Theobold Holsopple
Fred Kessler
Ilse Lahn
Melvyn Lenard
Robert Martien
Lou Philippi
Jack Pollexfen
Jack Pollexfen
Jack Rabin
Irving Sindler
Holbrook N. Todd
John F. Warren
Film Details
Technical Specs
Articles
Edgar G. Ulmer: Archive on DVD
The disc comes from the independent company Allday and its owner David Kalat has included a score of extras that offer teasing glimpses of Ulmer's unique genius. The lamentable condition of most of Ulmer's work makes appreciating him sometimes resemble a search for artifacts, and Kalat's presentations are better than can be seen anywhere else. The most impressive film in the group improves the quality of an earlier disc and comes with one of the disc producer's exemplary audio commentaries.
Starting chronologically, Moon over Harlem is one of Ulmer's adventures in ethnic filmmaking. Blackballed from studio work after filming his The Black Cat at Universal, Ulmer made all kinds of features and documentaries, eventually directing a number of Yiddish and Russian 'old country' musicals in New Jersey -- according to one source, the farm leased for the filming of one Fiddler on the Roof-style show about Russian Jews was right next door to property often used for meetings of the German Bund. This story of vice and virtue in the rackets and nightclubs of New York's Harlem was filmed in 16mm for almost nothing yet features a large cast. In an interview videotaped shortly before she passed away, Ulmer's wife and co-producer Shirley Ulmer recounts that she rewrote the entire script, and the lively, all-black cast creates some vivid characters.
In perhaps the first true representation of how rackets really worked, a gangster thinks he can outwit the white crime organization that runs vice in Harlem. He marries a woman to be near her beautiful daughter, who for her part wants to become a singer. The daughter is attracted to a political reformer and sparks fly. Much of the acting is stilted but the film has a general honesty missing in later Blaxploitation pix. Moon over Harlem comes with two added films, a 1940s public service short called Goodbye Mr. Germ and an unsold 1958 TV pilot filmed in color in Mexico, Swiss Family Robinson.
Bluebeard is one of Ulmer's best known pictures, a well-liked horror item that makes a sympathetic character of its mad killer, a talented painter and puppeteer in 19th century Paris. John Carradine has his best starring film role as Gaston Morrell, a civilized maniac compelled to strangle the models he paints. Jean Parker is the spirited girl he admires; he attempts to get free of his crimes but cannot erase the telltale paintings that chronicle his succession of victims.
Using fog, bits of sets and a cooperative cast, Ulmer creates a convincing period picture out of almost nothing, while moving the horror film closer to a more psychologically valid assessment of murderous evil. It's one of his more artistically successful efforts.
Allday's extras include a featurette about the Barlow and Baker marionettes that star as Morrell's puppet actors. Some striking Kodachrome movies of the marionettes in action are included that show that Bluebeard could have looked terrific as a color movie.
Strange Illusion is an awkward but artistically adventurous contemporary mystery lifted almost entirely from Hamlet. Jimmy Lydon is discouraged from investigating his father's death and is suspicious of the new man in his mother's life; he eventually becomes the victim of a conspiracy and is committed to an asylum. Weird dream sequences work their way through this Ulmer fan favorite. This disc comes with several Ulmer trailers including the elusive Beyond the Time Barrier, an MGM title for which 35mm printing elements are currently missing.
Daughter of Dr. Jekyll is a late-50s Allied Artists film made on the cheap in Los Angeles but set on a foggy moor. Gloria Talbott is afraid to marry John Agar afer being advised that she may have inherited her father's curse of lycanthropy. Several slow-motion dream sequences later, Gloria finds out she's being set up by a relative, the true guilty party.
Known almost exclusively as a joke title in Andrew Sarris' auteurist book The American Film, this tame monster romp does wonders with minimal sets but flubs a key interior when 1957 auto traffic peeks through the blinds during a breakfast scene. Of all the pictures in the collection, this is the sloppiest.
This disc has an interview with Ulmer's Daughter Arrianné explaining her non-profit foundation to preserve her father's films, many of which have fallen into the limbo of unresolved legal rights. She apparently recovered the original elements for Daughter of Dr. Jekyll at the last possible moment, by asking the original producer to reassign her the rights only a few weeks before he died.
The final title in the disc, not in chronological order, is 1946's The Strange Woman, a mini-masterpiece done on a reasonable budget that almost raised Edgar Ulmer out of poverty row. Instead, its success made him impatient with his deal at Producer's Releasing Corporation and he left to do even wilder independent projects in Europe.
The movie is an intelligent drama about a headstrong woman who eventually falls victim to her own negative karma. Hedy Lamarr plays the ambitious Jenny and the story is set in Maine in the early 1800s when land swindles were cornering the lumber market. The daughter of the town drunk, Jenny uses her beauty to maneuver herself into a marriage with the richest man in town and then has trouble getting his handsome son (Louis Hayward) to do the old man in. The irony builds as Jenny establishes a reputation of charity and personal integrity - only she knows what a fraud she is. When jealousy over the handsome George Sanders comes into the picture, her conscience gets the better of her.
This Ulmer film has no need of excuses or explanations; it's just plain superior and is easily Lamarr's best vehicle. The Ill-fated Jenny is as complicated as Scarlett O'Hara (whom Lamarr resembles in the role) and much more believable than Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven.
To top it off, David Kalat provides one of his highly entertaining commentaries, packed with fact, analysis and intelligent conclusions about Ulmer, Lamarr and the entire moviemaking process. It's a great listen.
The quality of Ulmer DVDs is always an issue as few decent prints of the movies survive. Many PRC pictures now lack anything but worn 16mm television negatives, and Ulmer's entire 40s output exists in spotty condition. Happily, The Strange Woman has been improved with new elements from French archives. Allday's encoding and digitizing improved over the years but some of the transfers are not as good looking as they might be. Dr. Jekyll and Strange Illusion suffer from strange pincushion graininess in their frequent dark foggy scenes.
Still, the Edgar G. Ulmer: Archive three-disc collection is a bargain and a great introduction to Ulmer's prodigious output. With extras included it adds up to over six hours of entertainment.
For more information about Edgar G. Ulmer: Archive, visit Image Entertainment. To order Edgar G. Ulmer: Archive, go to TCM Shopping.
by Glenn Erickson
Edgar G. Ulmer: Archive on DVD
TCM Remembers - John Agar
Popular b-movie actor John Agar died April 7th at the age of 81. Agar is probably best known as the actor that married Shirley Temple in 1945 but he also appeared alongside John Wayne in several films. Agar soon became a fixture in such films as Tarantula (1955) and The Mole People (1956) and was a cult favorite ever since, something he took in good spirits and seemed to enjoy. In 1972, for instance, the fan magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland mistakenly ran his obituary, a piece that Agar would later happily autograph.
Agar was born January 31, 1921 in Chicago. He had been a sergeant in the Army Air Corps working as a physical trainer when he was hired in 1945 to escort 16-year-old Shirley Temple to a Hollywood party. Agar apparently knew Temple earlier since his sister was a classmate of Temple's. Despite the objections of Temple's mother the two became a couple and were married shortly after. Temple's producer David Selznick asked Agar if he wanted to act but he reportedly replied that one actor in the family was enough. Nevertheless, Selznick paid for acting lessons and signed Agar to a contract.
Agar's first film was the John Ford-directed Fort Apache (1948) also starring Temple. Agar and Temple also both appeared in Adventure in Baltimore (1949) and had a daughter in 1948 but were divorced the following year. Agar married again in 1951 which lasted until his wife's death in 2000. Agar worked in a string of Westerns and war films such as Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Breakthrough (1950) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). Later when pressed for money he began making the films that would establish his reputation beyond the gossip columns: Revenge of the Creature (1955), The Brain from Planet Arous (1957), Invisible Invaders (1959) and the mind-boggling Zontar, the Thing from Venus (1966). The roles became progressively smaller so Agar sold insurance and real estate on the side. When he appeared in the 1988 film Miracle Mile his dialogue supposedly included obscenities which Agar had always refused to use. He showed the director a way to do the scene without that language and that's how it was filmed.
By Lang Thompson
DUDLEY MOORE, 1935-2002
Award-winning actor, comedian and musician Dudley Moore died on March 27th at the age of 66. Moore first gained notice in his native England for ground-breaking stage and TV comedy before later building a Hollywood career. Like many of his peers, he had an amiable, open appeal that was balanced against a sharply satiric edge. Moore could play the confused innocent as well as the crafty schemer and tended to command attention wherever he appeared. Among his four marriages were two actresses: Tuesday Weld and Suzy Kendall.
Moore was born April 19, 1935 in London. As a child, he had a club foot later corrected by years of surgery that often left him recuperating in the hospital alongside critically wounded soldiers. Moore attended Oxford where he earned a degree in musical composition and met future collaborators Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett. The four formed the landmark comedy ensemble Beyond the Fringe. Though often merely labelled as a precursor to Monty Python's Flying Circus, Beyond the Fringe was instrumental in the marriage of the piercing, highly educated sense of humor cultivated by Oxbridge graduates to the modern mass media. In this case it was the revue stage and television where Beyond the Fringe first assaulted the astonished minds of Britons. Moore supplied the music and such songs as "The Sadder and Wiser Beaver," "Man Bites God" and "One Leg Too Few." (You can pick up a CD set with much of the stage show. Unfortunately for future historians the BBC commonly erased tapes at this period - why? - so many of the TV episodes are apparently gone forever.)
Moore's first feature film was the 1966 farce The Wrong Box (a Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation) but it was his collaboration with Peter Cook on Bedazzled (1967) that's endured. Unlike its tepid 2000 remake, the original Bedazzled is a wolverine-tough satire of mid-60s culture that hasn't aged a bit: viewers are still as likely to be appalled and entertained at the same time. Moore not only co-wrote the story with Cook but composed the score. Moore appeared in a few more films until starring in 10 (1979). Written and directed by Blake Edwards, this amiable comedy featured Moore (a last-minute replacement for George Segal) caught in a middle-aged crisis and proved popular with both audiences and critics. Moore's career took another turn when his role as a wealthy alcoholic who falls for the proverbial shop girl in Arthur (1981) snagged him an Oscar nomination as Best Actor and a Golden Globe win.
However Moore was never able to build on these successes. He starred in a passable remake of Preston Sturges' Unfaithfully Yours (1984), did another Blake Edwards romantic comedy of moderate interest called Micki + Maude (1984, also a Golden Globe winner for Moore), a misfired sequel to Arthur in 1988 and a few other little-seen films. The highlight of this period must certainly be the 1991 series Orchestra where Moore spars with the wonderfully crusty conductor Georg Solti and leads an orchestra of students in what's certainly some of the most delightful television ever made.
By Lang Thompson
TCM Remembers - John Agar
Daughter of Dr. Jekyll - DAUGHTER OF DR. JEKYLL - The DVD Special Edition
In Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers by Tom Weaver, Gloria Talbott recalled the making of Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, stating that Edgar Ulmer was "kind of insane, and I love people who are quirky and funny. He just was easy to work with....affable and fun...Also, I had some good lines in the film, like, "If you love me, you'll kill me" - I really felt it, and I can still make myself cry when I watch that scene. And I thought that the cameraman did wonders with my face. If you don't light my face just right, I look funny....we did it in something like five to seven days - not on a stage, but in a house. It was on Sixth Street, near Hancock Park, where there are great, wonderful old mansions; it must have been the Beverly Hills of seventy years ago. That house was fascinating - I'd never seen a kitchen like that, never seen a dumbwaiter, never seen such a library or such a glorious staircase. It was a real experience." For some reason, Ulmer decided not to use Talbott in the numerous nightmare sequences (shot on ultraviolet film) in the movie - a sexy-looking double was used - and for the climactic fight between Arthur Shields and John Agar, stuntman Ken Terrell doubled for Shields. But you'll hardly notice given Ulmer's imaginative handling of these scenes.
AllDay Entertainment's special edition DVD of Daughter of Dr. Jekyll is digitally restored from the original negative from the studio vaults and looks spectacular. It's heartening to see someone lavishing such care and attention to detail on the restoration of what many would dismiss as a minor B-movie. But for Ulmer fans and horror genre aficionados, this disk is a revelation. If only the major studios would show the same care and enthusiasm in preserving the key films in their library on DVD. The Daughter of Dr. Jekyll disk is also presented with an additional music-only track, the original theatrical trailer, a collection of rare stills and artwork, and two original behind-the-scenes featurettes - one is an interview with star John Agar and the other is an interview with Ulmer's daughter, film historian Arianne Ulmer Cipes.
For more information on Daughter of Dr. Jekyll and other Edgar Ulmer titles, visit All Day Entertainment.To purchase copies of Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, visit Movies Unlimited.
Daughter of Dr. Jekyll - DAUGHTER OF DR. JEKYLL - The DVD Special Edition
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Actress Mollie McCart's surname was misspelled "McCard" in the onscreen credits. Jack Pollexfen's credit reads: "Written and Produced by Jack Pollexfen." Although the onscreen credits contain no acknowledgment for the source of the character of "Dr. Jekyll," he derives from Robert Louis Stevenson 's 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For information on other films based on Stevenson's novella, see the entry for Paramount's 1932 production Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Fredric March in AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1930-40.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States Summer July 1957
Released in United States Summer July 1957