{"id":77900,"date":"2025-03-21T06:00:27","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T19:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/?p=77900"},"modified":"2025-03-10T22:20:49","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T11:50:49","slug":"movie-review-dr-jekyll-mr-hyde-1912","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/2025\/03\/21\/movie-review-dr-jekyll-mr-hyde-1912\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review – Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (1912)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/h5>\n
Principal Cast : <\/strong>James Cruze, Florence La Badie, Marie Eline, Jane Gail, Marguerite Snow, Harry Benham.
\nSynopsis:<\/strong> Dr. Henry Jekyll experiments with scientific means of revealing the hidden, dark side of man and releases a murderer from within himself.<\/h5>\n

********<\/p>\n

As a brisk 10-minute silent short from 1912, Lucius Henderson\u2019s adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson\u2019s classic literary work is essentially a condensed, Cliff Notes version brought to life on screen. Anyone familiar with the story\u2014a doctor drinks a mysterious potion that inadvertently transforms him into a monstrous rage-beast, leading to a spree of mayhem\u2014will recognise the core motifs of the fable. The duality of man, torn between virtue and evil, is at play here, though the single-reel short lacks much in the way of coherence or genuine narrative depth. Still, it remains an interesting piece of cinematic history.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

James Cruze takes on both the Jekyll and Hyde roles, transforming into a wild, fang-toothed monster after ingesting the ominous liquid, only to revert back to his mild-mannered self after drinking an antidote. Unfortunately for Jekyll, Hyde\u2019s emergence becomes more persistent, leading to tragedy when he murders the father of Jekyll\u2019s romantic interest (Florence La Badie), a local minister. What follows is a very brief chase before Hyde, realising he is doomed to remain a monster forever, drinks poison and kills himself. All very tragic, and all played at breakneck pace thanks to Henderson\u2019s perfunctory, low-budget direction.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As one might expect from a 10-minute silent short made in the early 20th century, there\u2019s little in the way of “visual effects” beyond some rudimentary transformation sequences. Cruze\u2019s shift from Jekyll to Hyde is achieved through simple snap-cuts between his \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cevil\u201d personas whenever the plot demands it. The quality of the surviving film print is, unsurprisingly, in rough shape\u2014the original negative lost to time\u2014but it remains an intriguing watch for fans of early cinema. The set design is rudimentary at best: Jekyll\u2019s laboratory resembles a glorified broom closet, and the outdoor scenes seem to have been shot simply by rotating the camera on a tripod, eliminating any real sense of depth or scale.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Performance-wise, the acting is similarly simplistic. Cruze plays Hyde as a screeching, spastic ghoul, his exaggerated movements cutting through the film\u2019s silence, while the largely uncredited supporting cast does what they can with limited material. It\u2019s hardly a showcase of virtuoso filmmaking, but as an early attempt at adapting Stevenson\u2019s novella, it holds a certain scrappy charm\u2014albeit one best appreciated by cinephiles rather than casual viewers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Principal Cast : James Cruze, Florence La Badie, Marie Eline, Jane Gail, Marguerite Snow, Harry…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48482,"featured_media":77903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[201,288,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classic-film-review","category-mini-review","category-movie-review"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2.jpg",640,480,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2-500x280.jpg",500,280,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2-640x365.jpg",640,365,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2.jpg",640,480,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2.jpg",640,480,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2.jpg",640,480,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2.jpg",640,480,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2.jpg",640,480,false],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2-540x340.jpg",540,340,true],"profile_24":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2-24x24.jpg",24,24,true],"profile_48":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2-48x48.jpg",48,48,true],"profile_96":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2-96x96.jpg",96,96,true],"profile_150":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"profile_300":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"sow-carousel-default":["https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/s-l1200-2-272x182.jpg",272,182,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"Rodney Twelftree","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/author\/rodney\/"},"category_info":"Film Classic<\/a> Mini Review<\/a> Movie Review<\/a>","tag_info":"Movie Review","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48482"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77900"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77907,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77900\/revisions\/77907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fernbyfilms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}