Mad Scientists

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

From Beyond

Howdy, my hobgoblins and hot witches, I hope October is treating you well so far. In the grand, gory pantheon of scary movie subgenres, there are hopefully only a handful that have gone unrecognized by this creepy critic. I’ve covered vampires and zombies and werewolves and ghosts, certainly, but sometimes I go so niche and specific—desert horror and pool horror and swamp horror, for example—that I might overlook the mainstays and most established horror tropes that petrifying pop culture has had to offer. One such tried-and-true archetype of horror stories, throughout time immemorial, is the maniacal, macabre, mad scientist. Science fiction is not exclusively horror, but the best sci-fi stories, to this critic, are horror sci-fi stories, and these almost always include a mad scientist at the center. I could really get into the nitty gritty of what I consider to be horror-sci-fi and what I consider to be just sci-fi, but I’d end up sounding more mad than the subjects of tonight’s films. Mad scientists are narrative tools with which horror can expand its imagination and scope of creepy creativity. They can inject a dose of realism into a tall tale, providing verbose explanations and analytical insight into whatever supernatural, otherworldly scenarios a horror movie may invent, because science kind of is the closest thing we have to organic, physical, tangible magic. There is a vast and disturbing human history of excursions and experiments done in the name of science and progress, from Nazi eugenics to Tuskegee, so it makes sense that stories of mad scientists and their deadly ambitions have been around for generations. Though this is sometimes up for debate, I consider Mary Shelley the Mother of Science Fiction and of Mad Scientists, not just because Frankenstein is a revolutionary story, but because I’ve seen its influence in almost every science fiction story since. Some of my favorite mad scientist stories are The Fly, Eyes Without a Face, The Skin I Live In, The Invisible Man (new and old), The Island of Lost Souls, and of course, The Bride of Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein, and Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein. I’ve also watched and written about depictions of a few‍ ‍doctors that are borderline bloodthirsty, but hospital horror is another niche for another day. For now, let’s focus on some scientists whose brains were too big for their own good, and whose determination toward discovery turned deadly.

Up first is a film so innovative, so subversive, and so undeniably transformative, that it became the first horror movie to ever win an Oscar, this is Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The film opens with a powerful rendition of Bach’s Toccata and fugue in D minor, and we are instantly thrust into Dr. Henry Jekyll’s point of view. The camera shows his hands playing the organ, then pans over to his butler, who informs him that it is time to leave. The camera remains in this first person perspective, all the way to the mirror, where we are shown Fredric March’s dazzling and pompous face as Dr. Jekyll, adjusting his hair and tie, with the camera magically not appearing in the reflection at all. The camera stays in this POV for the first few minutes of the film—the first of many groundbreaking stylistic choices—and the fact that we’ve barely seen the man whose body we’ve been placed into, only adds to the eerie presentation. Finally, we arrive along with Dr. Jekyll to a lecture, where he is presenting on his latest theorems and hypotheses. We move out of his POV to show the awe-struck faces of the students and scholars in the crowd, where accusations of both brilliance and madness are being murmured about. “Gentlemen!” Jekyll begins, “London is so full of fog that it has penetrated our mind and set boundaries for our vision. We should be bold enough to see beyond it.” He then goes on to explain how his next scientific experiment will involve the soul of a man, and the attempted separation of what is his decent self—the part of him that strives for good—and his bad self—the part of him that gives into his animalistic impulses. Jekyll believes that by separating these two sides of a man, he can eliminate all the bad parts, but his colleague and friend, Dr. Lanyon, is more than skeptical. Dr. Jekyll is depicted as almost cartoonishly upstanding—he is kind to his staff, understanding of the doubts of his critics, and even misses a party with his fiancé in order to operate on an ailing woman, though he is very apologetic to his judgmental soon-to-be-father-in-law when he does arrive. Dr. Jekyll’s fiancé, Muriel (Rose Hobart), tries her best to convince her father of Jekyll’s goodness, but he is not easily sold, and wants to postpone this wedding even further (because I guess he could just kinda do that…) Dr. Jekyll gives his lover a polite kiss goodnight, and sighs his way out of her father’s estate, back to his lab. But on his way home, he ends up tending to a bar singer (originally written as a sex worker) named Ivy (Miriam Hopkins), who has just been abused by a patron. Jekyll carries her up to her room and makes sure she is alright, and this small act of kindness makes Ivy fall for him hard. She pleads with him to stay, kissing him and dangling her bare leg outside her bedsheets, but Jekyll fights his caveman impulses and leaves her. It is an interesting moment, though, before any mad science is done to his human soul, we are shown a good deal of it—he doesn’t exactly fight off Ivy, nor does he look away when she undresses in front of him. “Perhaps you forgot you’re engaged to Muriel”, Lanyon remarks after the incident, which wakes Jekyll out of his horny and curious fog to say, “I want to be clean, not only in my actions but in my thoughts and inner most desires.” Jekyll is suddenly inspired to finish carrying out his latest experiment, so he mixes some chemicals, writes a quick farewell note to Muriel just in case, then downs an entire beaker of mysterious liquid that causes him to transform into a brutish, beastly, Cro-Magnon-esque creature who is motivated only by his base-level desires. He chokes, he gasps, he witnesses hair growing on his knuckles and face, and his features contort and twist into feral expressions of pain. There were zero cuts made, obviously no CGI, and yet it appears that Fredric March is actually turning into something else before our mortal eyes. This transformation sequence is more than impressive, it is downright mystical, and I would give anything to have seen the audience reactions to it back in 1931. (The effects were done with contrasting-colored makeup and lighting—a secret that Rouben Mamoulian only revealed decades later.) In an instant, Dr. Jekyll has become the disgusting and depraved Mr. Hyde: a cruel, callous, disturbingly-horny individual who is determined to act upon the sexual desires that Dr. Jekyll is repressing—and he has his sights set on Ivy. Mr. Hyde sneaks out the backdoor of the laboratory and skulks through the dank alleys to Ivy’s home, but she isn’t there, so he finds his way to the bar where she works. Though she is unbelievably frightened, Ivy is not only powerless to Mr. Hyde’s advances, she has such a low opinion of herself that she believes he is the only “romantic” conquest she is worthy of. It’s an unsettling and depressing premise, and it continues throughout the rest of the film, as Mr. Hyde begins regularly appearing and abusing Ivy, even without Dr. Jekyll consuming his concoction. The film only becomes more sinister and hard-to-stomach as it goes on, as Mr. Hyde’s power and brazenness grows, and as Dr. Jekyll steadily loses control of his experiment. I was skeptical of this film, only because so many “classics” of this genre are overhyped, but I was pretty blown away by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—for its boldness in practical effects and it’s (probably accidentally feminist) social commentary. Given its unflinching portrayal of sexual assault, repression, respectability politics, class dynamics, rape culture, and the deadliness of the male gaze, I’m positively shocked that this film was never shown or brought up in my feminist film theory class in college (a course I continue to find flaws in, lol.) And to cover this material in 1931, right before the Hays Code stifled all realism and ethical gray areas, is pretty miraculous. I hate to admit it because he was historically such an asshole, but Fredric March was incredible in this and completely disappeared into the role of Mr. Hyde. His body and face are completely transformed in this film, so I can understand why he won the Academy Award for Best Actor the following year. This job and the subsequent praise and success March was afforded, arguably created another real-life monster in the form of his outlandish ego, but that’s neither here nor there. I really enjoyed this film because I was so much more disturbed by it than I thought I’d be—which is always a pleasant surprise.

Similarly disturbing but far less shocking given its creators was tonight’s next film, from the twisted mind of Brian Yuzna, this is Stuart Gordon’s film, released (on my birthday) in 1986: From Beyond. Though he is only a producer, I mention Brian Yuzna’s participation in this film because his style and sensibilities within the horror world are pretty legendary. Yuzna’s directorial debut was a film called Society (1989), which focuses on a wealthy Beverly Hills community whose inhabitants are discovered to be a mutant alien species who feed on the social classes beneath them through hyper-sexualized cannibalism. It is, without a doubt, the wildest, grossest, most batshit bonkers movie I’ve ever seen, so I knew that the first films he produced—Re-Animator and From Beyond—would likely be much more tame in comparison. This was only somewhat true. I’d planned to watch Re-Animator tonight, but my sister warned me about the opening of the film, which deals with the killing and re-animating of a cat, and I’m just a little too sensitive right now to handle that. So instead, I opted for its sister-film that was released the following year, made with an almost identical cast and crew: From Beyond. Even though this was a bit harder to follow and even more sexually-perverse, From Beyond still had clear echoes of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in it, as it follows a scientist whose creation consumes him completely. Based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, From Beyond introduces us to Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs), who is tinkering away at various computer screens inside of an old-attic-turned-science-lab. Dr. Crawford is astounded when a giant machine in the center of the room begins whirring and glowing, so he runs to his superior, Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel), to say, “The Resonator! It’s working!” Dr. Pretorius and Dr. Crawford run to this machine and observe holographic, worm-like creatures that begin floating in the air above their heads. Dr. Crawford begs his boss to turn off the machine as he clutches his head in pain, but Dr. Pretorius feels chills all through his body, as if experiencing pleasure, and refuses to turn it off. “Can’t you feel it? It’s in my mind! In my mind! I wanna see more! More than any man has ever seen!”, Dr. Pretorius exclaims as his head detaches from his body. Dr. Crawford comes running out of the house, right into the handcuffs the police seemingly had prepared for him, and suddenly, he is being blamed for Dr. Pretorius’ alleged death. After an opening credits sequence featuring my favorite shade of hot pink text, we are then introduced to another scientist, Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton), who specializes in schizophrenia. In the aftermath of the Resonator’s destruction of his boss, Dr. Crawford has been placed into a psych ward, among other dangerous men. Dr. Crawford explains how the Resonator was designed to stimulate the pineal organ, to trigger a sixth sense. The experiment worked, revealing the creepy crawly critters swimming through the air, which can only be seen by opening one’s third eye. This has previously only been a theory, but Dr. Crawford claims that it is now fact. When Dr. Katherine begins speaking with Dr. Crawford, she is bewildered by how lucid and sane he seems, despite the insane things he claims to have experienced. So she believes him, and takes him under her care. Along with the help of a cop named Bubba Brownlee (played by horror icon Ken Foree), Dr. Katherine takes Dr. Crawford back to the scene of the crime, back to the machine that caused all the damage, to get to the bottom of everything. What they discover, apart from a complex, intricate laboratory, is just how freaky and bizarre Dr. Pretorius was. He has a sex dungeon, and seemingly filmed his own porn within it, and while Dr. Katherine says she’s not there to judge what the mad scientist did in his personal life, her tune changes when she is forced to contend with Dr. Pretorius, face to face. When the Resonator is turned back on, worm and jellyfish-like creatures reappear—along with Dr. Pretorius, now goopier and hornier than ever. He is eager to meet the beautiful woman in his presence, but Dr. Crawford shuts off the machine just in time, making the mad scientist disappear once more. Though slightly disturbed, Dr. Katherine is suddenly very intrigued by this machine, and the promise of a new, exciting, scientific discovery. This is where things take a turn for the severely kooky, as the level-headed Dr. Katherine suddenly becomes the mad scientist herself, who is addicted to the insights she gleans each time the Resonator’s switch is turned on. Each time we see the nasty Dr. Pretorius, he is even larger, even goopier, and even more powerful than he was before, as his face and body melt into a monstrous blob of oozing skin and tentacle-like appendages. From Beyond is a wild, wacky, unwaveringly weird movie, in both its concept and its execution. There is no part of this story that is expected or predictable or even uniform in regards to other mad scientist movies, it is uniquely its own, gross, thing. I didn’t necessarily expect the sexualized aspect of this film, but that was rather silly of me, given the time period and the crew in charge. It’s not perfect, but it is wildly entertaining and jaw-droppingly strange, so I have to give it some credit. And one of these days I’m sure I’ll finally watch Re-Animator, but I was pleasantly surprised by its less-popular sibling. Well that’s enough toiling in the lab for one Halloween season, but I thank you for going with me on this scientific excursion. Until next time, stay curious—but not too curious! 🧪