Review of Daughter of Dr. Jekyll

I wasn't expecting too much from this 1950s horror film but the idea that Dr. Jekyll was an innocent victim of another man's scheming to get his money and estate and this other man happened to also be...wait for it...a werewolf was clever and unique. The film's plot however becomes obvious and most viewers will guess what's going on at the get-go. Arthur Shields, brother of Barry Fitzgerald, is annoying and cloying right from the outset as he portrays a man who claims to represent the late Dr. Jekyll's best interests but who is actually a rampaging fiend who seeks to trick Jekyll's daughter in the same way he tricked her father and obtained the vast Jekyll mansion and estate. Emphasis throughout is on atmosphere with fluid dissolves and what the Germans called stimmung or heavy atmosphere in the silent film days. The entire film appears to be seen through a haze and Gloria Talbot't's visions of herself as a werewolf are overlaid so as to make everything appear to have occurred in a nightmare. This is very effective and beautiful, especially the camera tilts that make her world seem to be slipping away from her. Some oddities do occur. John Agar wears a bizarre striped sports jacket in the latter part of the picture which seems incongruous. He is also slow to reason out what is going on around him even though the audience is way ahead of him. Arthur Shields, just like his brother, Barry Fitzgerald is incredibly irritating and annoying throughout with his unctuous comments all done in Irish brogue. It's almost like being tied down and forced to watch Going My Way again starring his brother. And the oddest thing is that Shields' real teeth are so bad that when he turns into a werewolf his teeth actually improve. I believe that's the only time that a werewolf's dental work got better during a transformation sequence in the history of the cinema. Gloria Talbott looks lovely and contributes a solid performance here. She was a queen of fifties horror but was versatile enough to play many roles. In fact she was omnipresent on early television and was also a star of many many western programs due to her athletic ability. John Agar was also a constant horror film star and also a frequent veteran of westerns, part of the John Wayne entourage, and he was Shirley Temple's ex-husband! Agar was never a very good actor and he doesn't contribute much to the success of this film but part of that is the script that makes him appear dull witted and his plan for surprising a werewolf with a big club is just plain stupid. All things considered this is a surprisingly entertaining film played partly as a mystery more than a shocker. The unnecessary comic monster intro and finale feel put in by the producer to goose up the film as does the scene where a half-naked extra girl is leered at by the werewolf, a scene thrown in to the coming attractions for this movie to make it seem more lurid than it actually was. None of that tampering was necessary. I liked the look of the film. Ulmer could create a mood in the old Germanic sense-- it resembled more Nosferatu (1922) and The Golem (1920) more than the rather flat clear look of most fifties films such as Creature From the Black Lagoon or The Hypnotic Eye. It's a throwback to a style that Ulmer was familiar with from his early days in the German silent cinema and this film should be remastered and presented on a large screen where its striking visual beauty could be better appreciated, especially since it was achieved with an amazingly limited budget.