Retrospective Film Review

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) • 90 Years Later

Dr. Jekyll faces horrible consequences when he lets his dark side run wild with a potion that transforms him into the animalistic Mr. Hyde.

90 years ago was a good time to be terrified at the local picture palace. Tod Browning’s Dracula, with Bela Lugosi in the title role, appeared in February; James Whale’s Frankenstein with Boris Karloff as the monster followed in November; and then, just as 1932 was about to dawn, Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde completed the unholy trinity.

All three were significant commercial successes and, although some at the time thought that scary movies would be a short-lived fad, they inaugurated horror as a Hollywood genre. Its emphasis did shift several times over the coming decades, of course — toward science in the 1950s, for example, fed by the real horrors of recent history, and then to the occult in the 1970s — but the direct influence of the Dracula/ Frankenstein/ Jekyll and Hyde trio remained considerable, not only in the frequent reappearances of celebrated…