Another telling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale of a scientist (Spencer Tracy) who makes a potion to split apart the good and evil sides of man, and ends up with the murderous Mr. Hyde.
What is more fun than hearing, over and over, debates between a googly-eyed doctor who claims that we are all made up of good and evil, and stuffy elitists who say that nice folks don’t talk about that sort of thing? You better enjoy that, because that’s the first 30 minutes of the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
After that, we get Mr. Hyde, who looks like Spenser Tracy with a smirk (got it, good=googly eyes, evil=smirk) sans any of the sexual implications from the 1931 film. This is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-lite: no monster, no brutality, no sex.
We do get a well shot film with some mixed acting. Lana Turner is uninspired in a generic, good-girl role. Tracy puts in one of his worst performances, shooting his eyeballs around like pinballs. Ingrid Bergman is lovely, although her character has been changed from a prostitute to a near-virginal barmaid, with her blouse buttoned to her neck. I’d like to have seen what she could have done if the production code hadn’t been in effect. It might have compensated for her wandering accent and made the film worth my time.