Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon of Death

A new category of 'bad'- a movie I could only watch in twenty-minute doses, but had to finish just to see where they ended up with the alleged plot, like watching a bus with no brakes, packed full of orphans, careen down a mountain road to certain doom. As thoroughly wack as a Frederick Hobbs movie, where things happen for no apparent reason and with great intensity, but without Hobbs' technical skill.

My GHOD is this thing wrong, on more levels than you've had hot dinners. Oh, sure, there's a plot, some crapola about Dr. Jekyll's grandson inventing a serum that releases people's aggression, but what you see on the screen is an endless parade of dramatically-lit kung-fu matches, community-college-level overacting to no discernible purpose, and the most frightening eye-rolling by a female character outside of Creedence the Druid in Troll 2.

What makes less sense than the plot is that somebody wrote large checks to both make this movie and then to obtain the rights to distribute it. What makes even less sense is that it was NOT a career-ender for all involved. The worst offender, James Wood, who wrote/ directed/ produced/ drove the honey wagon, did disappear from the exciting world of cinema entirely, showing that there is perhaps a loving God in heaven. The only cast member with a shred of acting ability, Dawn Carver Kelly (Julia), also took this as her cue to get completely the hell out of the biz. But everyone else went on to other projects; James Mathers, the unwatchably out-of-control Dr. Jekyll, continues to work into the present. Euuuuwwwww.

If you believe in the primacy of Art, the perfectability of Man, and the essential order of the Universe, avoid this blazing paper bag of dog dookie as you would a panhandler with a wet, hacking cough.

The famous mad doctor's nth-great-grandson carries on the family tradition by developing a serum which transforms those under it's influence into unstoppable karate-chopping killing machines. By and by, the doctor is visited by an old colleague who is unaware that his own daughter is being subdued in a room just arm's length away, kept as a sedated slave for the Doctor's cruel desires(he also frequently tortures his half-wit assistant and tragic lobotomized sister).

This mercilessly unprofessional travesty seems to be filmed around footage of some sort of martial arts competition, and the dire results are mind-bending. Surely one of the worst horror films of the 70s...if you have cultivated a taste for uniquely terrible cinema, then you might find this an especially scrumptious morsel.

3/10

Looking as though it was lit entirely by a single spotlight, and boasting some truly terrible acting and direction, The Dungeon (AKA Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon of Death) is an unbelievably bad horror movie that manages to throw in some very poor martial arts for good measure.

The great grandson of the original Dr. Jeckyll (a very hammy James Mathers) is experimenting on kidnap victims in an attempt to perfect the aggression serum first created by his famous ancestor. Jeckyll injects his prisoners with his serum and films their fights to the death; he is aided in his task by a black hunchback-style assistant named Boris and his lobotomised sister Hilda.

The mad scientist spends the rest of his spare time trying to seduce Julia, the object of his desires (well, most of them, since he also has a thing for his sister!). Julia is somehow resisting his charms, so Jeckyll wisely keeps her tied up and drugged in his house.

When the father of Julia pays a visit (believing his daughter to have died in a riding accident), the mad scientist tries to enlist his help. Naturally, he isn't too keen on the idea and tries to put a stop to the madness.

Although this premise actually sounds fairly entertaining, let me assure you that not one facet of this awful production is worthy of praise: the whole film is extremely dark (ie., too shadowy); the script is terrible; the acting is amateurish in the extreme; and the endless fight scenes are interminably boring.

If I hadn't bought this in a charity shop, I'd be demanding my money back!!

My review was written in February 1982 after a Times Square screening: Filmed in 1978, "Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon of Death is a very strange takeoff on the Robert Louis Stevenson story, combining martial arts action with mad scientist and bondage motifs. Commercial prospects seem limited for this odd cheapie.

Set in San Francisco (no exteriors are used, however) arbitrarily in 1959, pic limns the demented behavior of the original Dr. Jekyll's grandson, portrayed by screenwriter James Mathers, with much eyebrow raising and eye-popping. He's experimenting with a serum for mind-control, worked on by his ancestor and later by Nazi scientists.

Oddity is film has no Mr. Hyde character and hence no transformations from Jekyll to Hyde, probably a first among the dozens of screen versions of the tale. Instead, Jekyll injects criminals (of both sexes and various races) with the serum, staging lengthy one on one kung fu fights in his basement between the "maddened" patients.

Helmer James Wood displays an unhealthy preoccupation with on-camera injections and stages the kung fu material listlessly with cheap direct-sound recording coming off more realistically in place of the usual dubbed, noisy sound effects. Despite a blonde in bondage for him to play with, film has no nudity to titillate the fans. Whole cast of corny horror stereotypes self-destructs in a silly, basement killing spree climax.

Wood handles most of the pic's tech credits himself, and his lighting is so bad that when the thesps miss their marks they are swallowed up in total darkness.

Never mind calling it a WEIRD film! It's a classic horror tale on drugs! This is certainly the finest example of no-budget filmmaking I've witnessed , as plenty of useless, senseless, but violent kung-fu fighting makes for a real good time! That's most of the fun I had watching this, a movie that knows no bounds when it comes to weirdness: awful acting, bad scripting, and virtually no plot and storyline. It's actually pretty good, that is if you've grown a full appetite of lost and forgotten bad films that millions are missing today.