Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon of Death

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!!

Dr Jekyll's grandson is alive, mad and conducting inhuman experiments in San Francisco, aided by his black hunchbacked assistant called Boris. The Dungeon is not, disappointingly, a place of torture but where Jekyll's human guinea pigs, once injected with serum, fight to the death using martial arts. This movie is certainly a curiosity. These fights scenes, which are fairy long, are probably the best thing about this dreadful movie. And that's not saying much! The plot and script are as awful as the acting. Pretty much the whole film takes place in Jekyll's poorly lit mansion, near darkness at times. The film is incredibly cheesy, dreadfully bad but also slightly entertaining for those reasons. Released in the UK as The Dungeon.

Underneath all the cheese and tacky sets there is a deeply disturbing aspect. James Mathers, who wrote the film as well as starring as Dr. Jekyll, plays a really juicy role where he gets to indulge in all sorts of viciously dramatic sadism. He is an incestuous rapist who stabs his sister with an ice pick and pours boiling water on her because she "makes him want her" like his mother did. He keeps a blond chained up and sexually molests her until she screams, at which point he has an orgasm. He then beats his braindead black servant viciously when he thinks he was trying to "soil" his beautiful blond girlfriend. All the while he's leaping around, clasping his hands and giggling. I just can't help thinking that a man who wrote this specifically to act it out must have some serious issues.

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.

"Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon of Death" tells the story of the great grandson of Dr Jekyll,who is conducting experiments in his sleazy and grimy dungeon lab.Once these victims are injected with a serum Jekyll has concocted they commence to violent kung-fu fighting and rage of the berserker.Surprisingly nasty and ugly exploitation flick that mixes martial arts cinema with Gothic horror.It's a weird and off-beat combination for sure.There is incest,sadism and rape for any exploitation fans.The film is poorly shot,some scenes are too dark and there is some blatant overacting,but the performances are decent and fights scenes are quite savage and unsettling without being gratuitously gory.6 kung-fu fighters out of 10.