Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon of Death

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

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 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.

Where do I even start?! The film, set in San Francisco, opens with two black guys fighting in Dr. Jekyll's (James Mathers) lab. Over this fight a narration by Jekyll informs us of the story up to this point. He says "Great Grandfather Jekyll foolishly used his own body as a subject for experimentation, that was his fatal mistake. Once the rage emerged, or as he wrote once Hyde emerged and gained control, Grandfather was lost. In the continuing viewing of my experiments filmed here in the laboratory it is interesting to note how the various subjects react under the influence of the serum. The reaction time of the serum doesn't seem to be affected in any way by the decrease in dosage. I'm able to study the behavioral changes brought about by the different dosages. The black subjects have less hostility in comparison to the whites, one would think they would have more repressed aggressions, perhaps I should increase their dosage. Despite the many failures I have endured thus far, I will continue with the human experimentation and discover the secret that will give me the power to control the mind of man!". Jekyll is a complete loon, he was thrown out of Oxford university in 1939 for dissecting a tramp alive. He keeps his assistant and the woman with whom he is in love with, Julia (Dawn Carver Kelly) constantly drugged and tied to the front of his wardrobe in his bedroom. His mute sister Hilda (Nadine Kalmes, who I sort of fancied) was hopelessly insane from birth and was lobotomized when she was 14 to calm her madness. Boris (Jake Pearson) is also mute, he kidnaps people for Dr. Jekyll to perform his experiments on and is a general dogsbody, he is also in love with Julia. Malo (Tom Nicholson) who has an afro hair cut and a 70's porno mustache, also helps Jekyll in his experiments, Jekyll describes him as "a fine example of a psychotic killer!", he doesn't say a word throughout the entire film either. On the false pretense that his daughter Julia is dead Jekyll invites her Father Professor Atkinson (John F. Kearney) to his house. Jekyll wants Atkinson to help him in his experiments. Jekyll tells him that he has developed a cross breed of cattle that produces 30% more edible meat. But the bulls are docile and refuse to breed, sex stimulants on their own are useless. Jekyll says that while he worked on psychological warfare for the army he developed a pituitary stimulant which released all the aggression buried deep within the unconscious mind. The serum is unstable and the bulls kill the cow after ejaculation! At first Professor Atkinson agrees to help him, but it soon becomes clear to him that Jekyll has more sinister intentions for the serum. Jekyll confesses "if I can control the dosage so as to counter the rage with the awful need for withdraw then I believe I can keep the subject in a constant state of anxiety, they will follow me then on command!" Disturbed by this Professor Atkinson refuses to help him any more. If it's possible Dr. Jekyll becomes even crazier in his attempts to perfect the serum. Will he succeed? Can Professor Atkinson convince him to cease his experiments? Will the local police figure out that Dr. Jekyll is behind the recent kidnapping spree? Watch it and find out. Directed by James Woods (no, not that James Woods!) this is one crazy film. The script by Dr. Jekyll himself James Mathers is totally hilarious. Just listen to some of the dialogue, "good god Jekyll does tragedy follow you everywhere!?" Jekyll starts to grope a drugged Julia, his sister Hilda looks on in the shadows, he sees her grabs her and says "you have had to bear more agony than I in your wretched young life, your just like Mother, that's why I hate you! You walk like her, look like her, you even make me want you like her!" Dr. Jekyll is showing Professor Atkinson some footage of his experiments, he gloats over the possibilities "imagine if you will an army of enraged killers, righteous killers. Who'd need no moral justification for their deeds, ever. No moral questions in battle!" "You fiend, Jekyll! You fiend! You Fiend!" Line after line, it's just so hilariously entertaining. The relationships between the characters is bizarre as well. Jekyll beats Boris, "yes my friend I know exactly how you feel, love is the most painful emotion of all!" and burns him with a cigar. He stabs Hilda in the arm with an ice pick because she didn't put any ice in his drink, in this scene Jekyll also attacks a block of ice with the pick shouting "Ice! Ice! Ice!" I am also puzzled as to how Boris can kidnap people so easily. He pulls his car up outside the front of Jekyll's house and proceeds to remove people from the boot and takes them inside over his shoulder. Jekyll's neighbors call the police when they supposedly hear gunshots but don't notice Boris and all the unconscious people he brings home in the boot of his car! Unfortunately, apart from the wacky script and bizarre characters there is little to recommend here. The film has no blood or gore and very little violence, the fight scenes look OK and seem well choreographed, with the exception of the odd punch here and there that obviously miss by a mile. Another exploitation element that appears to have been completely, and disappointingly ignored is naked flesh, there isn't any nudity or sex in it at all. The film is extremely dark and sometimes difficult to see whats happening. The entire film is set in Jekyll's large house, film never leaves the confines of his house or grounds. Acting is all over the place, Hilda, Julia, Boris and Malo don't say a word during the whole film so they don't have much acting to do. I did like Hilda though, probably because I fancied her. So, the entire film is basically Mathers as Jekyll who overacts wildly, in fact he's quite funny to watch. The only other speaking character is Professor Atkinson, but Kearney isn't given much to do with him. The script is surreal, the dialogue is hilarious, and the characters bizarre, if only they could have made a good exploitation film around these elements, but they didn't and the film is poor in just about every other department, and with no blood, gore or nudity there's not a whole lot of reason to watch this. I found some of it really funny, but all things considered, don't bother wasting your time.

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.