Arthur Shields (1896-1970) was the younger brother of Oscar winning character actor Barry Fitzgerald (GOING MY WAY, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE). He rarely got the big picture opportunities or the on-screen time that his brother did even though he wound up appearing in many more movies. One time where he did get to carry a film was in this 1957 thriller from low budget specialist Edgar G. Ulmer which was produced and released by low budget movie specialists Allied Artists.
THE DAUGHTER OF DR JEKYLL was a perennial on afternoon and late night TV throughout the 1960s. It officially starred Gloria Talbott as the title character and 1950s sci-fi stalwart John Agar as her fiance’ who have come to Scotland to celebrate her 21st birthday. It is there that her guardian (Shields) informs her that she is the “daughter of Dr Jekyll”. This naturally causes her great consternation and sure enough there soon are murders in the village and the angry villagers blame her because of her legacy.
Director Ulmer (THE BLACK CAT, BLUEBEARD) by this time was an old hand at making the most out of the least and he does his very best to pull it off here. He almost succeeds but the script by producer Jack Pollexfen (THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN) ultimately does him in with a vampire and a werewolf along with torch bearing villagers added to the Jekyll/Hyde story for good measure. No matter how hard you try, the film just doesn’t make any sense but that doesn’t keep it from being quite entertaining.
Star Gloria Talbott recalled that the movie was shot in 5-7 days primarily in an old house in Hollywood. She said that after seeing it she found it to have a lot more substance that she would have thought. Co-star Agar said that he only did it for the money and found it “completely unbelievable”. Which brings us back to Arthur Shields. There is no record of what he thought of DAUGHTER but he gives a solid performance while carrying the burden of the plot’s inconsistencies and chewing the scenery in a delightfully understated manner.
The movie is loaded with plenty of atmosphere thanks to fog and low key lighting and this transfer, done for the multi-disc EDGAR G ULMER COLLECTION, is easily the best of the various versions out there so make sure that it is this Image Entertainment version that you get. It seems that most of these classic 1950s B movies are finally making it to Blu-Ray so I hope that THE DAUGHTER OF DR JEKYLL will soon join them. Until then, sit back and enjoy this DVD version which will more than do until then.
The Capsule Critic 