The classic Robert Louis Stevenson story gets a gender flip (sort of) with Hammer's DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE, on Blu-ray from Scream Factory.

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Ralph Bates, FEAR IN THE NIGHT) is hard at work on a universal antivirus to fight the world's illnesses, but he is soon dispirited when randy Professor Robertson (Gerald Sim, DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN) extrapolates how long it will take to fulfill his dream based on his first results. A dispirited Jekyll then turns his focus on a way to cheat death starting with the secret of eternal youth. Experimenting with female hormones, he manages to keep a male housefly alive for three days; however, he discovers that the treatment has also changed the insect's sex. He continues his research, harvesting human female hormones from bodies in the morgue by way of necrophile attendant Byker (Philip Madoc, BERSERK). Jekyll tries the drug himself and is briefly transformed into a beautiful woman (Martine Beswick, THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES HOLLYWOOD) but he persists in his experiments nevertheless. When bodies run in short supply, Byker recommends the help of body snatchers Burke (Ivor Dean, THE OBLONG BOX) and Hare (Tony Calvin, THEATRE OF BLOOD) who supply him with women of easy virtue snuffed out by unnatural causes until the pair meets their own historic fates; whereupon Jekyll must obtain them himself through murder, stirring up a panic about a homicidal maniac stalking prostitutes in Whitechapel. When his neighbors, including smitten young Susan Spencer (Susan Brodrick, COUTNESS DRACULA) see his female form, Jekyll invents his sister, the widowed Mrs. Hyde, but she soon takes on a life of her own once he goes out as her to continue harvesting hormones while the police (and Professor Robertson) are searching for a man. Once Susan's brother Howard (Lewis Fiander, WHO CAN KILL A CHILD?) falls in lust with Mrs. Hyde, she decides to rid herself of Jekyll altogether and stalks Susan as the next unwilling hormone donor.

Despite the laughable title, DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE is not at all a lowbrow comic film in the mold of Hammer's rebooted attempt a Frankenstein film with HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN (which also starred Bates). Hammer's previous takes on Jekyll and Hyde included the once-lost comedy THE UGLY DUCKLING and the well-received THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL, but the censors had forbidden them from using the name Jack the Ripper in their 1950 film ROOM TO LET while both the Ripper and Burke and Hare had been exploited by competitors Baker & Berman with JACK THE RIPPER and THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS in the late 1950s during Hammer's first horror boom. Screenwriter Brian Clemens (AND SOON THE DARKNESS) throws the Ripper and the body snatchers into the Jekyll and Hyde scenario as subplot elements but focuses primarily on the duality of gender scenario, which only seems to have bearing on the Ripper stuff in the difference in the savagery of the murders committed by Jekyll out of necessity and Hyde out of self-interest. While it would have been nice to see more of the battle for control between Jekyll and Hyde, the film lets the viewer down in its more perfunctory elements including a climax dropped in once the film gets to the eighty-odd minute mark with a conventional mob resolution and a disappointing final bit of prosthetics make-up. In spite of its shortcomings, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE is probably the best of Hammer's 1970s output. Bates' future wife Virginia Wetherell (THE CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR) plays one of the prostitutes.

Released theatrically by American International, DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE was released to VHS by Thorn/EMI first and then reissued by Republic Pictures Home Video when the EMI titles became part of the Lumiere library. When the EMI titles went to Studio Canal, the film was licensed for DVD to Anchor Bay Entertainment followed by Blu-rays in the U.K. and Germany last year. The film has always looked good in the digital realm, and Scream's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen Blu-ray looks spectacular thanks to the sound stage-bound interior and exterior settings with some nice depth in even the fog-diffused sequences. Colors are mostly sedate by design, with blood and Sister Hyde's red dress really popping throughout. The English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is in fine condition, and English SDH subtitles are also provided.

Ported over from the Anchor Bay is the audio commentary with actress Beswick, director Roy Ward Baker (THE VAMPIRE LOVERS), and writer Clemens moderated by Hammer Film historian Marcus Hearn. Clemens recalls pitching the idea on the fly to Hammer's James Carreras during a luncheon when they Hammer personnel were discussing the new directions for the studio, and independently producing the film for Hammer with THE AVENGERS partner Albert Fennell (THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE). Baker recalls shooting the film on two studios, with the modular complex of Whitechapel streets on one and the various interiors on the other, with Beswick chiming in about working with Bates and the staging for how the scenes where they had to transform to share a body were worked out on camera. Newly recorded is an audio commentary by author/film historian Bruce G. Hallenbeck who collates a lot of information on the production from various sources but also discusses the increased sex and nudity in Hammer's 1970s output, Bates being propped up as the studio's new leading man in place of Peter Cushing, how Clemens initially conceived the project as one that could either be modern day or period piece, proposed Mrs. Hydes including Kate O'Mara (THE VAMPIRE LOVERS) and Caroline Munro (DRACULA A.D. 1972), as well as proposed directors including Jimmy Sangster (LUST FOR A VAMPIRE), Alan Gibson (DRACULA A.D. 1972), and Gordon Hessler (SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN) before Baker who had directed past episodes of THE AVENGERS.