Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde – DVD – VCI Entertainment
Dr. Henry Pryde is a cool, kindly man who treats people in an office (which has pictures of Hendrix and Ron O’ Neal on its walls) behind a thrift shop in the projects of Watts, including a random topless prostitute called Linda whom he gives a lengthy Bill Cosby-like lecture to about her lifestyle. Linda has balls and fires back some barbwire lectures of her own: “You dress white, you think white, you might even drive a white car. Only time you hang around us black folk is when you come down here to clear your conscience.” Why she’s practically naked for a needle in her ass cheek is unexplored.
Away from the free clinic, Henry is experimenting in his lab to find a remedy for cirrhosis of the liver on a cage full of rodents. Much to his amazement, an injection changes the pigment of a rodent’s fur to white. It becomes rather vicious and the others cower away. Henry pours together liquids which look like urine after Vitamin B and states into his recorded log that tests were inconclusive. A human factor is needed instead.
After debating what is right and wrong with his assistant, he injects an elderly female patient who is near to death. The woman soon attacks a nurse looking like an albino plague victim from The Omega Man. When she dies suddenly, her skin color and hair changes back to normal. Henry doesn’t get a chance to inspect her body so he is left with nothing to show.
That night at home, he proceeds to inject himself and rolls around clutching his face in agony. Slowly but surely his skin lightens to corpse grey and his eyes become milky. Off he drives and asks the whereabouts of the Moonlight Lounge which was mentioned by Linda, to three dudes who believe he’s a white guy in the wrong side of town. Punches have no effect. He simply picks them up like shop dummies and throws them through windows.
The Moonlight Lounge is where the pimps ‘n ho’s sound stoned to funky music. Of course there had to be a comedy pimp, and his name’s Silky. He pulls a blade on Linda and no one steps to him, but when the new look Henry arrives he has to fight about ten men like a large Jim Kelly, well it’s every man all in. Silky dodges away. Outside Henry changes back just as bar turd reinforcement’s dash out looking for him. “You seen a white dude?” they ask. “Naah, man,” says Henry.
The next day at the clinic, he kindly asks Linda out for dinner. After the meal, Henry drives her to a building where, as a child, his mother used to leave him in a room as she cleaned. It used to be a brothel. He tells her how his mother died of a liver complaint, how they lived at the back and as a child ran door to door crying that she was dead. Linda probably regrets her choice words back at the clinic.
At home he tells her about his experimental serum and attempts to have her as a human guinea pig. On her insistence he injects himself. “Nothing to it,” he smiles but then slowly transforms. “Now you must try!” Linda freaks out. “You must feel what I feel!” he chases her in a rage outdoors but she escapes. As morning comes, a stripped corpse is found of a random hooker. The woman’s throat is crushed, as a cop states: “Like in a vice. Someone’s puttin’ some shit in the game.”
That night another prostitute runs into Henry’s alter ego. “We got a fuckin’ psycho on our hands,” decides the homicide cop. Silky is soon attacked whilst with two of his girls in a street filled with awesome flying bodies, a run over girl and Silky being sandwiched between a car and a wall.
Henry wakes up the next morning puzzled by the blood on his car bonnet. What follows is a long and intense stare off into the mirror after reading news reports of the murders.
Linda tries to convince him later that day to hand himself in. She’s realised who is responsible. “I can’t believe you can sit there and talk like nothing has happened.” She heads to the police who, naturally, aren’t very sure of her story. “A black doctor who turns white at night?” Nonetheless they begin to investigate whilst Henry Pryde’s ‘Demon’ hunts Linda, killing everyone in the way.
Like Blacula (incidentally, William Crain also directed that), the acting and the writing is spot on. Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde takes itself seriously and tries not to alter the original source material too much aside from the obvious, like the era. For a low budget twist on a classic horror, the makeup isn’t too bad by Stan Winston, even though Henry’s alter ego looks weirdly like Andre the Giant circa 1970’s. The gore is slight and bright red like an early Argento movie.
Bernie Casey is a good actor and doesn’t go too over-the-top in the role. In fact, the central characters are likeable and the action scenes are corny but fun. In fact that’s what my Horror Soulmate said about Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, “It’s fun.” Even the mistakes are fun. For instance, watch for a police dog changing size and color as Pryde throws it in the climatic showdown.
VCI Entertainment’s picture quality is sometimes flickery like an old tape, so hell yes it added to the mood and feel that this flick should have. Shamefully the only extra is a trailer. To think, it’s the 35th Anniversary Edition as well!!!
