JEKYLL AND HYDE TOGETHER AGAIN

US, 1982, 87 minutes, Colour.
Mark Blankfield, Bess Armstrong, Tim Thomerson.
Directed by Jerry Belson.

Jekyll and Hyde Together Again is a particularly unfunny American parody of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic - ending with Stevenson's grave and the skeleton turning in his grave.

The film was directed by veteran comedy writer Jerry Belson (Michael Caine and Sally Fields surrender). Here he works with a team and with the American comic Mark Blankfield who originated his druggist character on television, echoing some of Jerry Lewis's antics in The Nutty Professor - but by no means as funny. The film had a team of respected screenwriters who must have been, perhaps, as stoned as the central character.

The setting is a hospital with the world's richest and oldest man wanting a transplant of everything. The avaricious doctor in attendance wants Dr Jekyll, the world's expert, with students high in his praises watching his performances, to do the operation. Jekyll, meanwhile is involved in his own drug-taking experiments which turn him into a hairy and fiendish Hyde. The avaricious doctor's daughter played by Beth Armstrong is in love with Jekyll. In the meantime he picks up with Ivy as Dr Hyde. Tim Thommerson is a transvestite surgeon - to little effect.

There is a trip to England where questions about drugs are being discussed and awards given (by George Chakiris as himself). Jekyll turns up as Hyde and ruins the proceedings - to the dismay of the two women in his life who ultimately reach some kind of compromise for sharing him.

Mark Blankfield goes through various comic routines which may appeal to a very broad and slapstick American humour, but marked by gross unsubtlety.

A curiosity item - yet another variation on the Jekyll and Hyde theme.