(1920)
Dir - J. Charles Haydon
Overall: MEH
In 1920, two different versions of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were made in America alone, (there was also F.W. Murnau's lost Der Januskopf which stared Béla Lugosi), and the second though allegedly first to go into production was from the little known Pioneer Film Corporation. Directed by J. Charles Haydon and produced by Louis Meyer, (though not MGM's Louis B. Mayer, to add even more confusion), this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde features Sheldon Lewis in the title roles and is an unremarkable adaptation that merely keeps the rudimentary premise of Stevenson's source material. Running merely an hour, it still slogs along due to its unimpressive production values and Haydon's less than inspired direction. As Hyde, Lewis merely contorts his face and shags up his hair, running around and strangling a few people but otherwise providing little menace on screen. Jekyll begins the story as a benevolent fellow running a children's hospital for the poor, whose experiments are conducted under the thesis that man has no soul. Then the cop-out ending allows for him to recant this statement in a manner that was in fashion at the time since unchecked blasphemy was hardly allowed.
(1926)
Dir - Bennett Cohen
Overall: MEH
This largely forgotten old dark house quasi-comedy is not one of the more memorable of the lot, stemming from the mind of writer/director Bennett Cohen who haphazardly throws together various cliches without elevating any of them. Cohen also hardly has a keen eye for visuals, as Midnight Faces is flat from beginning to end. The checklist of motifs include a young man who inherits a large estate from a rich old relative that he never knew he had, said young man having an African American scardey-cat male servant who falls down a lot and says "lawdy lawdy", a mysterious "phantom" who runs around in a cloak and disappears into the walls, creepy hands emerging from behind people's back, secret passages, shady housekeepers, a Caucasian actor in yellow face, bumbling police detectives, and of course a needlessly convoluted plot that collapses under even the most minute scrutiny. It is poorly paced and lacking in atmospherics, (the setting is just a bog-standard country house and the day for night sequences do not even try), but the cast at least pretend that they are in a better movie than they actually are.
(1929)
Dir - Benjamin Christensen
Overall: MEH
Seven years after making the seminal witchcraft mockumentary Häxan in Sweden, Danish filmmaker Benjamin Christensen delivered the unremarkable, synchronized sound old dark house farce Seven Footprints to Satan. It is an adaptation of Abraham Merritt's 1928 novel of the same name, an absurd romp that is low on chills and even lower on laughs, but it has a wacky premise on paper. Creighton Hale plays a bespectacled fellow with a lot of his rich uncle's money at his disposal who plans to take a lengthy expedition in Africa for adventures sake. Instead, Hale finds himself and his top-billed love interest Thelma Todd caught up in an elaborate and bizarre kidnapping scheme in a mansion full of wacky occupants who all seem to be either prisoners or servants of actually Satan or just some eccentric fellow who calls himself Satan. It has a comedic tone where our main characters act frightened and confused while continuously saying that they would simply rather go home then participate in any of the insanity that they are forced into, but laugh out loud moments are none to be found. There is a guy in a gorilla suit, a guy dressed up as an Asian mystic, a guy with the most ridiculous facial hair in mankind's history, (see picture), a guy on stilts called "The Spider", and a woman with a whip, but sadly it all spells mediocrity.
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