Plenty to Hyde!

Here's a half film/DVD review for the low budget obscure title (unless you had cable in the early 80's) "Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again" from 1982. The film was released by Paramount Pictures in late 1982 to a few select theaters.

"Hyde" is a over-the-top wacky comedy, about a mixture of doctors and 70's drug abuse. Now the plot in a little nutshell, is about a surgeon named Daniel Jekyll (Mark Blankfield), who finds some research program that gets him hooked upon some kinda mumbo-jumbo power to make him into Mr. Hyde. Silly premise, but it involves cocaine. Yes, the white powder drug! And then, he goes mad and acts silly and really reckless, while going on to destroy video arcades/supermarkets and nightclubs, too. He's engaged to a little rich woman (Bess Armstrong from Jaws 3-D), who has no clue what's going on, or is too blind to.

Now enough of the plot, on with it's little cult classic history. At one time, I believe in 1983, late night cable had a field day with this little film. It was often talked about how funny it was. By the 90's, however, it was out of print and never to be seen again. It soon develops a cult status following all over the Internet. Now, on June 3rd of 2008, Legend Films picks up the rights to several of Paramount Pictures obscure titles and this is one of them. Released with different artwork than what your seeing here. It delivers a not too bad transfer, so for $10 I went for it, not having ever seen this on cable (and there wasn't too many I missed back then). It looked as though it could have been funny back then, but not now. It has not aged well and has become extremely dated looking. For a R-rated movie it lacks, with very little nudity and lots of drug haze humor. As far as R-rated film go, I've seen worse in Cheech and Chong movies than this. I really wanted to like this movie and laugh my head off, like everyone else was saying they did, but I just didn't get it. Sorry. And for that, I got nothing to "Hyde!" Well, except maybe the one star out of four I'm gonna give it...