Dottor Jekyll e Gentile Signora

Italy • 1979 • 107m •

• Directed by: Steno. • Starring: Paolo Villaggio, Edwige Fenech, Gianrico Tedeschi, Gordon Mitchell, Paolo Paoloni, Guerrino Crivello, Eolo Capritti, Francesco Anniballi, Walter Williams, Clemente Ukmar, Geoffrey Copleston, Paola Arduini, Angelo Boscariol. • Music by: Armando Trovajoli.

The modern Dr. Jekyll (actually being the descendant of Hyde) is a rude, brutish corporate fixer intent on toppling governments and exploiting the masses. But when he starts to have attacks of conscience, he chugs down his grandpa's formula in hopes of becoming pure evil. Of course, this backfires and he becomes a kind & caring (and rather fruity) Mr. Hyde, and he must now try to stop his own fiendish plan to blackmail the queen into promoting toxic chewing gum.

Review:

Image from: Dottor Jekyll e Gentile Signora (1979)

Actress Edwige Fenech and the Italians made A LOT of screwball sex comedies in the 70's. Generally though, they were more successful(internationally, at least) at bedroom farce-type stuff as opposed to parodies like this. To be fair though, the English-language version of this is saddled with bad dubbing, horrid music (which may or may not have been in the Italian-language version), and an inappropriate English-title, "Dr.Jeckyl Likes 'em Hot", which suggests a much more sex-saturated movie. Still, as European horror movie parodies go this is not as good as Lucio Fulci's "Young Dracula", it's about the same as Armando Crispino's "Frankenstein All"Italia", but it's significantly better than "Dracula Blows his Cool".

While most of the humor falls flat (at least, with the English dubbing), I did enjoy the satire. An evil descendant of Dr. Jeckyl works for a greedy, international conglomerate. And when he stumbles on his grandfather's formula, it turns him into his opposite--a foppish, ineffectual do-gooder. He and his predatory man-eating secretary turned angelic (and platonic) blonde wife (Edwige Fenech) make plans to spray the formula everywhere, but there's a very clever twist at the end. As for Fenech, she does have too small of a part, but she gets to act more than usual, essentially playing two different roles (she's definitely better as the maneater). And she gets to wear (and not wear) a variety of colorful outfits (although my personal favorite is, of course, her birthday suit).

I wasn't horribly entertained by this (and the title-song is downright vomit inducing), but it has a few good points--and I'll reserve judgment until when (or if)I ever see an Italian-language version with subtitles.

Review by lazarillo from the Internet Movie Database.

Release Anniversaries

Movie Database

Movies By Year: