The only animated MOVIE version of the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde makes death such fun... or more disturbing, you decide! www.phelous.com / phelous Originally aired: July 3, 2013
Plus it wasn't so much a split-personality as it was Jekyll letting loose and putting all the blame on Hyde. He treated it like another person, but it was more disassociate as opposed to an actual separate personality.
@@Igarappappa Does create a good relatable issue on the fact we all live on a fragile piece of glass called Reputation, and the thinner it is as you become a better and better being to the point one mistake could crash down Hence why Jekyll created that potion so as long as he is Hyde with an already broken reputation, he can still patch his.....but they were patched with those cheap bandages you get at a walmart
9:02 "Almost like Jekyll _knew_ it was gonna turn out this way instead of ridding himself of evil." That's...actually pretty close to how it was in the original story, if I recall correctly. Jekyll didn't create his formula for some noble cause of ridding humanity of evil; he did it so that he could have a way to act out his darker impulses without fear of repercussion or guilt. He only started regretting it when the transformations got out of his control.
16:13 19th century fact -- people left cards when they were visiting their friends, and the friends were not home. It was to indicate "hi, I stopped by", and was a fail safe for the servant's memory.
i just realized she's not telling them a story like hansel and gretel or something, this is something real that actually happened to her. she decided to just randomly tell some kids she's babysitting about some horrific traumatic string of murders she actually experienced firsthand, wtf!? who does that!? lmao!
19th century: it was either stress or something else. also she's not 60 XD they probblly thought 40 was ancient back then Also you can have grey hair and NOT be 60 😂
"Well you see kids, I kept Dr Jekyl's old notes...and you know, I felt tonight would be a good night to...to...TEST IT AND RAAGGGHHHHHHH!!!" *cue nightmaare fuel as Nanny starts shredding her clothing, her eyes go yellow, and a large shadow plays over the bed*
In the original story, Mr. Hyde's body count was WAY lower. You would think the cartoon version would lighten things up a bit, not turn the darkness up to 11.
This isn't nearly accurate! They forgot the infinite-range bombs and the birds that take dumps on Jekyll, and the cane isn't supposed to kill anything except bees!
Yeah, he was described as extremely off-putting but more because of his eyes and the general repulsiveness that a depraved human can evoke in others, but nothing like Frankenstein's mosnter or Dracula, for sure...
Kasumi Ryona Gaming and he was also short, as in dwarfish, with his arms and legs proportional to each other, so he’s basically the Victorian version of the hulk minus the green.
@@KasumiRINA Even Frankenstein's monster wasn't hideous in the traditional sense, looking at him just tripped people's mental "THIS SHOULD NOT EXIST" alarms
A little piece of 19th century trivia. At 16:11 , the “ calling card” isn’t so that Jekyll actually calls him. In the 19th century, it was standard etiquette that people would regularly go and visit their friends homes to catch up with them and enquire on their well-being.That practice was called “calling”. If your friends weren’t at home, you’d give their servants or family members your “calling card” so that your friends could know that you came to visit them. When telephones became more standard in every home, people started “phone calling”, so they didn’t necessarily have to go see their friends in person to catch up and chat. And, slowly, voicemail replaced calling cards. So when the guy at 16:11 leaves his calling card to Hyde, it’s today’s equivalent of leaving a voicemail saying “We need to talk”.
@@barktrap Well, I can't exactly blame people for forgetting, considering most adaptations omit Utterson (most likely since, once the mystery aspect is removed, his character becomes kind of superfluous)
Andy Semple I'm waiting for Friday the 13th the animated musical with a scene interrupting bear, a random idiot running through a field, and a comic-relief cat.
I can't believe people are actually arguing that Phelous should've read the book before watching this movie in order to appreciate it better and explain some of the plot holes. Do you expect the children this movie was _meant for_ to have read the book beforehand as well??
None of the adaptations follow the book anyway. If someone made a completely faithful adaptation of the book, only with the names changed around, everyone would think it was an original story. I'm dead serious.
I actually HAVE laughed at "A Clockwork Orange" and I was really surprised that people were horribly disturbed by the "Singin' in the Rain" scene because I thought it was like... a dark comedy moment.
Apparently I'm more Australian than American because I laughed at all of that, too... My Father and I often freak people out by laughing at the most horrible things. 🤣😂🤣
@@mastermarkus5307 Wait... The drooves were supposed to be scary? Also some have claimed the film is meant to take place in the future in a post-apocalypse, but like, nothing futuristic happens nor is there any indication that any kind of End of the World has happened... I like a lot of the imagery from it, but as a movie.. it just makes no sense, especially since it's missing an ending.
So, according to the title at the beginning, 20 years passed between the Jekyll/Hyde incident and the maid telling it to her grandchildren. But she's clearly an old lady there with gray hair. Yet she looked young during her time with Jekyll. Holy time warp Batman!
Heck, yeah! 👍 Though you should check out Jekyll & Hyde in animated form in "The Pagemaster". ^_^ It's an underappreciated animated classic, & Leonard Nimoy does a FANTASTIC job as J&H! ❤
Mr. Porteous PLEASE consider a career in voice acting, at least part time! Your reviews are hilarious, but your voice acting is the highlight! Or at least one of the highlights. UPDATE: I've discovered "Lloyd." So I'll rephrase this post: do voice acting more often!
What's especially weird about this is that Hyde only officially killed one person in the book, and that was what actually got him in huge trouble and made Jekyll stop taking the potion. In the animated movie here, murder is the first thing he does, and keeps doing. (And of course, Hyde was just a disguise for Jekyll to indulge his base desires, they were never two separate personalities in the book)
@@Readasaur 👍 I noticed a lot of people here in the comments keep describing it as split personality making me MORE confused 😅 I haven’t read the book but I do want to look into the dynamic of the tale more
@@gracekim25 It's been years since I read the book, but it was essentially an allegory for addiction. It starts out as a way for Jekyll to cut loose without significant repercussions, but spirals out of control as he finds himself needing more and more to have the same effect. He finds himself succumbing to "transformations" during the day when he needs to fulfill obligations, which begins to negatively impact his life. By this point, he has also been engaging in a lot of bad behaviour, which he blames Hyde for rather than taking ownership of his actions. For him, creating the persona of Hyde was easier than admitting that he, a well-respected doctor, had fallen to the moral failing of addiction. The people around him supported this, since a doctor surely couldn't be an addict. Once he runs out of the chemical he had been using, he tries to order a new batch, only to discover the new stuff doesn't work for him at all. His initial batch was somehow impure, and he doesn't know what it was laced with. This, in addition to having killed someone while intoxicated, places him in a very dark place. The story ends with his death, as his friends and the police find "Mr. Hyde." He leaves them a note explaining what had happened to him. It's a bit of a downer ending, but it made a significant impact on the perception of addiction at the time. It was one of the driving forces behind the cultural shift in seeing it as an illness rather than a moral failing. Strangely enough, the book never clearly calls it addiction. It's all in the subtext.
Can you imagine if the maid told the children how the story actually ended? "And then out of pure hopelessness and pain, Dr. Jekyll committed suicide. The end. Well, goodnight kids!"
Lawyer dude: "He totally left me all his money. It's all there in this will he made." Sir Butler: "May I see?" Lawyer dude: "No, you may not." Sir Butler: "Fair enough. We'll send you the money shortly."
I mean, that actually really is what happens. One of the running subplots in the book is Jekyll, who had previously stated his intent to leave a portion of his fortune to Ottisen, suddenly asking him to draw up a new will leaving it all to Hyde instead. This turned out to have been a fail-safe, in case Jekyll was no longer able to keep up the facade; he'd falsify his own murder and live the remainder of his life pretending to be Hyde while still able to enjoy his fortune. In the end he recants this will and restores Ottisen's portion.
+CoLeMaWeSoMe Well, we all live in such a world were things get dumbed down. I wonder how Hamlet or King Lear would be transformed into a cartoon, or even a Kid's Special.
Uh, there already IS an animated adaptation of "The Phantom of the Opera". In fact, there might be two, and I remember hearing about one that's allegedly still in production.
Not before the animated films based on the lives of Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer. The one I can't wait for is the animated tale of Earl Bradley and use it as a story of conscious to warn kids about sick child molesters and killers in the world.
If they wanted Dr. Jekyll to have a love interest, they should have used the maid. It would have been more meaningful than him looking at a random woman in the park.
+ecojosh1 As a fan of the original story, it annoys me to no end that every adaptation feels the need to have a love interest for Dr. Jekyll. Same thing for The Island of Doctor Moreau. I don't know why people in the media (Hollywood especially) love to throw in love interests where they don't belong.
Master Markus And like in Patch Adams... Seriously why this movie needed a heartbroken love story that didn't even match the real events baffles me, but what baffles even more is that people wants those vain love stories to happen in films that even needed them to begin with!
@BilboKoira I'm not opposed to making him gay, but how would that be more reasonable exactly? A love interest is a love interest, regardless of their gender...
@tultsi93Finnish almost all characters in the book are male, Doctor Jekyll is described as handsome and imposing, and there are definitely too much strong feelings between men for the story to be completely straight. @Yawning Lion original story has zero heterosexual romance but clearly a total "male friendship romance" overload.
Jekyl and Hyde was never a split personality, it was more two sides of the same person, or, (as a bit of a tortured example) like you can meet the same person online and in real life and find they act completely differently. Hyde is just Jekyl minus his inhibitions, doing all the fun stuff that Jekyl himself would be ashamed of because Victorian's (am I right?lol)
I guess the "separation og good side and bad side" idea was just a sanitation in order to make it more for the kids because I think the original idea from the book was that jekyll wanted to create an alter ego to get away with doing a bunch of crimes but the potion went out of control eventually
I don't know where it originally came from, but the "separate good and bad" idea is actually the justification I have heard most often when it comes to adaptations of this story. I don't know where it originated, but I assume that it was changed so that Dr. Jekyll was more sympathetic for some reason.
I could be wrong since I haven't read it in a while, but I don't remember such a thing, and this is how Wikipedia summarizes that point: "Jekyll's letter explains that he had indulged in unstated vices and feared discovery. He found a way to transform himself and thereby indulge his vices without fear of detection." which sounds a lot like what the first commenter said.
@@gracekim25 It's not always perfectly reliable but "can't be trusted" is excessive. Also, I've read the book and remembered it saying that; I was just refreshing my memory. I'm quite certain that Jekyll's motivation wasn't removing his evil side.
My theory is that Lanyon secretly has his own Mr. Hyde personality, which is why he is so offended. This Hyde chap, butting in on his territory and maybe getting them both caught somehow.
I always though someone should've done the classic monster's animated version, including Dracula, Frankenstein and this one, but in a high quality high budget movie like Dreamwork's
The book wasn't actually about a split personality though, Mr. Hyde was more an elaborate (uninhibited) mask for Dr. Jekyll to use in order to satisfy his darker based urges that he as Dr. Jekyll, an upstanding pillar of the community, couldn't act on. Also the book was intended for at least older children which is why the book shied away from the blood and gore of a typical horror story.
@@gracekim25 I think Hollywood has provided more than enough adult targeted audience films for the retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The story is in the public domain so maybe there is someone who decided to write an adult take on the book as well. I was never curious enough to look any up though cuz I thought the original tale was perfect.
@@SwiftNimblefoot nope, that's why (despite the dark themes and adult main cast of characters) there are no profanities, gore, or sexual overtones in this horror mystery novel cuz the author intended for (older) children to be able to read the story
God, Phelous you really are an underrated reviewer. I know some people don't like your style but I love it. Your style is unique and you deserve a couple hundred thousand more subscribers. Also, HENRY OH MY GOD!!!
I gotta say, this story isn't at all accurate to the book. Despite being the titular character, Jekyll isn't the main focus. Instead, it's the lawer, Mr. Utterson, who is the focus as he tries to solve the mystery that seems to surround Mr. Hyde. Most people seem to think of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" as a horror story, when it seems like Robert Louis Stevenson wrote it more like a murder mystery.
It's on my top 5 books. I love it. I get really pissed off because I've never seen any film that is even close to the book. For example when reading the book the Utterson (and the reader) think Hyde is Jekylls illegitimate son and is blackmailing him. Also Hyde is smaller and younger. And of course, there's the fact that there is something powerful in being Hyde, because Jekyll is a good man who made a mistake.
The "Oh, my God!" scene from the book was when it's revealed to the reader that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person and not only that, but it's also when supernatural elements are introduced in the story, so Lynyon's reaction was meant to also be the reader's reaction. It's from there that we get the whole story from Jekyll's perspective and the mystery blanks are filled in.
I loved the book. Dr. Jekyll was a seemingly perfect person but he secretly wanted to do evil things so he created the potion, thinking that he could remain in control of his immorality but Mr.Hyde slowly starts trying to take over.
Doing this review when you did was absolutely brilliant and clearly set your career trajectory from that point on. I have watched this video a hundred times, usually drifting off to sleep as I do. 12 years on and I never get tired of your content.
Seriously, I appreciate how Burbank wasn't afraid to capture the darker moments of the book into a 50 minute animated film that aired on TV. I'm legitimately, unironically waiting for them to do an adaptation of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men", THAT'S how much I love them!
lol why the hell is dude so mad @ 4:56 like really? what the hell is wrong with him? and I love the running joke with him Phelous this is one of my favorite reviews of yours. I love this one the first beauty and the beast, all the bootleg zones. when you talked about the real ghostbusters and how and why they changed it to the awful version and of course the stupid 80s TMNT moments.you are really a funny and talented man, keep up the great work, you are truly bring joy to people's lives.
IIRC the character in question is somewhat of an intellectual rival to Jekyll, and is both instinctively opposing him because he wants to one-up Jekyll, and is also annoyed that his "rival" is suddenly spouting such a patently unscientific hypothesis based on abstract concepts like "good" and "evil".
This actually seems like decent animation, I'm getting a lot of Chuck Jones vibes from the style - wouldn't be shocked if he had something to do with this considering his Jungle Book adaptations were a little dark as well XD But good god at those unfittingly comical death scenes... lol Also, I swear I recognize Dr. Jekyll's voice from somewhere, he almost sounds like one of the rabbits from Watership Down (specifically Hazel)
Showing murder , lightening it with comedic animation techniques , no romance ...... i might just be interested in more Australian movies for kids . this sounds amazing
This was actually one of my favorite movies when I was a little kid. I used to rent a VHS copy of it from a local video store all the time back in the early 90's. And I think part of why I loved it was precisely because it was so much more brutal than any other cartoon.
I think people not wanting children to know that death exists is mostly an American thing because you see it often in animation from other countries and same with sex stuff, alcohol, scary stuff and other things.
I thinks they conflate implicit with explicit - implicit meaning can only be determined by understanding the context - children (as in younger children) learn this context when they're older and understand the greater meaning (hence the rating system and the reason the murders are not explicit - as in shown on screen). Censoring all content doesn't help, it just infantalises the society that censors it, stunting their growth (mentally).
1. "Death exists"? Seriously? Do you not actually watch American stuff? Even shows on Nick Jr. acknowledge death. What's scary about this movie is the *protagonist* is killing people, and involuntarily at that, and that is scary for everyone. 2. Phelous is Canadian, but I guess we're all the same country, aren't we?
Im a huge fan of animation in general and i watch hundreds of different American cartoons actually and in the huge majority of them they try to pretend that death and people being killed does not exist. That there are a few that does not try to hide it like Gravity Falls for example does not remove the fact that most of them do try to hide it and in some of the cartoons where one or two characters dies like Avatar The Last Airbender for example they never actually say that the character is dead and they die in a way so that its not completely obvious. At the end of Avatar i heard that they were not allowed to have the main character try to kill anybody because its a kids show so they made Aang refuse to kill and made it so he removed Firelord Ozais fire bending instead. And if your fans of animation you should be aware that most of the time they are not allowed to say things like kill or murder in American cartoons and just says destroy instead.
I never understood why it is almost every incarnation of this story depicts Hyde as a bulky large man and often with green skin. He was described in the book as short and stock with large hands and a face that shows no compassion for his fellow man but pure sadistic pleasure. It was to represent that while Jekyll of course has a dark side as all men do, it's not the biggest part of him. Doing it as most adaptations do suggests that the evil within us is larger than our very selves.
VauschthePuca Reading your comment makes me want to read the original story~ :o But I think it's the want to exaggerate things for the "big" screen. Also it's probably due to a lack of imagination. When older versions decide to make a classic baddie look a certain way, later creators tend to follow suit, regardless of whether or not the early versions make sense. Frankenstein's monster is a great example; they almost always look like the Boris Karloff version. The only classic I can thing think of that did a drastic aesthetic overhaul is the vampire and... well, we all know how that went, so maybe it's not entirely bad, maintaining an image... Honestly, I think it's mostly because of laziness. Why communicate an altered state of consciousness/drastic personality shift by way of a subtle yet powerful performance change when you can just make the other personality morph it up and look like a monster? The audience won't be able to tell the difference if he still looks the same! Make him big, green, and hairy! Makes it easy!
Original story is kind of interesting in that the reveal that Hyde and Jekyll are the same person is practically a twist ending. Like, if you didn't know the story it's practically a Shyamalan level twist. Which is another big change, probably due to the fact that Jekyll and Hyde is so ingrained in culture that everyone knows the story by now even if they haven't read it. That would be my guess, but the way Hyde is in the book is a bit more unsettling to me. It's a small man with a sadistic look on his face that can apparently beat people to death rather easily and enjoys doing it. Funnily enough, Junji Ito (Mangaka behind Uzumaki, Gyo, Amagira Fault) wrote a Frankenstein story in which he drew the monster as described in the book. It's rather unsettling. So at this point the most original thing would be to make him as the book described him. Does it say something when adapting something 1:1 is more original nowadays?
I've read the book, love the story, and I'll say it right now, this movie actually does touch upon most of the important plot points from the book. HOWEVER, it does so in the worst, most haphazardly way humanly possible! The result is a butchered mess! Go read the book, it's not very long.
I'm always disappointed none of these film versions ever adapt the actual book. Like the fact they always try and pretend that Jekyll is a good guy who's manipulated by Hyde in some way. But in the book Jekyll claims to be good yes. But he also freely admits that he feels constricted by his reputation as an upstanding citizen. He takes the potion intentionally in order to live out a life doing what he always wanted to do with no consequences. The horror at the end where he starts changing without the potion isn't because he's trying to redeem himself, it's because if he gets stuck as Hyde he could be caught and forced to actually pay for his crimes. Anyway, good video! Despite my Jekyll/Hyde themed hang ups.
A bit like how I feel regarding adaptations of Barrie's Peter Pan. Peter isn't meant to be a character that changes, but in almost every adaptation, they have to have him learn something.
As to the Nanny's story I think she knows of the things she hasn't seen because Jekyll wrote it in his journal which was probably given away or read by the lawyer guy. Still this is a bizzare movie and not exactly a faithful adaptation as in the book it was never clear what Hyde did. It was Victorian Era and it would have been considered scandalous for a man of his position to go to prostitutes or to gamble, because while men weren't as retrained as women there still were strict social norms. Anyway even if he did murder people this is an awkward adaptation of it and as you said it does make it even worse...
comic relief cat reminded me of an animated christmas carol adaptation with a comic relief dog and whoopie goldberg she did not play the voice of the dog unfortunately
A major positive about this movie is that it's as faithful to the original story as a kids movie could make it. There maybe a few flaws here and there but I commend the makers for doing this part so well.
While this may be the only animated adaptation, I know of at least two cartoons that did parodies of it...one of which, surprisingly enough, was VeggieTales. (That was actually what first introduced me to the story xD)
I remember my English teacher showing us this last year when studying Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde for our GCSEs and the whole time I was thinking how cringe worthy it was but how the sound track was out of place
