Jekyll & Hyde... Together Again (1982)

Directed by:

Jerry Belson

Several dozen parodies emerged in the early 80s hoping the combination of sight gags, silly, irreverent dialogue and physical humor would appeal to the same audience who'd flocked to see Airplane! back in 1980. This one's a parody of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (that took four people to write), was badly received by critics during its day and didn't make much of a dent at the box office. Dr. Daniel Jekyll (comedian Mark Blankfield), resident surgeon at "Our Lady of Pain and Suffering" Hospital wants to retire so he can experiment with drugs (huh?) but first, dying gazillionaire Hubert Howes (Peter Brocco), who's as old as Moses, wants Jekyll to perform the world's first full body transplant on him. Even though Dr. Jekyll's dead-set on retiring, pushy hospital administrator Dr. Carew (Michael McGuire) threatens not to let his high-maintenance daughter Mary (Bess Armstrong), who Jekyll's engaged to, marry him. After snorting some special cocaine, Jekyll becomes an aggressive swinger who grows an afro, chest hair, bushy eyebrows, a mustache, a tighter ass and a long pinky nail (!?) He also gets gold jewely, a silver tooth and a constant erection that won't go away.

It's your typical assortment of noisy, pea-brained gags; some of which are genuinely funny, while others are embarrassingly awful. Blankfield's lifeless performance as Jekyll is about adequately balanced by his grotesque over-the-top mugging in the wildman Hyde persona. Not that he's really a pleasure to watch either way... When Jekyll's told a woman has a "foreign object" stuck in her vagina, he enters the room to find a sexy woman and Japanese man latched together. Said woman is Ivy (Krista Errickson), who sings "Light Up My Body" at Madame Woo Woo's punk club with her band "The Shitty Rainbows." Blankfield (who would also appear in the horror parodies Frankenstein General Hospital in 1988 and Dracula: Dead and Loving It in 1995) also gets to sing "Hyde's Got Nothing to Hide" at the end during a mock Pulitzer Prize ceremony where Oscar-winner George Chakiris accepts the award on his behalf! Best that can really be said about this one is that are are worse examples of this kind of thing out. Then again, there's also better.

The supporting cast boasts some familiar faces. Tim Thomerson is a bewigged plastic surgeon who gets a little carried away performing a boob job. Cassandra Peterson (aka Elvira) plays a "busty nurse" whose scrubs are specially designed to show off ample cleavage. George Wendt ("Cheers") has a brief scene as a patient with a severed hand. Lin Shaye, Art LaFleur and others have small roles.

★★