Dr. Jekyll AND Mr. Hyde: A Filmography

Abstract

Since its original publication in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has maintained a remarkable and never-wavering popularity. The story has achieved such a high level of name recognition that most Americans and Europeans who have never read the original story could summarize its plot, or at least explain its central premise. Particularly in the United States, the story has frequently been adapted for film. Although the film versions could be claimed with equal authority by the horror and science fiction genres, they are now numerous enough to constitute a subgenre. There have been at least 88 film and television adaptations, including shorts and some less-traditional variations. Since 1908, there has not been a period of longer than five years without a version of the story, and multiple versions in the same year are not uncommon. Most scholarship on film adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has focused on only a handful of the films, most frequently Rouben Mamoulian's 1931 version. This article is intended to be an introduction to the study of the broader subgenre, both identifying themes that appear in a number of versions and providing the most comprehensive and accurate filmography compiled on the subject. The filmography in particular should serve as a solid foundation for future research into the Jekyll and Hyde film subgenre.