I, Monster (1971)

Cushing's worst performance, 5 February 2005

I, Monster is Amicus' take on the Jekyl and Hyde story. I won't go into details on the plot as most everyone is familiar with the story. From a couple different sources I've read that I, Monster may be the most faithful adaptation of Stevenson's book ever put to film. I don't know about that, I've never read the book. The biggest change from the book seems to be the names - instead of Jekyl and Hyde, we have Marlowe and Blake.

I had been looking forward to seeing this movie for a while. Any movie with both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing is high on my "to see" list. To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement. Usually, no matter how bad the material may be, you can usually count on Lee and Cushing to at least provide some degree of entertainment. Not here. This is the first movie I've ever seen with Cushing that I did not enjoy his performance. He acted as if he knew how bad things were. Much of the movie is an utter bore with everyone just sitting around spouting inane dialogue. I don't mind a slow moving story (for example, The Mummy (1933) is one of my favorites) but this is torture.

In I, Monster, Marlowe is allowed to slowly progress with each injection into a hideous monster. It is a progression into evil. It's a nice touch that I think improves on past versions of the story. But it brings up one of my major complaints about the movie. I do not understand how some of Marlowe's friends failed to realize he was Blake the first time they ran into him. Just ridiculous. The only physical change that Marlowe experienced at first was a grin on his face and messed up hair.

Next time I have a desire to see Lee and Cushing together, I'll pick something like Horror of Dracula or The Curse of Frankenstein.

4/10