I, Monster *** (1971, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Mike Raven) – Classic Movie Review 3078

Director Stephen Weeks’s 1971 British horror movie I, Monster is a version of the split personality Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story in all but name. Despite the character names having been changed, it is still a costume horror set in the Victorian era. It remains unclear why the names of the central character have been changed.

Christopher Lee stars as the mad doctor, though he is now for some strange reason called Dr Marlowe and his alter ego is Mr Blake. Marlowe’s experiments with intravenous drugs to release inner inhibitions lead him to find an effective drug, but it turns out to be one that incurs increasingly brutish side effects.

Lee is predictably convincing and authoritative, and he is loyally matched by Peter Cushing as Marlowe’s friend and colleague, the good doctor, Dr Utterson. Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for him, Mr Blake gets more and more monstrous with each transformation. ‘The face of evil is ugly to look upon,’ Dr Marlowe says. ‘And as the pleasures increase, the face becomes uglier.’

It is a shame that writer-producer Milton Subotsky’s Amicus Productions’ budget is so obviously pared to the bare minimum. But the story, the energetic acting and the imaginative direction by Weeks – making his first feature at the age of only 22 – go some considerable way to compensate.

Stephen Weeks followed I, Monster with Gawain and the Green Knight, Ghost Story (1974), Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1984) and The Bengal Lancers! (1984), which ran out of funds under producer Mahmud Sipra.

Also in the cast are the DJ/actor Mike Raven as Enfield, Richard Hurndall, George Merritt, Kenneth J Warren, Susan Jameson, Michael Des Barres, Aimée Delamain, Marjie Lawrence and Ian McCulloch.

I, Monster is directed by Stephen Weeks, runs 75 minutes, is made by Amicus Productions and British Lion Film Corporation, is released by British Lion Film Corporation (1971) (UK) and The Cannon Group (1973) (US), is written by Milton Subotsky, is shot by Moray Grant in Eastmancolor, is produced by Max J Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky, is scored  by Carl Davis and is designed by Anthony Curtis. It was originally designed to be shown in 3D.

Lee previously played Paul Allen in The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960), another adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, where Paul Massie plays Jekyll and Hyde.

Lee once described I, Monster as ‘one of the best things I’ve ever done’.

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3078

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