Absolutely Fantastic

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The creaky classic is given an above-average treatment in this silent short. The running time clocks in at a mere 12 minutes which means that there's no time for extraneous material or slow spots, just a basic run-through of the Stevenson novella.The transformation from Jekyll into Hyde is achieved with a simple camera trick, substituting one actor for another. The story is straight-forward and comes complete with an appropriate opening (the first transformation), middle (a tragic romance) and end (a battle). The film contains a setting which was repeated for later versions. James Cruze is good as the scientist who transforms into an evil twin, coming across as a respectable gent. The actor playing Hyde goes over the top, of course, yet his portrayal works. The running time is extremely short as well, meaning that this early variation is well worth a watch.

I may not like silent films, but this one got my attention. I sat and watched it, it was truly a remarkable film. there were two others before this one, but sadly they are lost. I learned that this was also lost too, but it's now found it's great that film exist. The transformation scenes are dull, but the make-up on Mr. Hyde is brilliant in it's own way. This film may not live up the 1920 silent version or 1931 sound version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde films. But its truly a holy grail. this short film is interesting to watch, but it is only for cult fans. If you have free time give it a watch. I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

This film is somewhat interesting for comparison to later screen adaptations, but it's probably not worth watching otherwise. It's only one reel, however, so it's not a waste of time, either. There's a lot of condensing of the story, of course, to fit the one-reel standard. (For the one-reel format, I tend to prefer the original scenarios to the adaptations, due to this subtraction.) The plot here is reduced to mostly just the transformations. The most interesting element, otherwise, is how they film those transformations. The first two are done with substitution-splicing (or stop-substitutions), but after that, the other ones are done with direct cuts, crosscutting scenes (i.e. scene of Jekyll cuts to spatially separate action, then cuts back to prior scene with Jekyll now as Hyde).Additionally, one actor plays Jekyll and a different actor plays Hyde (at least in some scenes). I don't recall that being done in any other screen adaptations of Stevenson's novella. Thanhouser, at the time, gave sole star credit to the one playing Jekyll, James Cruze. Hyde is the meatier role here, though.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912) *** (out of 4) The Thanhouser Company released this version of the classic tale with James Cruze in the title role. This version runs around ten-minutes and is a bit weird but it works nonetheless. Cruze is very good as Jekyll but another actor plays Hyde in most of his scenes. Nothing too new is done with the story but this is still a nice version to watch.This is available on DVD along with six other shorts from Thanhouser. Other sources are out there as well but the picture quality on them aren't as good and a couple contain no soundtrack.