Jekyll and Hyde...Together Again

A screamingly unfunny, not to say mildly nauseating "comedy" from 1982, Jekyll and Hyde...Together Again stars dubious funny man the late Mark Blankfield (of "Fridays!" fame) as Dr. Daniel (!) Jekyll, an idealistic surgeon in the Dr. Hfuhruhurr mold—you know, Steve Martin’s wacky brain-doc in The Man with Two Brains (which, to be clear, came out a year after this mess). Jekyll decides to quit surgery so he can concentrate on creating a magic nose powder (har-har) that he sniffs up by accident when a drinking straw gets caught in his slumbering nose. I'm not making this up, but whoever did must have been totting a little of that old nose powder himself.

He is engaged to a hoity-toity but endlessly horny society dame but turns into a "Mr. Hyde" of epic late-’70s, early-’80s proportions: a fly, soul brotha pimp with a gold tooth, earrings, an open-collar shirt, gold chains (including a little razor blade pendant), and wild, spiked—later curiously punk rock—hair. He talks in a guttural jive accent and prowls chicks at video arcades, seducing them while they play Pac-Man.

A subplot involves some ancient man whose entire body has to be transplanted and who sometimes speaks through a cybernetic mouth (the screenwriter must have been doffing huge lines of space coke while writing this). There are plenty of Mad Magazine, Mel Brooks, and Troma-level gross-out gags, and the whole thing was undoubtedly made to cash in on the success of the Airplane! and Police Academy-type pictures. (Note: Police Academy wouldn’t actually be released for another two years, but we maintain the screenwriter most likely foresaw a future of screwball comedies and acted accordingly—maybe after chewing some funny beans out in the Mojave Desert roundabout 1981.)

It’s a bunch of ludicrous, sophomoric sight gags and some rather crappy jokes, with the only vaguely memorable thing being the oddly distinctive yet still unfunny performance by the energetic Blankfield, whose weird, I suppose quasi-Southern drawl is tempered here by his attempt to sound like both a highfalutin gothic villain and a dope-dealing street hustler.

Jekyll & Hyde Together Again Arcade Scene

Along the way, we have a party with phony New Wave slam dancers, a video game–loving hooker who chews bubblegum and loves Jekyll because he doesn’t just think about sex (conversely, his high-caste honey wishes he would take her on a one-way trip to the Kingdom of Humpalot). Hospitals of horror open up onto charity wards where the Elephant Man never died, and dudes wearing silk Victoria’s Secret lingerie under their lab coats aren’t the only thing that could get this movie cancelled in 2025. (A woman whose tits get blown up to the size of miniature zeppelins provides a vulgar sight gag that would only feature in a Toxic Avenger sequel today—and maybe not even there.)

What else can one say? (Better think of something, as we still need to meet a quota of words here.) Jekyll and Hyde...Together Again is a titanic celluloid doody stain that stinks for over an hour and a half. At one point, it turns—literally—into a stand-up comedy routine, none of which is even mildly amusing. It’s a train wreck of a movie: bad concept, bad execution, and, while not exactly boring (at least up until the last twenty minutes, which is a tough slog), able to induce little besides a feeling of vague distaste and even a little queasiness on the part of the viewer.

On the whole, it makes Penn and Teller Get Killed, Night Train to Terror, and Class of Nuke ’Em High seem like pinnacles of 1980s cinematic achievement. We’re not certain what happened to the makers of this film, but we’re certain that after its release, they were only looking for a safe place to run and Hyde.

Pomp-ching.

Ahem. It was considered a box-office bomb, by the way. Wonders never cease.

Starring Mark Blankfield, Bess Armstrong, Krista Errickson, Tim Thomerson, etc.

Directed by Jerry Belson.

Written by Belson, with Monica Johnson, Harvey Miller, and Michael J. Leeson.

Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again 1982 TV trailer

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