Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976)
A.K.A. Dr. Black, Mr. White and The Watts Monster.
It’s a little surprising that Dimension Pictures, the exploitation outfit that released the Rudy Ray Moore “Dolemite” movies, would make a Blaxploitation movie with so little grit to it. Yet here it is: a Blaxploitation take on “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” that isn’t so much Black as… beige. Trust me: few people in the world are a pasty-white as I am, and if even I notice how tepidly the movie addresses its Black audience, there’s probably something wrong.
Will Laughlin is the Braineater.
#1 by The Rev. on May 26, 2014 - 4:44 pm
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That was a near-Beggian intro, Will! (That’s supposed to be a compliment, since it was well-researched and informative.) Nicely done, as was the entire piece.
I cannot believe that’s what they went with for their Hyde character. Good lord. I didn’t even need to be told who that actor was.
I now want to watch Gargoyles and Blacula again…but really have no interest in the main subject, I have to say.
#2 by Braineater on May 26, 2014 - 9:09 pm
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Thanks, Rev. I take the adjective “Beggian” as a deep compliment.
#3 by lyzard on May 26, 2014 - 7:03 pm
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Yes, that’s great piece – thanks!
Mind-boggling – you wonder how hard they had to work to stop the social commentary pushing in in spite of them.
I wonder if the crappiness of the makeup job was Stan’s protest? I like to think so, anyway.
#4 by Braineater on May 26, 2014 - 9:08 pm
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My heart sank during the opening credits, when I saw “Based on an idea by Lawrence Woolner”. I had this vision of Woolner muttering something in a board meeting, and a clueless but overzealous intern rushing to make it happen… I guess that’s terribly unfair, but it just seems depressingly easy for a white writer of the era to totally miss the point of a Blaxploitation scenario. Crain is the wild card here, though: I’ve read that he was one of the first Black directors to graduate from film school… but Crain never really tried to establish any kind of identity for himself, least of all as a “Black Director”.
Actually, that reminds me: I made an error in the setup. Dimension was literally across the street from Corman’s company, not Arkoff’s.
#5 by RogerBW on May 27, 2014 - 10:39 am
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Thanks for the pointer on Willie Best. Man, whenever I think Hollywood has hit bottom…
And yeah, that’s Hollywood for you. Different is bad and scary, until you’re foced into it or (preferably) someone else risks his livelihood to do it and makes a success out of it; then it’s copy, copy, copy.
This is not an objection, but always capitalising Black while never capitalising white makes the text look remarkably odd.
The idea of a guy who seems like a completely different person just because he’s a different skin colour is something that a better director could work marvels with.
#6 by Braineater on May 27, 2014 - 11:08 am
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It’s an idea that could still be done powerfully, if only it hadn’t been done so trivially before.
By the way, I chose to capitalize Black to emphasize the idea of “black identity” which was so important to audiences of the time (and still is). However the idea of “white identity” in American culture has a *much* different implication; thus no caps. If this formatting makes the word “Black” stick out unexpectedly, well… that’s kind-of the point.
#7 by lyzard on May 27, 2014 - 8:14 pm
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This reminds me of the moment in Third Rock From The Sun when the aliens find out the black secretary belongs to a black empowerment group, and start asking whether there are any white enpowerment groups they could join… {*appalled stares*}