History has a way of righting itself when it comes to the arts. Sometimes it restores clarity and reminds us of the great things out there we had forgotten and sometimes things are going too well so it’ll regurgitate something we tried to forget. But there’s usually some sort of balance.Occasionally something falls through the cracks.
Like Jekyll & Hyde… Together Again.
Let me first say that I am not an advocate for this movie. I’m not a fan of it in the least. But, I have watched it at least forty times regardless. It was rated R. It had sex. It had a crazy lead performance from the underused [back then] Mark Blankfield. It had that great “foreign object in her vagina” joke. As a twelve year old kid it had merit to me. I didn’t get the drug humor (actually I still don’t like drug humor), but I enjoyed that I was watching something I wasn’t supposed to. I am not asking for Jekyll & Hyde… Together Again to be treated like a comedy classic or demand some sort of re-release. But this movie was a huge staple in the early-mid 80’s on cable and videotape. Huge.
And it’s almost never given much play at all now. And even more interesting, it was produced by the still relevant Joel Silver and Lawrence Gordon.
The film is about a nerdy scientist who accidentally creates a white powder that when inhaled turns the user into a sex-crazed maniac. His good intentions go out the window as he becomes a slave to his alter ego and the story dissolves into spoofy sight gags and numerous thinly veiled cocaine allegories. For what it was (a film that wanted to capitalize on Airplane!‘s success as well as ride the Cheech and Chong coattails), there’s no reason it’s unknown to most people while so many films from that era are either considered seminal comedies of the time or are getting all sorts of residual nostalgia.
This film (and to a lesser extent the more famous Young Doctors in Love) were 80’s mainstays that you couldn’t avoid on cable if you tried to and for people in the 35-40 age demographic who had a little freedom in their lives, I’d bet most of them have at least seen these movies in part or whole at least five or six times.
Whether it was because of rights issues, the fact none of the stars had massive careers, or because druggy twists on Robert Louis Stevenson doesn’t age well this is a film that completely fallen through the cracks. Even the eventual DVD release happened with little or no fanfare.
It’s weird. The film was such a weird omnipresent part of my childhood for a few years and has almost seemingly been relegated to some dark corner by the cosmos.