Dr Jekyll's grandson is alive, mad and conducting inhuman experiments in San Francisco, aided by his black hunchbacked assistant called Boris. The Dungeon is not, disappointingly, a place of torture but where Jekyll's human guinea pigs, once injected with serum, fight to the death using martial arts. This movie is certainly a curiosity. These fights scenes, which are fairy long, are probably the best thing about this dreadful movie. And that's not saying much! The plot and script are as awful as the acting. Pretty much the whole film takes place in Jekyll's poorly lit mansion, near darkness at times. The film is incredibly cheesy, dreadfully bad but also slightly entertaining for those reasons. Released in the UK as The Dungeon.

Judging from the other reviews, mine is the first for the new Bluray restoration. And what a restoration it is.. the film looks absolutely stunning in its sinister, dimly lit glory. The cinematographer wisely chose to film with a dark lighting, which makes the image appear as a moving Baroque painting, the primary color being blood red, which looks stunning against the blackness. I'm sure that a movie like this must have looked awful on VHS and unrestored DVD versions. Fans of the cult TV horror/soap opera "Dark Shadows" might be the correct audience for " Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon" , as this is unapologetically Gothic and overwrought drama. The idea of combining the then-popular martial arts genre with a Gothic period horror film has never been done before, and the result is truly bizarre. The kidnapped victims that are injected with the rage inducing serum, are forced to fight to the death in a bleak, nightmarish looking dungeon that resembles the torture room in David Cronenberg's "Videodrome, " and these scenes provide the grim action and violence of this sadistic tale of tortured madness and family dysfunction. Filming the entire production inside the huge mansion doesn't hurt the film, as the house is beautiful and poetically spooky. Themes of incest and the pain of unrequited love are examined in ferocious detail, and the highly stylized overly dramatic acting brings to mind the 1930s horror classics. The low rating of this unknown gem is wildly inaccurate and I can only assume it's largely due to the poor quality of earlier video transfers. There is a very specific audience for this bizarre film and it looks like that audience has yet to discover it. If nothing else, see this on Bluray for the aesthetic beauty alone, which is a quality that can't be denied. I absolutely loved this movie. Also recommended is the 70s film "Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne" with Udo Kier, and directed by Poland's premier Surrealist Walarian Boroswyck. That film is very similar in style to this one and most likely was an inspiration for this unique horror film, even borrowing music cues from that European version. In fact I'm guessing fans of Euro cinema might particularly appreciate this one of a kind film..

Looking as though it was lit entirely by a single spotlight, and boasting some truly terrible acting and direction, The Dungeon (AKA Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon of Death) is an unbelievably bad horror movie that manages to throw in some very poor martial arts for good measure.

The great grandson of the original Dr. Jeckyll (a very hammy James Mathers) is experimenting on kidnap victims in an attempt to perfect the aggression serum first created by his famous ancestor. Jeckyll injects his prisoners with his serum and films their fights to the death; he is aided in his task by a black hunchback-style assistant named Boris and his lobotomised sister Hilda.

The mad scientist spends the rest of his spare time trying to seduce Julia, the object of his desires (well, most of them, since he also has a thing for his sister!). Julia is somehow resisting his charms, so Jeckyll wisely keeps her tied up and drugged in his house.

When the father of Julia pays a visit (believing his daughter to have died in a riding accident), the mad scientist tries to enlist his help. Naturally, he isn't too keen on the idea and tries to put a stop to the madness.

Although this premise actually sounds fairly entertaining, let me assure you that not one facet of this awful production is worthy of praise: the whole film is extremely dark (ie., too shadowy); the script is terrible; the acting is amateurish in the extreme; and the endless fight scenes are interminably boring.

If I hadn't bought this in a charity shop, I'd be demanding my money back!!