Michael Carreras often attempted to broaden Hammer's repertoire during his terms there and most of the company's artistic triumphs, and interesting misfires, can be laid at his feet. THE TWO FACES OF DR JEKYLL was a serious attempt to move the Gothics beyond the traditional limits expected of Hammer that failed due to the gap between intention and execution. Having pioneered SHE and ONE MILLIONS YEARS BC and put Hammer into the Summer family crowd pleaser market - and anticipating the modern Hollywood blockbuster - Carreras took advantage of hammer's relationship with Dennis Wheatley not to churn out another Black magic Chiller but a curious mish-mash of soap-opera, disaster movie, nautical adventure and sci-fantasy.

Eric Porter was hotter than a murder weapon at the time with his portrayal of the tormented, cuckolded Soames Forsyth on the BBC (and had become something of a sex symbol in the process - despite, or because of, his rough treatment of his capricious wife, Irene) so Hammer thought it worth taking a chance on him as leading man material - as they had Peter Cushing - instead of Christopher Lee or a fading American star. Porter was a top drawer classical actor - I had the good fortune to see his Malvolio in TWELFTH NIGHT at Stratford - and he has a convincingly craggy sea-faring face and a natural authority, and ain't half-bad as a man of action at the climax. His captain could give Cushing's Baron Frankenstein a few lessons in monomania - he fails to tell his crew (including, inevitably, Michael Ripper) about the dangerous cargo of Phophor B they carry. Having been beaten to the punch by Benito Carruther's sleazy character to sleep with Hildegard Knef, he cares very little when the man is carried off by an octopus. I doubt whether Porter lingered too long over the film on his CV but he's a first-rate lead and although he made an excellent Moriarity in the Granada series, might have been an intriguing Holmes. The women characters are unusually complex for Hammer. Hildegard Knef looked every inch a MILF and conveys the weary melancholy of a beaten-down woman who's had to compromise herself in the name of survival. Suzanne Leigh is one of Hammer's finest and most underrated bitches - look at the smirk she gives her hated father Nigel Stock when Porter berates him - and opens her thighs for anything with a pulse including the Sparks, Benito, and on-the-wagon Harry. Sadly, both fade from centre-stage at the climax - but there is compensation in the form of Dana Gillespie. We've suffered enough childish double-entendres with those gas balloons she wears for now, but she is a striking beauty and, as Hammer weren't overly concerned with the thespian ability of their ladies, it seems strange she never made another one for them - Christopher Lee could have sunk his fangs into her certainly. I suspect she's dubbed, but she certainly takes Harry's mind off the booze.

The plot structure is oddly similar to FROM DUSK TIL DAWN with the plot starting off as one genre and taking an unexpected detour in fantasy-land. Nonetheless, it remains a curio in Hammer's output (and an indication of what ZEPPELINS VS PTEROCATYLS might have looked like had it been made) and remains the guiltiest of pleasures.

This can best be described as a cult classic. Its a fun movie with a lot of character development, and craftily directed. The movie follows the characters through a voyage at sea through hostile weather and a captain whom seems thoroughly decadent. Many of the characters are depicted as worse than they actually are in the beginning, and then the viewer is lured into sympathizing with them. Its a very common device in the movies, and it works better here than in most movies, due to better writing and directing. There is mutiny, shipwreck, life raft chaos, and a land full of monsters and hostile inhabitants, not to mention the famed "Balloon Girl" who they meet. This movie was banned early on, many places. This movie can be classified as the most iconoclastic horror move of all time, because the director had the audacity to kill two characters immediately after they lit up cigarettes. And you can imagine how the greatest censors of all time, the tobacco companies, responded to that, (quite covertly). This was the real thing that horrified audiences in America. What really makes the movie, though, is attention to even the most minor of characters. Most people don't realize how important character identification and appeal is to them, but it's what makes a movie interesting. And this is an interesting movie.