One suspects the motivating factor behind Mary Reilly had been a trend in the few years before for lavishly produced big budget remakes of the horror classics with the likes of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), as well as Wolf (1994) offering up a revisionist werewolf tale. Mary Reilly appears to have been similarly construed as an attempt to mount a revisionist horror film. The film is based on Mary Reilly (1990), an award-winning novel by American writer Valerie Martin. In this case, Valerie Martin retells story of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), the most filmed horror story ever. Valerie Martin’s ingenuity is in retelling the story from the perspective of Dr Jekyll’s maid.

It should be noted that the story being retold in Mary Reilly is the literary version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as opposed to any of the film versions. Watching the film requires a reasonable familiarity with the way things happen in the story. We see events transpiring where we realize their significance but the characters in the film do not – the servants of the household being told to give Mr Hyde free run, the scene where Mary finds the cheque written for 150 pounds ‘blood money’ – and the different perspective gives these events a striking new illumination. Even though we know from the outset that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are the same person, the film’s playing into this gives Mary’s discovery a potent emotional resonance. Moreover, in telling the story from Mary’s point-of-view, this allows Valerie Martin to intriguingly transform the story into a feminist meditation on male sexuality – the good Jekyll coming to represent kindness and a father figure that the abused Mary has never known, while Hyde comes to represent a dangerous allure that she finds sexually compelling.

The film is directed by Stephen Frears, known for class works like Dangerous Liaisons (1988), The Grifters (1990), High-Fidelity (2000) and The Queen (2006), as well as one further genre entry with the live broadcast tv movie remake of Fail-Safe (2000). The script was adapted by Christopher Hampton who wrote acclaimed works like Dangerous Liaisons for Stephen Frears, The Quiet American (2002), Atonement (2007) for which he received an Oscar nomination, and the play that became the basis of A Dangerous Method (2011). Frears does an exceptional job directing. The scene where we are introduced to Hyde for the first time comes with a startling dream-like intensity – Frears’ camera following Julia Roberts as she moves through the house and the huge lab sets, hiding beneath a table as Hyde returns only to have him find her and stomp on the table with a bloodied shoe then bend down to hand the key to her and departing with a taunting “I think we’ve had enough excitement for one evening. Close the door behind you.”

The film conducts an exceptional portrait of the dreariness of the servants’ and working class lot in Victorian England. (At one point, Julia Roberts is called to the lodgings where her mother has died to find her body has been packed away in a closet and her belongings sold for unpaid rent, whereupon she is offered the shilling’s change that was left over. “Poor wages for a lifetime of drudgery” is her haunting soliloquy). The sets – from the drearily grey courtyards and streets of Victorian London to the tiered lecture theatres and vast sets and hanging platforms of Jekyll’s laboratory – are exceptional. The entire production design schema has been to relay the sets and costumes, almost everything in the film with the exception of the brothel, in blacks and greys, which has amazingly bleak effect. The photography is beautifully subdued, emphasizing the grey dreariness of this world with a soft elegance. It renders even more tragic the sense of the central character trapped in a life that she was born into with little prospect of advancement.

The Jekyll/Hyde makeup is subdued. With the exception of a change of wig, John Malkovich’s features are so distinctive in both roles that we keep wondering why Julia Roberts never works out what is going on. We do eventually get a digitally created transformation scene at the end in a startling sequence where we see Jekyll physically forcing his way out of Hyde’s shoulder. One suspects that this was born out of a desire on Stephen Frears’ part to depict the Jekyll/Hyde transformation in a new way that had not been seen on screen before.

Many people laughed at Julia Roberts and her stab at an Irish accent when Mary Reilly came out. In fact, amid the facile light comedy roles that she is usually cast in, this is one of the few times that Julia Roberts acts on screen. Her frightened, timid, even gaunt and emaciated character is excellent. Indeed, the sense of Mary’s lifelong downtrodden nature radiates considerable sympathy out of the screen without Roberts ever needing to say anything. This may well be the best piece of acting that Julia Roberts did in the decade between Pretty Woman (1990) and Erin Brockovich (2000). The only negative point against the film is an extremely bad performance from Glenn Close as the brothel owner. It is hard to understand why such an exceptional film was hated so much. Least of all while why Empire magazine nominated Mary Reilly as one on their list of ‘50 Films That Should Never Have Been Made’.

Other versions of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde include:– Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1908); Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1910) with Alvin Neuss; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1912) with James Cruze; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1913) with King Baggott; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) with John Barrymore; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920) with Sheldon Lewis; Der Januskopf (1920), a lost German version with Conrad Veidt; the classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) with Frederic March; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941) with Spencer Tracy; the French version The Testament of Dr Cordelier (1959) with Jean-Louis Barrault; The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960), the Hammer version with Christopher Lee; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (tv movie, 1968) with Jack Palance; I, Monster (1971) also with Christopher Lee; The Man with Two Heads (1972) with Denis DeMarne; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (tv movie, 1973), a musical version with Kirk Douglas; Dr Jekyll’s Women/The Blood of Dr Jekyll (1981) with Udo Kier; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (tv movie, 1981) with David Hemmings; a 1985 Russian adaptation starring Innokenti Smoktonovsky; Edge of Sanity (1989) with Anthony Perkins; The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde an episode of the tv series Nightmare Classics (1989) with Anthony Andrews; Jekyll and Hyde (tv movie, 1990) with Michael Caine; My Name is Shadow, a Spanish version starring Eric Gendron; a bizarre tv pilot Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1999), which combined the story with Hong Kong martial arts and featured Adam Baldwin playing a Jekyll as a superhero in the Orient; Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical (2001) with David Hasselhoff; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (2002) directed by and starring Mark Redfield; the excellent British tv reinterpretation Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (2002) with John Hannah; The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Rock‘n’Roll Musical (2003) with Alan Bernhoft; the modernized Jekyll + Hyde (2006) with Bryan Fisher; The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (2006) with Tony Todd; the modernized BBC tv series Jekyll (2007) with James Nesbitt; Jekyll (2007) starring Matt Keeslar where Hyde becomes a virtual creation; and the modernized Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (2008) starring Dougary Scott.

Other variations include the would-be sequels Son of Dr Jekyll (1951), Daughter of Dr Jekyll (1957) and Dr Jekyll and the Wolfman (1972); the comedy variations Abbott and Costello Meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1953), The Ugly Duckling (1959), the Italian My Friend, Dr Jekyll (1960) and The Nutty Professor (1963); versions where Dr Jekyll turns into a woman with Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), the Italian comedy Dr Jekyll and the Gentle Lady (1971), Dr Jekyll and Ms Hyde (1995) and Dr. Jekyll and Mistress Hyde (2003); the erotic/adult versions The Naughty Dr. Jekyll (1973), The Erotic Dr Jekyll (1976) and Jekyll and Hyde (2000); Dr Black and Mr Hyde (1976), a Blaxploitation version where Jekyll is a Black man who turns into a white-skinned monster; the amusing sendup Jekyll and Hyde ... Together Again (1982); a wacky children’s tv series Julia Jekyll and Harriet Hyde (1995); and Killer Bash (1996) set in a frat house with an avenging female Jekyll. Dr Jekyll also turns up as one of the The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), which features a teamup between characters from Victorian fiction.

(Winner in this site’s Top 10 Films of 1996 list. Winner for Best Adapted Screenplay, Nominee for Best Musical Score and Best Production Design at this site’s Best of 1996 Awards).