Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953)

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I have to, once again, mention how I first saw this flick one afternoon on Sci-Fi Channel and, like the other Abbott and Costello monster meetups, there were plenty of images and parts of its story that left an impression. I remembered Boris Karloff as a surprisingly diabolical and cruel Dr. Jekyll who's obsessed with his lovely young ward, his Mr. Hyde being a crazed, snarling monster, Costello getting turned into both a big mouse and his own version of Mr. Hyde, and him inadvertently doing the same to a bunch of policemen at the end. And, again, like so many of these movies, I never owned it on VHS and never saw it again until I got that DVD set containing it and the other Abbott and Costello monster movies. Among these movies, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the most interesting in that about 80 to 85% of it is played as a straight horror film, with the main focus being Karloff's Jekyll and the way he uses Mr. Hyde to commit murders that benefit him. In fact, though they're introduced fairly early on, Abbott and Costello's first major scene doesn't happen until over twenty minutes into the running time, their first scenes with Karloff don't occur until quite a while after that, and even then, their comedy feels a bit off. It's much more slapstick and cartoonish, with little of the snappy dialogue and banter they were known for, and they still sometimes take a backseat to everything else, as if they literally blundered into what was supposed to be a straight-laced Jekyll and Hyde horror movie. Therefore, it might not be one of their strongest movies per se, but the storyline involving Karloff's Jekyll and Hyde picks up the slack, and it's also interesting to see Universal do a movie specifically set in London around the turn of the century, as even their Gothic horror movies of the 30's and 40's often didn't go for a specific time period and location.

London, during the Edwardian period. The city is being plagued by a series of murders committed by a beastly man referred to simply as "the monster." The latest victim is Dr. Stephen J. Poole, a well-respected doctor, and his body is found by Bruce Adams, a newspaper reporter. The next day, at a women's suffrage rally in Hyde Park, Bruce meets the lovely Vicky Edwards and takes an interest in both her and her cause. A fight breaks out between the women and a bunch of misogynistic men, and Slim and Tubby, two American policemen working with the London police force, attempt to stem the violence but instead get caught up in the mayhem. Many of the women, as well as Slim, Tubby, Vicky, and Bruce, are jailed as a result, but fortunately for the latter two and the other women, Vicky's guardian, Dr. Henry Jekyll, bails them all out; Slim and Tubby aren't so lucky, as they're promptly removed from the force. After catching a ride with Vicky and Jekyll in the latter's carriage, Bruce learns of Jekyll's theory about the good and evil inside every person and that he hopes to find a way to control the latter side. When he arrives home, Jekyll, seeing an attraction between Vicky and Bruce as they continue on to the musical hall, becomes full of jealousy and rage. Retreating down into his secret laboratory in the basement, Jekyll reveals to his mute assistant, Batley, that he murdered Poole as Mr. Hyde because Poole laughed at his theory. Though he initially decides not to experiment again with the serum that turns him into Hyde, his jealousy and hatred towards Bruce due to his own feelings for Vicky lead him to inoculate himself once more in order to kill Bruce as Hyde. After transforming, Hyde heads to the music hall and sneaks inside, while Slim and Tubby, trying to find a way to get back on the police force, decide to capture him themselves. Their intervention stops Hyde from killing Bruce and he, along with Slim and Tubby, chase him across the rooftops and into a wax museum, where Tubby manages to trap him. But, by the time Tubby fetches Slim and the inspector, Hyde changes back into Jekyll. Jekyll opts not to press charges, though, and even asks Slim and Tubby to escort him back to his home, intending to keep Tubby from exposing him, as well as a guinea pig for his experiments. When the boys discover what he's up to, they're the only ones who have any chance of exposing him for the monster he truly is, which won't be easy, given their lack of credibility and Jekyll's public standing.

As with Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was directed by Charles Lamont who, leading up to this film, directed three other movies with them: Comin' Round the Mountain, Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd, and Abbott and Costello Go to Mars. During that time, he also directed a 1951 adventure film called Flame of Araby and Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation, the latest film in the studio's series of Ma and Pa Kettle films, which he directed the bulk of. He would go on to direct Abbott and Costello's next two movies, which would also happen to be their last for Universal, as well as very near the end of their career as a comedy duo.

That notion that Abbott and Costello's career was quickly winding down at this point comes across somewhat in the movie itself, given how little it actually focuses on them and doesn't allow them to engage in their usual form of comedy. As I said, though they're introduced fairly early on when they try to break up the fight at the women's suffrage rally, only to get caught up in it, wind up in jail themselves, and then get kicked out of the London police force (their presence in London at the turn of the century is explained away as them having come over to learn the British way of law enforcement), their first major scene doesn't happen until later, when they track Mr. Hyde into a music hall in an attempt to capture him. In fact, Tubby initially takes Hyde for a burglar, while Slim is the one intent on catching "the monster" that's been terrorizing London. When Tubby encounters Hyde, they realize they've run into the monster and attempt to capture him, only for Tubby to twice crack Slim over the head. Along with Bruce Adams, they pursue Hyde along the rooftops leading away from the music hall, with Tubby falling into a pair of long underwear hanging on a line suspended between buildings before ending up in a wax museum with Hyde. He manages to capture Hyde, but he turns back into Dr. Jekyll by the time Slim and the inspector get there, causing them further embarrassment and derision from the inspector. Rather than press charges, Jekyll asks Slim and Tubby to escort him home under the pretense of being afraid of running into the monster himself, and then offers them five pounds to stay the night there. Though Slim is more than happy to accept, Tubby, knowing what he saw and not trusting Jekyll, is scared out of his wits at the idea. After failing to convince Slim, Tubby finds himself unable to sleep that night and does a little exploring around Jekyll's house. He's stalked and attacked by Jekyll's assistant, Batley, and blunders into his hidden laboratory, where he finds a number of animals whose brains Jekyll has switched around. Escaping the lab, he runs into Jekyll and tries to convince Slim of what he saw. While he denies the existence of Batley, Jekyll does take them back down into the lab and confirms what Tubby saw regarding the animals. When Jekyll leaves them alone at one point, Tubby, after drinking a beaker of what he thinks is water but is actually a bizarre serum, sneaks out of the house, followed by Slim.

The two of them stop at a pub for a drink, only for the serum Tubby drank to take effect and turn him into a man-sized mouse, which both he and Slim are initially oblivious to, though everyone in the pub sure sees it. When Slim finally looks at Tubby, he faints, twice, and Tubby does the same when he realizes what's happened to him. He then reverts back to normal and, now convinced that there is something sinister about Jekyll, Slim decides they should tell the inspector. Of course, the inspector

doesn't believe them, and when they go to Jekyll's home with Vicky Edwards and Bruce in order to convince them, Jekyll has removed all traces of his laboratory, which is now a wine cellar. Demoralized, the two of them try to find where Jekyll hid everything, and when Slim finds a bottle of Moselle wine, he pronounces it "mouse-el" and thinks it's what Tubby drank before. He gets him to drink some, hoping he'll become a large mouse again, but all he succeeds in doing is getting Tubby

really drunk. However, the two of them are then vindicated when Jekyll reveals his true, cruel nature to Vicky when he refuses to let her marry Bruce and transforms into Hyde again. They get caught up in Bruce's struggle to save Vicky from Hyde and Tubby gets repeatedly stuck by a syringe full of the formula that created Hyde. Soon, he becomes a Hyde-like monster himself and Slim, thinking he's the beastly Jekyll, chases after him while Bruce chases the real Hyde. While not as vicious as the real Hyde, and more apt to run away when

threatened rather than attack and kill, Tubby's monster still manages to scare the crap out of a bunch of Londoners as he's chased through the streets. The chase culminates in a moment where he, the real Hyde, Bruce, and Slim end up on the same rooftop, circling a raised skylight as they stalk each other. Both Hyde and Tubby freak each other out and, after Tubby and a chimney sweeper scare each other, he runs into a clothes line and knocks himself unconscious. Slim captures him

and brings him to the inspector. In his struggle, Tubby manages to bite the inspector and several cops before reverting back to his normal self, which draws the inspector's ire, as he thinks it was an attempt by Slim to fool him. However, thanks to Tubby's bites, the other men turn into Hyde-monsters and chase Slim and Tubby out of the office.

Even though they didn't produce the more well known Jekyll and Hyde movies of the previous thirty years, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is, technically, not Universal's first film dealing with the subject, as in 1913, Carl Laemmle's initial production company, the Independent Moving Pictures Co. of America, produced a little known silent version that was distributed by the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, Inc., which would later become Universal Pictures. Still, it is surprising that they would throw Jekyll and Hyde into the mix of their Abbott and Costello monster meetups, although the casting of Boris Karloff as Dr. Jekyll was a very inspired one. What's more surprising is the direction they took Karloff's Jekyll in: rather than a kindly, well-meaning scientist who accidentally awakens his inner evil, this Jekyll is already a cruel bastard of a man whose transformations into Hyde only magnify his monstrous personality, taking away the inhibitions that keep him from actually committing the evil deeds he contemplates doing anyway (which I've heard is very accurate to his portrayal in the original novel). He puts on a facade of respectability for the public and is very much revered in London's high society, coming off as a loving, caring guardian towards his ward, Vicky Roberts, but is quickly revealed to be a nasty, spiteful, and horribly petty man who physically abuses his assistant, Batley, when he's angry, and uses Mr. Hyde to murder those who get in his way or oppose him in any manner. He murdered Dr. Poole at the beginning of the movie because he laughed at his theories about the dual personality of man (which, according to reports, was not his first murder), and when he sees Vicky's attraction to newspaperman Bruce Adams, Jekyll, who's wanted Vicky for himself all these years (according to him, ever since she was a child, which is really unsettling), decides to become Hyde in order to kill him. Jekyll rationalizes what he does by saying Mr. Hyde is the one who commits the murders, not he himself, saying, "Dr. Jekyll is a cultivated gentleman, bound by convention, by tradition," while Hyde is, "A creature devoid of all good. The embodiment of all that's evil." There is a bit on conflict within him early on as he decides he mustn't experiment with the serum again until he's found a way of balancing its effects, but because of Bruce, he injects himself and becomes Hyde once more.

Though he fails to kill Bruce as Hyde and gets captured by Tubby, Jekyll reverts back to himself and totally lies about what happened, saying Tubby threw him into the wax museum's fake prison cell when he simply walked into the museum to investigate a disturbance. He also hides the ring he wore while he was Hyde and suggests Tubby suffers from hallucinations. Rather than press charges against Tubby, he instead has him and Slim escort him home under the

pretense of being afraid of running into the monster, and then gets them to stay the night, saying he'll give them five pounds for it. His real motivation, however, is to dispose of Tubby because of his suspicions, and rather than have Batley do him in, Jekyll instead decides it might be interesting to use him in his experiments. Later that night, after Tubby is chased around the house by Batley and has wandered into the laboratory, he runs into Jekyll, who, again, proceeds to make him look

like a delirious fool in front of Slim. While he does show them the laboratory and corroborates what Tubby saw, he denies any knowledge of Batley, saying he works alone. Because of this development, he intends to dispose of them both immediately, preparing a large syringe in another room and filling it with a black liquid, likely some sort of toxin. He doesn't get a chance to use it, though, as Slim and Tubby walk out of the house, and though he sends Batley after them, they ultimately elude him. The next day, they bring

Vicky and Bruce by to try to prove what they found, but Jekyll outsmarts them by having cleared away all traces of his laboratory in the basement and turned it into a wine cellar. But, while he manages to temporarily discredit them, Jekyll starts to unravel when Vicky tells him that she and Bruce want to marry. He gives his consent, but is filled with absolute rage, and when she goes to leave with Bruce, he keeps her at his house under the pretense of wanting to discuss wedding plans, only to tell her he has no intention of letting her marry

Bruce. He declares, "You belong to me! I've loved you ever since you were a child. Every plan I ever made, I made for you!" He even tries to get her to run away with him to Paris that night and, even worse, intends to inject Bruce with the serum, turn him into a monster, and kill him to come off as a hero to the police. Vicky, now knowing what a horrible person he really is, knocks the syringe with the serum out of his hand, when he suddenly becomes Hyde again.

Since Dr. Jekyll himself is already evil enough, they made Mr. Hyde into little more than a snarling, ape-like beast of a man who does little besides go around attacking people, climbing up the sides of buildings, and running and leaping across rooftops. He clearly retains Jekyll's thoughts, as he knows who he's meant to target when he transforms and he's also smart enough to know when and how to hide and disguise himself when he needs to, so he's not totally mindless. Also,

his physicality is akin to Frederic March's Hyde in the 1931 film, but he's hardly the deviously intelligent and sadistically evil creature Hyde is often depicted as, particularly in that film. While Boris Karloff is credited as both Jekyll and Hyde, he actually only played Jekyll, including when he goes through the transformation sequences, while Hyde himself was played by stuntman Eddie Parker, who was able to do all the running, leaping, and climbing the role required. As for the design of Mr. Hyde, it's not a very inspired one. Again, it

kind of has that ape-like look from the March film, with a large nose, bushy eyebrows, a sort of scraggly beard around his face, big teeth, and drooping skin around his eyes, as well as hairy hands, but it's not as memorable, mainly coming off as one of the very standard foam latex masks Bud Westmore's crew created at Universal during that period, like their designs for the creature in Monster on the Campus and such. And, apparently, that look is not something unique to Dr. Jekyll's monstrous side, as Tubby, the inspector, and the policemen all turn into the same type of monster, with few variations in their look.

The characters of Dr. Jekyll's ward, Vicky Edwards (Helen Westcott), and newspaperman Bruce Adams (Craig Stevens) are pretty generic and typical of B-level horror and sci-fi flicks being made during this time. It's especially disappointing because, when they're first introduced, they have some promise, with Vicky being a showgirl and singer who's also a major proponent of a women's suffrage movement going on, and Bruce, besides being the one who finds Mr. Hyde's latest victim at

the beginning of the movie, mentions right before he meets Vicky that he's not for the idea of women voting. As such, when he does meet her and she asks him to sign her petition, he does but hits on her in the process, writing his street address and apartment number along with his name, as well as asking for an "interview" in a "quieter spot." Despite this initial attitude of chauvinism, Bruce stands up for Vicky and the other women when a heckler gets really nasty about it, getting into a fistfight with him that turns into a full on brawl that lands them in jail. They make the most of their time there, with Bruce writing down notes for a story he intends to do on the suffrage movement and they become closer and better acquainted. They're bailed out by Dr. Jekyll and Bruce rides with him and Vicky to the west end of London, picking Jekyll's brain about his theories on why some people commit murder, then goes on with her to the music hall where she's to perform that night. By the time Mr. Hyde shows up to kill Bruce, he and Vicky are exchanging passionate kisses after having known each other for only a few hours. Bruce then gets caught up in the pursuit of Hyde when he's spotted in the music hall, chasing him along with Slim and Tubby, only for them to lose track of him. The next day, Slim and Tubby bring him and Vicky to Jekyll's home to prove what they saw the night before, and while Vicky couldn't see her beloved guardian doing such horrible and outlandish things, Bruce, while unsure of some of their claims, is willing to keep an open mind until he sees Jekyll's lab for himself. Jekyll then makes Slim and Tubby look like complete idiots when they go down into the basement and find a wine cellar rather than a laboratory, discrediting them.

The couple then asks for Jekyll's permission to be married and he gives it, although the two of them are too busy kissing to notice him break a small glass in his hand in anger. The two of them attempt to leave together, but Jekyll keeps Vicky there, telling her he wants to go over plans for her wedding, only to reveal he has no intention of letting her marry anyone but himself. When he goes on to reveal his plan to turn Bruce into a Hyde-monster in order to kill him under the pretense of

protecting her, Vicky goes to stop him. She knocks the syringe out of his hand and decides to go to the police and tell them everything. Jekyll then transforms into Hyde in front of her, causing her to faint out of fright, and Bruce, who happens to still be outside the house, hears her scream. He breaks his way back into the house just in time to keep Hyde from escaping down into the cellar with Vicky and gets into a fight with him. During the fight, which Slim and

Tubby also get caught up in, Bruce struggles with Hyde and kills Batley with his own gun when he tries to intervene, while Slim tries to awaken Vicky and Tubby gets injected with the serum. While Vicky, after being revived, stays at the house, Bruce, Slim, and Tubby chase after Hyde, only for confusion to break out when Tubby turns into a Hyde-monster and Bruce and Slim each chase after one of them. In the end, the real Hyde returns to his house and, again, tries to make off with Vicky, but Bruce manages to rescue her.

Like in Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Bud and Lou's characters here often cause annoyance and aggravation for someone higher in authority in their profession; in this case, it's the short-tempered inspector (Reginald Denny) who, after the brawl they get caught up in at the women's suffrage rally, dismisses them from the London police force. They continue to give him headaches throughout the movie, enraging him when Tubby seemingly caged Dr. Jekyll by mistake and later when they try to convince him that Tubby drank something in Jekyll's laboratory that turned him into a large mouse, which the inspector dismisses as nothing more than hallucinations caused by their being in a pub and chases them out of his office. During the climax, the inspector becomes increasingly frustrated and confused by the numerous reports of Mr. Hyde being spotted in various locations all over London, to the point where, when Slim shows up and claims to have captured Hyde, he doesn't know what to think anymore. Sure enough, Slim brings in a monster and the inspector tells him to his face he's going to enjoy having him hanged. He makes the mistake of wagging his finger in the monster's face and gets bitten, along with the cops who helped Slim bring him in, and what's when he gets a phone call telling him that Hyde was killed in front of Dr. Jekyll's house. During this call, the monster turns back into Tubby. When the inspector sees this, he believes Slim dressed Tubby as Hyde to perpetrate a hoax, only for him and the officers who were bitten to turn into Hyde-monsters themselves and chase after them.

Dr. Jekyll's mute assistant, Batley (John Dierkes), is little more than a big, mumbling brute who helps Jekyll in his experiments and does some of the dirty work for him, which he appears to take pleasure in, given how eager he is to murder Slim and Tubby. Even though Jekyll is shown to be abusive towards him when he doesn't do things exactly the way he wants and is roughly tossed aside by Hyde when Jekyll transforms the first time, Batley is very devoted to his master. He chases Tubby about the house when he starts snooping around in the dead of night, attempting to kill him when he makes his way down into the laboratory, and when Jekyll tries to placate them by showing them the lab and explaining what Tubby saw, Batley hides in another room to keep Tubby from pointing him out as his attempted murderer. Under Jekyll's orders, he follows them out into the streets when they wander out of the house but retreats when he sees how Tubby has turned into a large mouse when they're at a pub. During the climax, when Hyde gets into a fight with Bruce, Batley comes in with a gun to help his master. However, Slim manages to disarm him and Bruce gets the gun, which he uses to kill Batley during the fight.

Like I said at the start, Abbott and Costello's presence in this film almost seems out of place, given how secondary they feel to the plot and, when they do finally start to take center-stage, the comedy they engage in doesn't feel like them. You do get what you've gotten before in their horror-comedies: Costello being the main target of the spookiness, getting chased around by both Mr. Hyde and Batley, blundering into places that freak him out, like Dr. Jekyll's laboratory and the wax museum, and him seeing something and trying to

convince Abbott and others of it, only to be ignored. But, the majority of the comedy is more physical and cartoonish than you usually get with them. In fact, there are only a couple of instances I can think of where they get to engage in the snappy banter and play on words they're known for and even then, they don't last long and are not on the level of "Who's on First?". Otherwise, Slim and Tubby are either getting caught up in madcap chases with Mr. Hyde and Bruce Adams,

conking themselves and others on the head when they attempt to subdue Hyde, or getting smacked around, like in the brawl at the women's suffrage rally or the fight with Hyde and Batley at the start of the climax, sometimes with instances of sped-up action. On top of all that, there's the surreal comedy of Tubby getting turned into a man-sized, anthropomorphic mouse for a little bit, and him later turning into a Hyde-monster and getting chased around London along with the real Hyde. And yet, while there are some amusing parts to it,

it's never as funny as many of their past movies, as the comedy, again, feels less important than, and almost intrusive towards, the straight horror story being told, and Abbott and Costello themselves don't appear to have the energy they did before. I don't know if it's because they were running out of material by that point, if their chemistry was getting stale, or if they themselves were getting long in the tooth and tired (Abbott was 55 and Costello was 46 during filming), but there's no denying that, as far as their comedy is concerned, this is not one of their stronger films.

One of the things that makes Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde stand out from a lot of Universal's past Gothic horror films is that, instead of the Neverland approach where those movies were never set in one specific place or time period, this film most definitely takes place in early 20th century London, not too far removed from when the original Robert Louis Stevenson novel was published. As such, it has a look to it that most of Universal's past films don't have and is something of a precursor to the period pieces

Hammer would begin producing a few years later. On the studio backlot, you have sets created to simulate the city streets of London during this period, with plenty of horse-drawn carriages and appropriately costumed extras walking about, as well as fog during the nighttime scenes to give off some atmosphere; a lovely section with trees, bushes, a gazebo, and even a little pond that's meant to simulate Hyde Park (in the background of the first scene there, you can see the still-standing sets of Notre Dame from the 1923 Lon Chaney movie);

and sets for the rooftops of London, where Mr. Hyde often climbs and escapes to. Among the interior sets, the most noteworthy are those of the music hall where Vicky performs, the wax museum that figures in one sequence, and Dr. Jekyll's house and laboratory. While we do see the fairly elegant main stage of the music hall, most of that sequence takes place backstage, among the dressing, costume, and prop rooms where Slim and Tubby attempt to catch Hyde before he gives them the slip (that whole set is reused from The Phantom of the Opera with Chaney). The wax museum is something of a callback

to McDougal's House of Horrors from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, with all of its creepy dummies (mostly real people just standing still) and displays that freak Tubby out while he's in there, chief among them dummies of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster (the latter of which actually comes alive when it's touched by a loose, electric cable), a chopping block with a dummy head, and a fake jail cell where Tubby manages to momentarily capture Hyde. And finally, Jekyll's home, for the most part, is a very

elegant-looking, upper-class house, with a big, lovely foyer and main staircase, upstairs bedrooms, and a library for Jekyll, in which there's a fake bookcase that hides the entrance to his laboratory. Said laboratory is nothing special, just a room filled with various animals in cages, numerous bottles and beakers of liquid, and the typical chemistry sets with boiling liquid within them, as well as a small desk and workstation Jekyll sits at.

The transformations seen in the movie are done through the classic Wolf Man lap-dissolve technique, and while Boris Karloff ultimately did not play the full-blown Hyde, he did go through the actual process of having makeup applied to him bit by bit, and vice versa. You see each of those two types of changes twice, along with a close-up of Jekyll's hand becoming hairy and ape-like during the first transformation, and they look about as good as you could get for the time. Lou Costello also goes through this sort of

transformation when he turns into both a large mouse and his own Hyde-monster, and you also see him change back both times. While a stuntman actually wore the big mouse mask for the sequence in the pub and also played his Hyde-monster during the climax, it's clear that, like Karloff, he also went through the actual transformation process. The mouse one doesn't work that well, however, as while the change itself is done through makeup, the ultimate mouse is a big, stiff mask

(apparently the nose could move back and forth because of the stuntman sticking his tongue up into it and moving it back and forth) and fur gloves. The only other bit of effects work in the film is a moment during the initial chase across the rooftops where Tubby falls in-between two of the buildings and gets hung up in some long underwear hanging from a clothesline, suspended high above the street. It's a short but decent enough bit of matting, and like in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, animation is used for moments where the electric cable in the wax museum is throwing off sparks.

In its opening, which features shots of London, the movie uses a shot of Big Ben that was also seen in the opening of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, as well as a shot of the River Thames and London Bridge, both of which look noticeably modern for a film meant to take place around the turn of the century. In any case, when the movie properly begins, Dr. Stephen Poole is shown walking down the foggy city streets, when a cloaked figure wearing a top hat and carrying a

cane appears behind him and begins stalking him. Poole stops to relight his cigar and the figure, after checking to see no one's around, makes his move. He hits Poole in the back of the head with his cane, then comes around to his front and strangles him with his big, hairy hands while snarling like an animal. Poole collapses to the sidewalk and the attacker runs off. The sound of the attack draws the attention of newspaperman Bruce Adams, who comes out of a pub and finds Poole's body.

Checking him, he looks at his wallet and finds his card in it. Newspaper headlines touting Poole's death are then shown in a montage, calling it the latest in a series of murders committed by a "monster" in or around Hyde Park. While sitting in the park, reading one of the papers, Bruce sees a man lying on the ground near some bushes. Thinking he may have fallen victim to the monster, he walks over and inspects the man, who turns out to be very much alive and was merely sleeping. Initially, he thinks Bruce is trying to rob him but

Bruce explains that he thought he'd been attacked by the monster and they discuss whether or not this monster is a man or an animal. Bruce remarks, "Might even be a woman. It's possible, you know?", and the man says, "Of course I know. My wife's a monster to me!" Some music starts up nearby and the man says his wife has joined a women's suffrage movement. He asks Bruce if he believes in women being allowed to vote and Bruce admits he doesn't.

The two of them walk over to a gazebo where the suffragists are having a rally. When the music stops, Vicky Edwards makes her case, although she gets jeered at by some men sitting on a bench, one of whom suggests she join the army and another adds, "Yeah, if you wanna vote like men, why don't you fight like men?!" An older woman yells at them for that insult but she's dismissed immediately. Undeterred, Vicky starts up a song about how they won't stop until they get equal

rights, a song that's accompanied by some cancan dancers. When it's over, Vicky asks the crowd to sign their petition and approaches Bruce herself. He does agree to sign it, but when he starts to add his profession, his office hours, and his home address, she realizes she's being hit on, which is confirmed when he asks for her home address and an interview in a quieter spot to "make things clearer." One man then gets really aggressive with his misogynistic attitudes, snarling at the women to

go back to the kitchen, and when Bruce admonishes him for it, he gets a punch to the jaw. Bruce throws a punch right back, sending the man falling over the bench with the other hecklers. The man rushes back at Bruce but, this time, Bruce blocks his punch and socks him in the gut. Vicky tries to stop the fight, but when the man throws a nasty insult at her, the older woman from before belts him over the face with her purse. A big fight between the men and women breaks out, with

Bruce getting knocked to the ground while the women use their instruments as weapons. Dressed as bobbies, Slim and Tubby come running in and attempt to break the fight up, but get beaten up themselves. Tubby yells at the older woman, "Stop this fight! There's ladies present!", but she takes his nightstick, smashes him over the head with it, and then kicks him, sending him tumbling headfirst into the bench. Slim doesn't fare much better, as a woman knocks him over the head with his own nightstick, puts him over her shoulder, spins

him around, and throws him into a garbage can. Getting back to his feet, Tubby runs back up to the woman who clobbered him, but she belts him in the face. He stumbles backwards and two women grab him by the arms and slam his backside into one of the gazebo's pillars, causing a large light hanging from it to fall and crash onto his head. Despite being knocked senseless, Tubby, again, tries to confront that same woman, but she hits him right on the top of the head, hard enough to send him through the ground. He then yells for Slim, who

pulls himself out of the garbage can and helps him out of the hole, as the fight continues around them. They keep on trying to stop it, when the sound of more police approaching sends the men running. Slim tries to chase after them but he falls into the hole Tubby was stuck in and yells for help, only for a drum to get slammed over his head. Seeing this, Tubby tells the woman she's under arrest for "resisting an officer," but he gets smashed over the head by her purse again. Pulling his hat up off his head, he yanks her own hat down over her head, which gets him shoved through the ripped drum and into the hole with Slim. The women also try to run for it when they hear the police coming, but the next scene shows they weren't so lucky.

One of the women talks to Slim and Tubby on the other side of some bars, demanding she and the other women be released. Tubby comments, "She demands that we release her! Who's going to release us?!", and the camera pulls back to reveal they're in jail as well, in a cell right next to the women. An officer unlocks the women's cell and tells them they've been bailed out. All of them eagerly file out of the cell, save for Vicky, who's giving her story to Bruce as he sits in the cell with

Slim and Tubby. When she's done, she asks Bruce if she's forgotten to mention anything and Bruce says, "Yes. Are you married?" The officer then speaks up and tells Vicky she's been bailed out. Vicky wonders who could've put up the money and Bruce remarks, "Whoever it was, I hate him. I was beginning to enjoy it in here." Vicky walks out of the cell and the station, when the cop goes to the adjoining cell and tells Bruce he's free to go as well. However, Slim and Tubby are stopped at the

door. As Bruce rushes to catch up with Vicky, Slim asks the cop, "What about us?" The cop just laughs and says, "That's a good question," then walks away. Slim tells Tubby, "I think I asked him a silly question," and he remarks, "And you got a silly answer." Outside the jailhouse, Vicky and Bruce are met by Dr. Jekyll, who's revealed to be Vicky's guardian and the one who bailed her and the others out. Bruce goes to pay back his part of the bail, since he wasn't part of the suffrage, but Jekyll says it's not necessary. This reveals that Bruce could

have paid his own way out but he admits he didn't because he would have missed out on being able to spend time with Vicky. After Jekyll and Bruce are introduced formally, he and Vicky go to leave, with Jekyll intending to have his coachman drop him off at his house and take Vicky on to the music hall. But, as they're climbing into the coach, Bruce runs up and asks if he could come along to the west end of London. He eagerly climbs aboard without really asking and Jekyll, despite clearly not liking it, allows him. Jekyll climbs in with them and has his coachman, Watkins, drive them to his house (according to Charles Lamont, the rather prudish Boris Karloff called the idea of him practically sitting in Craig Stevens and Helen Westcott's laps to be "indecent,").

At the jailhouse, the horribly embarrassed inspector regrets having allowed Slim and Tubby into the London police force. He orders them brought in and, when they are, he tells Tubby he's finished and, ripping the pins off his collar, calls him a disgrace to the force. Slim takes this opportunity to talk himself up, saying they can't have men like Tubby on the force, but the inspector yells, "Attention!", and proceeds to strip him of his pins as well. Tubby adds to it by yanking some of

the buttons off the front of his uniform. Meanwhile, as Bruce and Vicky ride with Jekyll, their topic of conversation changes from Bruce's oncoming story about the women's suffrage to the murder that was committed early that morning. Jekyll denies any knowledge of it or the victim, who Bruce says was a colleague of his. He then asks Jekyll if he can explain why people commit murder and Jekyll tells him, "I believe that every human being has two sides to his nature: the good

and the evil. When the evil predominates, it brings out the animal instinct in man, the desire to get what you want, even if you have to kill to get it. Of course, some people are born with that animal instinct under complete control. But it's the less fortunate that I want to help. If I can find some way to curb that instinct, to tame it so that it's always under control, then, perhaps, we can eliminate bloodshed, violence, even war, and have peace on Earth and good will towards man." Bruce then asks if he's made any experiments but he says it's

just a theory at the moment and asks him not to put it in his paper. The carriage arrives at Jekyll's house and he disembarks. He tells Watkins to take Vicky to the music hall, when Bruce decides to ride there with her. Jekyll is confused, as he thought there was someone in the area Bruce wanted to see, and Bruce checks his watch and says his "friend" wouldn't be home at the moment, but that he happens to have another friend who lives near the music hall. Jekyll gets what he means, saying he's sure Watkins would be willing to drive him all over London to see the rest of his "friends." The carriage heads on and Jekyll glares as he watches it go down the street. He heads inside, angrily takes off his gloves and throws them on a table in the foyer while glaring out the window, heads into his library, and goes through a passage hidden behind the bookcase.

He heads down some stairs, through another door, and enters his laboratory. He storms over to the side of a cage containing a monkey and, looking at a clipboard hanging on it, grabs it and yells for his assistant, Batley. He stomps up to him, yells at him for not giving the monkey an injection he told him to give it, and smacks him across the face with the clipboard, causing him to fall back into a corner in the table. While Jekyll sits down at his desk, Batley mumbles and shows him a newspaper with a

headline about the murder of Poole. Jekyll says he had to kill Poole after he laughed at his theories, then makes the excuse that he himself didn't commit the murder, Mr. Hyde did. He says he won't make any more experiments until he finds a way to balance out and control how long the serum's effects last, but when looks at a picture of Vicky on his desk, he declares, "No. I must do it again. I've waited all these years for her. Now, that newspaperman... I hate him. I hate him." Jekyll takes a bottle out of his desk drawer, fills a

syringe up with the serum contained within it, and injects himself in the arm. As he waits for the serum to take effect, he calmly says, "Mr. Hyde will kill him. Mr. Hyde will kill him." Batley watches as Jekyll begins to change, first with his hand becoming hairy with black fingernails, before his face changes into the monstrous, ape-like visage of Hyde. Fully transformed, Hyde puts down the picture of Vicky, grabs his top hat and cane, and viciously shoves Batley aside with a snarl as he storms upstairs and out of the house.

At the music hall, Vicky performs with some dancing girls, as Bruce watches from backstage. Finishing her number, which she sings in a pronounced Cockney accent, Vicky leaves the stage, meets up with Bruce, and the two of them head to her dressing room, while a more oriental act begins, one involving an actor wearing a demon mask and costume. In her dressing room, Vicky and Bruce get better acquainted with a really passionate kiss, which Bruce initiates and Vicky

then returns, reminding him that she believes in "equal rights." She goes behind a screen to change out of her costume, telling Bruce how Jekyll has been her guardian ever since her father died and that he's been wonderful to her the whole time, saying, "Anything that makes me happy pleases him too." She comes out in a new outfit and they kiss again, unaware that Mr. Hyde is watching from outside a window to their right. He walks around the building and starts climbing up its side,

using a section of piping along the brick wall to make his way up to the roof. At that moment, Slim and Tubby come walking down the street, Slim saying they should try to capture the monster that's to get in good with the police force again. While they're talking about it, a rather creepy-looking man walks out of a doorway, scaring Tubby. He turns out to be friendly enough and asks for a light for his cigarette, which Slim gives him. They walk on and start to round the corner of the music hall,

when Tubby spots Hyde climbing up to the roof. Thinking he's a burglar, he suggests they try to capture him and Slim, despite being more interested in finding the monster, goes along with him and they walk into the building. Hyde climbs through a hatch on the roof that leads down into the building, while Slim and Tubby walk into the music hall through the back entrance. They run into a guy who asks them what they're doing there and Slim tells him they're the new dancers. Tubby does a little jig to convince him and they dance their way down the hall leading to the backstage area. Hyde makes his way down a short, winding staircase and sees Vicky and Bruce emerge from her dressing room. He runs back upstairs until they've gone, then heads down and sneaks into the dressing room.

Slim and Tubby come down the hallway from the opposite direction, with Tubby walking through a door to his left, only to come stumbling out at the sound of girls screaming at him. Slim tells him to check the rest of the dressing rooms while he looks backstage and Tubby walks into Vicky's room. Hyde gets up against the side of a draped section of the room and watches Tubby fiddle around. Tubby then decides to check behind the drapes and Hyde quickly walks around to the front of them,

following after him. Tubby comes out at the spot where Hyde was just standing, but then goes back in and comes out the way he came. He obviously didn't see Hyde in the dark, as his hairy hands reach out behind him for his neck as he stands there. Oblivious, he walks out of the room and down the hall to another door. The man in the oriental demon getup walks past him into the room and Tubby does a sudden double-take as soon as the guy closes the door behind him. Thinking it's

the monster, he grabs the door and pulls it shut to keep him from escaping, while breathlessly yelling for Slim. When he shows up, Tubby tells him he's got the monster behind the door. Slim then pushes him on in, telling him he's going to hold the door to keep him from escaping. Tubby walks up to the dancer, who's now sitting in front of his mirror without the mask on, and asks him if he saw a big, ugly monster, describing him as having really long teeth. The dancer shows him the mask and asks if it's what he's talking about. Tubby does

another double-take when he sees the mask and quickly opens the door. Slim, heaving been leaning on the door, falls in and Tubby tells him the dancer is the monster. Slim is incredulous and tells the dancer, "Excuse my friend. He's a little excited," to which the man responds, "Excited? He's barmy!" He leaves to get the manager, while Slim tells Tubby to look for clues as to where the burglar is, leading to this exchange: "I know where to look for clues." "Where do you look for clues?" "In the clues closet." Slim smirks and tells him his hat's dirty. When Tubby takes it off and looks at it, Slim smacks him over the head with his own hat. He then tells him to look for the burglar and walks back out into the hall.

Pouting, Tubby walks through a door in the room that leads back into Vicky's dressing room, forcing Hyde to, again, take cover in the drapes. Tubby mills about, glancing at a small mirror on the dresser and looks underneath it, when Hyde glances out from behind the curtains. Tubby stands back up and catches a glimpse of him in the mirror before he ducks out of sight. Tubby thinks he must have imagined it, when he looks off to the right and glances back in the mirror to get another quick

glimpse of Hyde. He almost starts to holler for Slim again when he sees it this time, but he looks in the mirror again and, not getting another glance, figures it must've been his imagination. He walks over to the drapes and looks behind them, only for Hyde to lunge at him and send him tumbling backwards to the door. He runs back into the hall, holds the door shut like before, and yells for Slim, who's at the other end of the hall, talking with some dancing girls. When he comes over, Tubby,

again, tells him he's got the monster behind the door. Slim initially thinks it's another actor in a mask, but Tubby convinces him and he goes to get a club. While Tubby waits, Hyde sneaks into the adjoining dressing room. Slim comes back with a club and he and Tubby enter Vicky's dressing room. Tubby shows Slim the draped section Hyde was in and, unbeknownst to him, he goes in there to try to find the monster. When Tubby sees the drapes ruffling, he tells Slim, who he thinks is still behind him, to stand back and he grabs the chair at

the dresser and slams it into the drapes. He excitedly tells Slim he got the monster, until Slim stumbles out of the drapes in a daze, making Tubby's excitement turn to whining. Hyde tries to escape from the other room but ducks back in when a bunch of dancing girls come running after finishing their act. He puts his hat away and puts on the demon mask the dancer was wearing earlier. In the other room, Tubby snaps Slim back to his senses, explaining what happened and that he thinks the monster is hiding in the next room. Slim

gives him his club, telling him to clobber the monster when he chases him out. Walking into the other room, Slim, seeing Hyde wearing the dancer's costume, asks him if he's seen a monster. Hyde snarls out a, "No!", but Slim thinks he can't talk clearly because of the mask. Slim removes the mask, only to take off running back through the door when he sees Hyde's face. Predictably, Tubby clobbers him with the club and cries helplessly when he watches him collapse to the floor. Hyde runs out into the hall, despite there being people

there, and pushes past them to get back to the staircase leading to the roof. Having heard one of the girls scream, Bruce comes running, as do Slim and Tubby, and they learn that Hyde escaped through the skylight. Excited about the story, Bruce chases after him and tells Slim and Tubby to join him. Tubby tries to slip away but Slim stops him and forces him up the stairs.

When they get on the roof, it doesn't take them long to spot Hyde as he runs across it and makes his way up onto another section. They give chase, though Tubby, again, is hesitant to follow after him. Hyde tries to get through another door on the roof but finds it locked and, hearing them coming, climbs up onto and skirts along the edge of the skylight he was trying to enter. Down below, Tubby gets separated from the others and fumbles around, getting spooked when a gust of wind

causes a white nightgown and nightcap to flail up like a ghost and runs blindly, only to hit another clothesline and get flung back by it. He then climbs up the ladder in order to follow Slim and Bruce, as they continue pursuing Hyde, who runs to the edge of the roof and, unable to evade them, hops across to another building. Slim and Bruce are able to do the same, but when Tubby attempts it as he straggles behind, he falls in the gap between the buildings. The others hear him screaming and

come running. They look over the edge to see him hanging in a pair of long underwear on a clothesline suspended far above the street. Slim tells him, "This is no time to hang up laundry!", while Tubby lets out a terrified, "Whoo!" yell and screams for help. As they climb down to him, Hyde makes his way through a hatch in the roof he's on and climbs down into the building, a wax museum. He runs down to the museum's front door and tries to escape, only to find it locked, and has to duck to avoid being

seen by a passing bobby, who glances through the window and jiggles the doorknob before heading on his way. Meanwhile, having saved Tubby, the guys try to continue their pursuit of Hyde, but Tubby, again, attempts to slip away, only for Slim to grab and pull him back. When they regroup with Bruce, they find no sign of Hyde and Slim suggests they split up to look for him. Slim and Bruce take different sides of the building, while Bruce has Tubby stay on the roof and search for him, telling him to holler if he finds him. Tubby comments, "If I find him, I won't be able to holler." He then spots the hatch in the roof and figures he can use it to get down to the street.

Down below, Hyde sees him climbing down into the museum and, like before, slips behind some drapes. While climbing down, Tubby yanks loose an electric cable that sparks wildly before he drops to the floor. Getting to his feet, he stumbles about and comes face-to-face with a wax dummy of Count Dracula, which he promptly backs away from, only to bump up against another dummy of Frankenstein's monster. (I remember seeing a still of this scene in The History of Sci-Fi and Horror

documentary and being confused, as I knew it couldn't be from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, given how the Dracula dummy doesn't look like Bela Lugosi. I think I had seen this movie by then but I'd completely forgotten.) Feeling the dummy, he slowly turns around, freaks out at the sight of it, and runs. A random cat jumps on his back, scaring him further, and he runs and hits a chopping block exhibit, knocking a fake severed head down into his hands. Literally

shaking at this, he throws the head, only for it to land on the cat nearby. The cat then moves along with the head, scaring Tubby all the more, as it looks as though the head is moving by itself. He runs to a wax dummy of George Washington and tries to compose himself, only for Hyde to emerge from the drapes behind the dummy and lunge for him. He almost runs back up the stairs, but gets spooked at the sight of a caged skeleton hanging along them and instead runs back to the corner with the Dracula and Frankenstein

monster dummies. That's when the hanging electric cable sends a charge into the bolts on the latter's neck and it starts moving by itself towards Tubby, who's up against the wall, holding his derby as its rim drums on his noggin, a tic he does throughout the movie (by the way, let's just ignore the fact that the dummy is obviously based on the original Jack Pierce design, even though this movie takes place decades before the original Frankenstein was even made). He runs to the door, when he comes across a dummy meant to look like a cop and, thinking it's

a real person, tries to get him to come and help him catch Hyde. Obviously, he gets no response and runs back to the dummy, yelling for him to come on, and grabs and pulls on his arm. His arm then pops off in Tubby's hands and he quickly tosses it aside, only to run into Hyde again. Tubby runs and ducks inside a hollow, woman-shaped statue akin to an iron maiden and yells for Slim, as Hyde tries to open the thing up to get at him.

Outside, Slim and Bruce walk down the street, wondering how Hyde could have eluded them, and Slim also wonders where Tubby went. While Bruce leaves to go check with the inspector, Slim starts searching for Tubby. In the museum, Tubby bangs on the inside of the statue, yelling for Slim, while Hyde, looking out the window and seeing Slim approaching, ducks into another part of the place. Outside, Slim hears Tubby's yelling and, looking through the window, tries to open the door and has to force it

due to its being locked. Once inside, he figures out where Tubby is and gets him out of the statue. Tubby tells him that Hyde is in the museum as well and Slim goes to get the inspector, making Tubby stay behind, telling him to find something to tie Hyde up with. Once he's left alone again, Tubby does find a rope that's being held by a cowboy dummy, as Hyde watches from nearby. Getting the rope, Tubby looks to his right and sees Hyde's shadow as he approaches him from behind.

Initially scared, he comes up with a plan and walks toward a fake jail cell in the corner of the room. As Hyde creeps up behind him, he opens the door and walks into the cell, before ducking out of the way when he lunges at him, then quickly gets out of cell, closes the door, and locks it. He excitedly yells for Slim, telling him he's got him, and smacks Hyde's face with his derby before going for the door. But, at that moment, Hyde gradually but quickly turns back into Jekyll. Tubby excitedly

leads Slim and the inspector, as well as Bruce and another cop, into the museum, telling them he's captured Hyde. But, when they get to the cell and see Jekyll standing in it, Tubby does a double-take and asks him if he let Hyde out. Jekyll tells them he was simply passing by the museum, came in to investigate when he saw the door was open, and Tubby shoved him into the cell. The inspector chews him out for this, but Tubby insists Jekyll is the monster, saying he's wearing the same ring, but Jekyll shows them his hands and

says he wears no rings. The inspector unlocks the cell and lets Jekyll out. He asks him if he wants to press charges against Tubby but Jekyll opts not to, adding that he would like to have a private talk with him one day, that he might be able to help him get over his "hallucinations." Bruce decides to leave, telling Jekyll he's not going to write up what's happened since he's involved, and heads out. After the inspector asks Jekyll if he would like to be escorted home, he says he'd rather walk and heads out. Irritated, the inspector tells Tubby he's

the one who should be behind bars and goes to leave, only to walk into the cell, with Tubby closing the door on him. Realizing what just happened, the inspector walks out of the cell, looks Tubby right in the face, and exclaims, "Good night!", emphasizing the "t" to where he spits in his face. Slim does the same, growling, "Monsters! Rings! Good night!"

As Slim is heading out, he's stopped by Jekyll, who feigns being nervous due to all the stories about the monster and asks them to escort him to his house. Although Slim is more than happy to oblige, Tubby, knowing the truth, is horrified and tries to talk Slim out of it, but he doesn't listen. Aggravated, Tubby, on his way out, glares at what he thinks was the dummy cop from before, and growls, "As for you, ya dummy, good night!" But, it turns out to be the cop who came with the

inspector, and he promptly cracks his nightstick over Tubby's head for that. Later, they arrive at Jekyll's house and, while talking with Slim, he tells him he might be able to talk the inspector into letting them back onto the police force. He also asks them to stay the night, offering to pay them five pounds, which Slim gladly accepts. He then sees Tubby looking through a nearby dresser and tells him to stop being nosy. Jekyll leads them upstairs to their bedroom, although Tubby tries to

sneak out the front door, only to be called back by Slim. When he catches up with Slim and Jekyll, he tells Slim, "I gotta go home. I forgot somethin'... I forgot to stay there." Slim, again, stops him from leaving and pushes him into the bedroom, after which Jekyll bids them good night. Though Slim is eager to earn the five pounds, Tubby isn't sure they'll be alive the next day to spend it, and they talk about what happened at the museum. Slim tells him, "You can't make two persons out of one. If there's a monster, there's a monster. If

there's a Dr. Jekyll, there's a Dr. Jekyll. But one can't be the other," but Tubby counters, "Now listen, Slim. All I know is that I locked up the monster, and when I came back, Dr. Jekyll was there. You know I'm no magician... I'm gonna tell you this: either Dr. Jekyll is the monster, or the monster is Dr. Jekyll." Slim is almost taken with that remark, but then realizes it's the same thing and gets more irked at him. Down in his laboratory, Jekyll tells Batley about Slim and Tubby, that the latter saw him and shouldn't be allowed to leave the house. Batley makes a motion that he should strangle Tubby but Jekyll says it might be interesting to use him in his experiments instead. Jekyll heads up to bed, telling Batley to keep his eyes open. 

Speaking of keeping their eyes open, the next scene shows Slim snoring loudly in bed, his hat covering his face, while Tubby, sitting at the foot of the bed, is fighting sleep out of fear. He stands up, walks to the door, looks to make sure no one's around, and sneaks out and down the hallway leading to the staircase. Unbeknownst to him, Batley emerges from a doorway and follows him. At the head of the stairs is a creaky floorboard, and as Tubby walks across it, Batley does the same right behind him. Hearing a creak that's out of

sync with his own, Tubby turns and looks back down the hallway, missing Batley, who moves himself to remain directly behind him. Not seeing anything, Tubby figures it was nothing and walks on across the landing towards the stairs, when he hears the suspect creaking again. Having a feeling someone's behind him, he turns around and sees Batley staring at him. The sight of him sends Tubby tumbling down the stairs while Batley watches, his head bobbing with each move he makes on his way down. At the bottom of the

stairs, Tubby, after looking up and seeing Batley still standing at the top, runs to the front door, only to open it to find a snarling bulldog on the other side (said bulldog, though, is not actually snarling, and wherever they filmed him, he's not out on a doorstep). Tubby slams the door shut and runs through the open door leading into Jekyll's library. He sits on the couch to catch his breath, when the bookcase leading down to the laboratory swings open and Batley emerges from it. Turning his head, Tubby sees the passageway behind the bookcase,

but doesn't see Batley as he stands in the corner. He walks through the opening, calling for Jekyll, and goes completely around the bookcase, Batley following right behind him. Still oblivious to the danger, Tubby walks back through the passage and, seeing the stairs, heads down them. Behind him, Batley goes to strangle him but then opts to let him go on down. Tubby finds the door leading into the lab and, still calling for Jekyll, walks in, as Batley continues stalking him. He comes to the small

cages containing the test animals and looks at one containing a white rabbit, which he calls a "cute, little Easter bunny." But when he tries to touch it, the rabbit snaps at him and barks and snarls like a dog. Startled by this, he then walks over to a cage that actually has a dog in it, only the dog is meowing! And then, to top everything else, a monkey in the cage above the dog is mooing like a cow. Weirded out, Tubby walks over to the table across from the cage, picks up a flask, and blows

into a little nozzle on the side, causing it to emit the sound of a horn. Batley walks into the laboratory behind Tubby and, when he turns around, grabs his throat. In his struggle, Tubby throws the flask into the corner, where it bursts into a puff of smoke, and is then shoved backwards, hitting the floor next to the end of the table. The chemistry equipment on the table proceeds to combust, even though he barely grazed it, and he runs back upstairs.

Slim hears the commotion all the way up in the bedroom and jumps out of bed and gets dressed. Back downstairs, Tubby enters back into the library and gets knocked over the sofa when the bookcase swings back around and hits him in his backside. He quickly gets up and runs to the door, only to run into Jekyll when he enters. Tubby tells him to stay away, saying, "There's someone in this house that shouldn't be here, and it's me!" He tries to run out but Slim comes in and stops him. Tubby tells him about Batley and the laboratory behind the

bookcase. At first, Slim thinks he doesn't know what he's saying, but Jekyll, surprisingly, confirms he's right and agrees to show it to them. He opens the panel behind the bookcase and leads them down the stairs. In the lab, Batley pours a steaming, fizzing liquid into a beaker and goes to put it into a cage with a mouse, when he hears the others coming. He quickly puts it on a ledge above a water cooler and walks through a door in the back of the lab. On their way down the stairs, Jekyll tells the boys they're the first to see his lab,

adding that he's been experimenting with "strange drugs" for the past fifteen years. Tubby points out the rabbit that snapped at him before and Jekyll says he's been able to transfer the characteristics of the dog in the one cage into the rabbit's brain. Jekyll is about to go on but Tubby demands he explain Batley and why he was attacking him, though Jekyll denies his existence. Slim figures Tubby is "hallucinating" again and Jekyll momentarily pardons himself and walks into

the same room Batley ducked into before. Alone with Tubby, Slim notes the beaker above the cooler and is about to pour it into it, when Tubby tells him there's something strange about Jekyll. He absentmindedly takes the beaker and drinks from it, while in the backroom, Jekyll fills a syringe with a liquid, telling Batley, "You were right, Batley. We must dispose of them right now." Tubby, noting the weird taste of the "water" he just drank, suggests they leave but Slim is reluctant because of the five

pounds Jekyll promised to pay them. He tries to convince Tubby that nothing bad will happen to him, but while he's talking, Tubby sneaks out a door on the opposite side of the lab. Slim quickly realizes he's gone and runs to the door, yelling for him to come back before chasing after him. Jekyll then reenters the lab, only to find they've gone. Smashing the syringe to the floor, he orders Batley to make sure that they come back.

Out on the street, Slim catches up with Tubby and asks him why he ran off. Saying he doesn't feel too good, he adds that he feels anyone who could put a dog's brain into a rabbit could change a person into something else as well. Slim scoffs at the notion and walks on down the street to a pub. Tubby loiters behind and, as he does, gradually turns into a human-sized, anthropomorphic mouse. When he finishes changing, he runs up to Slim, who keeps his back to him and lights a cigarette. Tubby asks if he would keep Jekyll from changing

him into something else and Slim, still not looking at him, says he would, inviting him into the pub for a drink. The two of them walk in and sit at the bar, with no one, not the bartender or the two other people in there, noticing Tubby. The first to see the new Tubby, aside from Batley, who watches from outside, is a regular mouse that comes out of a hole in the wall behind the bar, only to run back in as soon as he sees him. The bartender asks Tubby what he'd like and finally looks at him. Needless to say, he can't help but

stare, and puts on a pair of glasses to make sure he's not seeing things. When he does, the poor man runs, tripping over the little gate on the side of the bar, and zooms through the door that leads to the back. The two other guys in the pub, who are quite drunk, wonder what that was about, when one of them sees Tubby and notes, "Them mice get bigger every day." When the other sees Tubby, he slurs, "I may have to eat with 'em but I don't have to drink with 'em!" The two of them then go up to Slim and

the one guy demands he take Tubby out. Slim, who still hasn't looked at Tubby, ignores him, thinking he's seeing things because he's drunk, and when Tubby asks, "Who are you callin' a mouse?", they both doubly freak out and run out of the pub. Tubby walks behind Slim, who tells him not to pay any mind to the two drunks, when he finally looks at him. He spits out the cracker he's chewing on and promptly faints to the floor. Confused, Tubby taps Slim to rouse him, and when he comes to, he's about to tell him what he just saw, when he looks at him a second time and faints again. Tubby goes to grab a mug of beer, when he looks at the big paws his hands have become. He then looks at himself in the mirror on the other side of the bar and faints right next to Slim.

While he's unconscious, Tubby reverts back to his normal self. They both awaken at the same time and, as if expecting it this time, nearly jump out of their skins when they look at each other. Tubby asks, "What am I: a man or a mouse?", while Slim realizes it was the effect of the liquid he drank in the lab, with Tubby commenting, "How do you like that Dr. Jekyll? He turned me into a mouse, the rat!" They decide to go tell the inspector, who's not prone to believe them, given both their insane claim and their recent track record. And when they

tell him Tubby's mouse transformation took place in a pub, the inspector decides on the logical explanation, yelling, "You were drunk! You were seeing things! You expect me to arrest one of the most prominent doctors in London on evidence of that kind?!" He orders them to get out and, as they head for the door, he scoffs, "Mice." Tubby corrects him by saying, "Mouse," and the inspector, again, yells at them to get out.

The next day, the two of them go back to Jekyll's home with Vicky and Bruce. Vicky can't bring herself to believe what they've told her, adding that anything like that would ruin Jekyll's reputation if it got into print, while Bruce says he wouldn't print such a story without proof. Slim and Tubby insist they're right about what they've seen and the four of them disembark from the carriage they've taken and walk up to the front door. Jekyll happily invites them all in, and both Vicky and Bruce immediately confront him with the others' claims.

He tells them to follow him into his library so he can answer their questions and they do, although Tubby randomly falls over himself. Because of this, he lags behind and the library door gets slammed in his face when he tries to walk through. Once he joins the others, Jekyll denies any experimentation with drugs that could turn people into other creatures and also says he has no laboratory on the premises, that he does all of his work at the hospital. Tubby and Slim quiz him about the hidden passage behind the bookcase and

Jekyll is willing to show them what's behind it, saying there's nothing secret about it. Though Vicky doesn't think it's necessary, Bruce can't contain his news reporter curiosity and Jekyll gladly agrees to show them through. He opens up the panel behind the bookcase and leads them down the steps to the door below. Before they go in, Tubby tells Bruce to wait and see what Jekyll has in there. But, when they step through, Slim and Tubby are shocked to see the laboratory has been

replaced by a wine cellar. Bruce instantly loses confidence in what they told him and he and Vicky follow Jekyll back up to the library, while Slim and Tubby remain behind, wondering how he could've hidden all of the equipment and test animals he had in there before. Tubby suggests they try to find where he hid everything and start snooping around. They inspect the wine rack, thinking he may have hidden some of the drugs in the bottles, when Slim finds a bottle that reads "Moselle" and believes it's

"mouse-el," i.e. the stuff Tubby drank that turned him into a mouse. He sits him down and pours some of it into a cup, intending to have him become a mouse again in order to prove their story. Tubby asks what would happen if he's not able to turn back into a human and Slim assures him, "Oh, don't worry. I'll bring you cheese every day." Tubby then drinks the Moselle but, of course, nothing happens. Slim pours him some more and Tubby drinks that up, telling him he just feels warm all over.

Upstairs, as Bruce, again, apologizes to Jekyll, Tubby gets more and more sauced. After he downs another cup, Slim asks if he feels like a mouse now. Tubby dazedly looks at Slim, whose face becomes that of a large mouse to him, and he says, "I'm doin' all the drinkin', and you're turnin' into a mouse. A... big mouse!" His vision then clears, while a confused Slim sniffs the bottle. Tubby tells Slim he's going to take him up to Bruce as proof that they're right and staggers up the stairs in a very drunken manner. Reaching the landing, he staggers

to the edge, slurring, "There's a lot of steps here, mousey!", and loses his balance and falls. Slim runs to his aid and finds Tubby fell into a small cage under the edge of the landing. He asks him if he can do anything for him and he asks for a piece of cheese. Back upstairs, Bruce and Vicky ask for Jekyll's permission that they be married. Jekyll allows it, and the two of them kiss, not seeing him break a small glass in his hand. Vicky and Bruce go to leave together, but when they reach the front door, Jekyll stops them, telling Vicky he needs to

go over wedding plans with her. Bruce leaves, promising to see her that evening, and Jekyll takes her back into the library. He closes the door behind him and tells her right then and there that she can't marry Bruce. He tries to make the case that the two of them could be happy as a couple and he even says they could leave for Paris and tour the world. Vicky tries to leave the room but Jekyll grabs her and exclaims, "I'll not let you marry anyone but me!" As Bruce loiters outside, lighting a cigarette,

Jekyll fills a syringe with the Hyde formula and tells Vicky he plans to turn Bruce into the monster so he can kill him and make it look as though he were defending her. Vicky grabs the syringe and throws it onto a sofa, where its rear gets caught in the edge of the cushion, with the needle sticking out. Vicky, again, tries to run but Jekyll grabs her and flings her onto the other couch. Jekyll then swings around and stumbles over to a mirror in the corner of the room. Vicky tells him, "Tubby was

right. You're capable of doing everything he said you did. You're cruel and inhuman. You created the monster. I'm going to tell the police." With his back to her, Vicky is unable to see Jekyll transform into Hyde as he looks at himself in the mirror. He turns around, fully changed, and when she realizes he is the monster, she faints with a scream.

Both Bruce outside and Slim and Tubby in the cellar hear the scream, the former trying to get back into the house. As he rings the doorbell when he finds the door's locked, Hyde picks Vicky up in his arms. Realizing he can't make off with her through the front door, he goes for the passage behind the bookcase. Bruce breaks through the door and enters the library before he can escape. Regardless, Hyde tries to lunge through the passage when it opens but Bruce rushes him and is able to take Vicky from him and

put her on the sofa. Slim gets Tubby out of the cage and they both get back up into the library, as Bruce struggles with Hyde. Slim tries to bring Vicky to, while Tubby goes to help Bruce, only to get frightened when Hyde snarls in his face. He falls back and gets stuck right in the butt with the syringe sticking out of the other sofa. Letting out a silent yell, he stands up and yanks the syringe out. Tossing it aside, he runs out of the library, only for Batley to force him back in at gunpoint. Backing into the room with his hands up, Tubby bumps into

Hyde, who stops attacking Bruce and grabs him instead. Tubby gets shoved back to the sofa and the syringe sticks him in the rear several more times. Bruce grabs a candlestick from the desk and goes to hit Hyde, but Batley yells at him, threatening to shoot him. Slim kicks the gun out of his hand and Bruce catches it. He quickly puts it to Hyde's back, who stops his attack on Tubby. Batley grabs the gun and he and Bruce struggle for it, until Bruce manages to shoot him in the midsection. Hyde,

meanwhile, takes the opportunity to escape by bursting out the French window and running off into the streets. Seeing this, Bruce checks to see if Vicky, who's come to, is alright and then gives chase, telling Slim and Tubby to follow him. They run out the way Hyde went, though Tubby trips over the ledge on the other side of the smashed window when he goes.

Seeing that he's being chased, and spotting some bobbies up ahead, Hyde ducks into a doorway. Having lost sight of him, Slim and Bruce stop on the sidewalk, while Tubby, lagging behind, staggers into another doorway, clearly feeling strange. While the others try to figure where Hyde went, Tubby transforms into a similar monster. Slim hears him growl, and Bruce then hears the actual Hyde growl on down the sidewalk. Both Tubby and Hyde hop out of their doorways and run in the opposite directions, with Slim and

Bruce each seeing one of them and giving chase. Meanwhile, Vicky calls the police station and tells the inspector the monster is in the vicinity of Jekyll's house. After hanging up, the inspector puts a pushpin on a map of London and tells one of his men to take a squad to the location. At that moment in Hyde Park, Tubby runs and hides behind a tree near another women's suffrage rally, sending the women running screaming when they see him. He then runs in the opposite direction, chased by Slim and a mob of men. Slim comes across a

nursemaid with a baby playing on the ground at her feet and tells her she'd best get the baby home, as the monster's on the loose. The men continue the chase and the nurse goes to put the baby in his carriage, only to open it and find Tubby hiding in it. He snarls at her and she takes off running with the baby. Hearing her scream, Slim and the men come running back and find the carriage seemingly abandoned. One of the men opts to take the kid home, as he knows where he lives. At the police

station, the inspector gets a call from a woman who says she saw the monster in Hyde Park, which confuses him, given where he was reported initially. Putting a pin on that spot on the map, the exact opposite end of the first report, he sends some more men to the west end. Back at Hyde Park, the man who offered to escort the baby home is stopped by some of his friends at a duck pond and they go to have a look at the kid. When the monstrous Tubby snarls at them when they open the carriage, he

sends them tumbling crazily into the pond behind them, while he climbs out and runs away. Elsewhere, the real Mr. Hyde nearly gets hit by a horse-drawn carriage and rushes across the road and down the sidewalk, with Bruce and another mob of men in pursuit. Predictably, the inspector gets another call, this time putting Hyde near the wax museum, and he sends some men to search the museum while putting another pin on the increasingly covered map.

Tubby hitches a ride on the back of another carriage and attracts the attention of some dogs, who chase after the carriage and bark at him. But, when he turns their way and snarls at them, they take off in the other direction, yelping. While Slim and his gang continue pursuing him, the poor inspector gets yet another call that has the monster in another part of the city. He sends more men there, and goes to put another pin on the map, only for the phone to ring once more, much to his chagrin. The carriage Tubby's riding on stops and he jumps off the back,

runs across the street, and rounds a corner. Peeking around and seeing a bunch of bobbies heading his way, he turns to run down the sidewalk, only to be startled by some women who scream at him. He climbs into the driver's seat of a parked wagon next to him, which happens to be a police wagon, as the bobbies pile into the back. He drives off in the wagon, knocking the actual driver out of the seat, and rushes wildly through the streets, nearly hitting another carriage coming from the opposite direction. One of the bobbies tells him not to go so

fast, only for Tubby to look through the window into the wagon and growl. He jumps off the carriage and lands on the empty middle seat of a three-person, tandem bicycle. The guy in the rear tells him, "You have your nerve!", but falls off the bike when Tubby growls at him. The woman on the seat up front then tells "Oscar" to slow down, as she can't keep up with his pace, only for her to look behind her and fall off the bike herself when she sees Tubby. Tubby coasts for a few feet on the bike

before grabbing onto a hanging ladder that leads up to a balcony. He climbs up onto it and starts climbing another ladder against the wall, leading up to the roof. Slim and the mob catch up with him and Slim tells the men to surround the building, while he goes up after him. On another side of the building, the real Mr. Hyde climbs a pole leading up to the roof. Down below, Bruce and the group of bobbies with him, having lost sight of him, start searching the general area. It doesn't take long for Bruce to spot Hyde as he climbs on to the roof and he rushes inside the building. When he gets to the roof, Hyde runs to and leans up against the side of a raised, square-shaped section with a skylight.

Tubby then makes it to the roof and runs and hides on the side of the skylight opposite Hyde. Bruce makes it up there as well and presses up against the rear side, while Slim gets there and, grabbing a club, hides up against the front. All four of them move cautiously around the square in a clockwise motion, missing each other by mere feet, and then, they all get the idea to move counter-clockwise at the same time as well. They do this for a little bit more, when Slim stops on one side and turns in time to get a glimpse of Tubby growling and

ducking around the corner. He then turns the other way and sees Hyde do the same, and then, when his back is turned to their respective corners, each monster runs for cover elsewhere on the roof. Not knowing this, he clonks the next figure who comes around the corner ahead of him with his club, but that person turns out to be Bruce. On another part of the roof, both Hyde-monsters back into each other on one side of a chimney and when they turn and see each other, they take off in opposite directions. Like at the beginning of the

chase, Slim and Bruce each see one of the monsters as they run and chase after them. Tubby ducks behind another chimney and peeks over the top, only for a chimney-sweeper to peek out at the exact moment. Again, they both scream at the sight of each other and go in the opposite directions, the chimney-sweeper tumbling back down the chimney. Running in a panic, Tubby blunders into a clothesline suspended along the roof and gets flung to the floor, knocking himself out. At that moment, Slim, who got knocked to the floor by Bruce in his excitement, gets up and sees Tubby lying unconscious. One of the bobbies climbs to the roof and Slim tells him to unfasten the clothesline so he can use it to tie up the monster, boasting, "Boy, will this open the inspector's eyes!"

Back at Jekyll's home, Vicky is on the phone with the inspector again, telling him there's only one monster, when Mr. Hyde's hairy hand comes around her face from behind and she faints after he muffles her. Outside, Bruce comes back with the police, telling them to cover the front and back while he heads inside. He just misses seeing Hyde carry Vicky up the stairs as he comes through the front door and runs to the library, looking for her. He then hears Vicky scream upstairs and runs up there, as Hyde drags her into one of the

bedrooms and tries to make off with her through the window. Looking out, he sees two bobbies down on the street, when Vicky manages to slip away from him and to the door. Bruce follows her panicked yells to the room and Hyde, seeing him, stops his pursuit of Vicky and goes back to the window. Bruce tells him he can't escape, as the house is surrounded, but Hyde pays him no mind and climbs out the window. He grabs onto some ivy on the wall and reaches up for another bit of

vine, only for it to break off, causing him to fall to his death on the street below. Bruce and Vicky run to the window and see the bobbies gather around Hyde's crumpled body, and as they watch, he slowly turns back into Dr. Jekyll. They're joined by some townspeople, who can be heard murmuring that they recognize him as Jekyll. One of the bobbies then orders the crowd to disperse, while up in the window, Bruce comforts the traumatized Vicky.

By this point, the inspector is at his wits' end with everything that's happened, and is not happy when Slim comes in. Slim tells him he's caught the monster but the inspector tells him that, after the day he's had, he doesn't believe anything anymore. Slim yells for the bobbies to bring the monster in and they drag a tied up and viciously struggling Tubby, who manages to bite all of the bobbies as they try to subdue him. The inspector storms up to Tubby and tells him, "You'll struggle more when they get the noose around your neck. It will be a

pleasure to hang you!" However, he wags his finger in Tubby's face, allowing him to bite it. One of the bobbies knocks Tubby in the back of the head with his nightstick and he falls into a chair by the door. The phone rings and the inspector, sucking on his bitten finger, answers it. He's surprised when the caller tells him the monster was just killed in front of Jekyll's house, and as he argues with the caller, Tubby changes back to normal while no one else is looking. When the inspector, continuing to insist

the monster is in his office, looks and sees Tubby, completely back to normal, he glares at Slim and sarcastically asks, "So you caught the monster?" Pleased with himself, Slim says it should get him a promotion but the inspector exclaims, "This ought to put you in jail for the rest of your life, masquerading him as a monster!" Slim turns and is shocked to see Tubby. Tubby is just as confused, not knowing what he's doing there, while Slim unties him and admonishes him for dressing up like

the monster and making him chase him all over London, as well as for biting four policemen and the inspector. They're startled by a number of ferocious growls and see that the inspector and the policemen have all become Hyde-monsters themselves. They chase after Slim and Tubby, who run for the hills, smashing out of the office and heading down the hallway at a rapid pace.

More stock music is used in the score, including much of Frank Skinner's now very familiar music from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, including the opening title piece, the music that was originally meant for the Wolf Man in that movie, now often used as Mr. Hyde's theme, and the music from the climax at various points. Also, music from The Invisible Man's Revenge is used during the scene where Mr. Hyde tries to make off with Vicky following the chase across London. There are some "original" pieces of music, such as a dopey-sounding horn bit for the scene in the pub, and the music that plays when Dr. Jekyll first turns into Hyde is effective enough to where you could think this was a straight-out horror film if you saw it out of context, but, like with the previous movies, the score isn't one of its strongest or most unique aspects.

There's no denying that Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a very off-kilter entry in this slate of movies, mainly in how it seems as though Abbott and Costello themselves feel like they've found their way into what was meant to be a straightforward horror film. Also, the comedy isn't the type the duo was typically known for and they don't have the same energy they once did, so it's not one of their personally strongest films. But, aside from a couple of bland romantic leads and makeup and creature designs that are a bit "meh," the film has the benefit of the always great Boris Karloff playing a very reprehensible version of Dr. Jekyll (his storyline is almost too good for this movie), good production values and art direction, the interesting notion of a Universal horror film being set in a specific time and place like turn of the century London, and some well-done instances of visual effects work. Again, it may not be a great Abbott and Costello movie, but I think its pros are good enough to where it's still worth a watch.