Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon of Death is a very creepy, even deranged low-budget horror, filmed on minimal, blacked-out sets, and often looks like a stage reproduction of Pat Boyette's remarkable Dungeons of Harrow. The lurid screenplay also shares that film's love for florid dialogue and stiff, ham-style acting. Although the setting is ostensibly modern, the production has an avowedly anachronistic feel to it, as if it is taking place in some sort of cinematic purgatory for lost souls. All of the performers look like refugees from either kung fu or porno films. There are some violent and almost sensual battles between the doctors unlucky test cases. James Mathers is great as the ham-salad Demento Doctor, a bona fide weirdo; his nefarious experiments illuminate the motivations of rage, pitting one desperado against another, unto death. A very dark and primitive treatise on madness, with an odd, sensual choreography of souls, each dancing to another's will. A meandering, consciously redundant editorial structure reflects this dead space as a morbid, claustrophobic prison for both character and audience alike, in essence a stark depiction of existential alienation. Most interesting.
Review of Dr. Jekyll's Dungeon of Death
