the story start out talk about hyde a if he be a true monster who have murder his wife . it show a furry head and heavy browed hyde run into a house which be then set ablaze by a pursuing mob . jekyll and now look like a normal human and step out of an upper story window and fall to his death . but ( spoiler . ) thirty year later and his old friend dr. lanyon be reveal to have falsify jekyll note in a scheme to drive the son of dr. jekyll mad and so lanyon can steal the jekyll estate . to replace his own fortune lose defend jekyll sr. aside from the moral backflips lanyon have to perform to go from valiant friend to chiseler and murderer and the movie never come clean about who mr. hyde be . in order to make young jekyll look insane and lanyon fake those note and swap acrostyn for another chemical and so that jekyll jr. turn hairy and fanged then faint in the movie only transformation scene . it an odd medical breakthrough for lanyon to have go broke defend . or be young jekyll only hallucinate his transformation . lanyon even boast that he only need mob hysteria to turn edward jekyll into a monster . but a hallucination would be an even big cheat because the audience see an actual transformation after edward be unconscious . then the closing crawl smugly note that both jekyll original note and lanyon forgery be archive at scotland yard a a solution to the jekyll or hyde myth . huh . when do it become a myth . open crawl and meet end credit . the movie do get prop for reuse mamoulian color filter trick for reveal painted makeup in stage and devise for the fredric march 1932 version . and holmes herbert from that film show up here a a policeman . lester matthew ( the hero of the werewolf of london ) play lawyer utterson and a character from stevenson novella usually omit in screen adaptation . alexander knox and the model of rectictude a wilson and be wonderfully manipulative a lanyon . apparently and the idea be to make a monster movie with a minimum of expensive makeup session and and the script seem to have have numerous contradictory revision . the production value be fairly threadbare and not many step up from a 3 stooge short of the era while at one point and jekyll 1890 home be clearly a modern 1951 house with flagstone facing . but the studio cleverly reuse the big fire scene from the opening to close the picture with a bang . but that bang be still not loud enough to make you forget all the illogical and dishonest trick the story play on the viewer .