Jacqueline Hyde (2005) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

You see, it's a story about a mousy, overweight telemarketer who discovers her grandfather's Jekyll/Hyde formula, That turns out to be a very potent concoction which allows her to transform herself into anything - a gorgeous supermodel, a lithe dancer, even a hunky guy. The film stars Gabriella Hall.

Now what does that have to do with Rip Van Winkle? Well, I would have expected Gabriella Hall to play the "after", but she plays the "before" - she's the frumpy, lonely chunky-monkey. I guess I probably should have set the alarm for 1996 when I took that long nap. Either that, or I should have paid my cable bill. I guess the Cinemax world kind of passed me by.

I read a few ugly pans of this film from the online reviewers linked at IMDb. Filmcritic.com went so far as to say, "The film is so badly made it's hysterical." I don't agree with that at all. The film does have some serious lighting issues, and that is certainly an important point in evaluating it, but I think director Rolfe Kanefsky did a lot of things quite competently in this film, given the obvious budgetary constraints.

(1) He found an architecturally unusual mansion to be his primary filming location, and that choice lent the film a unique look and gave it plenty of detail and texture. The mansion's interior, complete with a full range of gags and gimmicks, and decorated with vintage posters and showbiz memorabilia, seemed totally appropriate as the former home of a professional magician - because it really was a magician's home! Kanefsky rewrote parts of the script after he found the location.

(2) In general, I like what he did with the placement and movement of the camera. With few exceptions, the storyboarding is smooth and coherent.

(3) The music blends well with the visuals to accentuate the appropriate moods.

Of course, it is also possible to draw up a list of criticisms. With any B movie, Santa's "nice" list is always balanced off in full or part by the "naughty" list, because there are always compromises when money is tight. Some of the acting is good, some isn't so good. Some of the special effects are shaky. I expect those sorts of things in a low budget movie, so I brush them away mentally. The only important thing on my "naughty" list is the lighting, which really poisoned the cinematography. The exterior daylight shots in this film are quite good, and some of the daytime interiors look fine, but just about all of the evening and night activity needed a few more lightbulbs. That's a critical flaw because the film features gore effects and pretty girls en deshabille, and those elements don't serve much purpose if you can't see them! 

Excluding the lighting, however, I think Kanefsky delivered a pretty good bang for the buck in terms of production values. Unfortunately, I don't think the film has an audience. It is a reasonably interesting interpretation of the Jekyll/Hyde story, but in the final analysis, it is a genre film without a genre.

• It isn't really scary enough to be a balls-out horror film.
• There isn't enough gore to please the gorehounds.
• There isn't enough nudity to please the Cinemax crowd, but there is too much sexual content for the film to work as a studio-style Halloween release. I watched the unrated version, and it is definitely a hard R or NC-17, but without much clear nudity, and no lower body frontal nudity at all. The lead character is obsessed with sex, there are numerous sex scenes, and there are various self-induced orgasms, but there is simply not much nudity, and the sex scenes have not been shot to feature the nudity. Too much editing; too few light bulbs.

The tame nudity, even in the unrated version and the deleted scenes, is surprising because Kanefsky has delivered some pretty good soft-core films in the past. We know he can do it right, so he must have been deliberately trying to avoid going in the direction of erotica. A quick peek at the most recent films in Kanefsky's IMDb filmography seems to confirm that he wants to move away from sex films in order to become a horror film director. The following "official summary" indicates that he hopes Jacqueline Hyde can be taken seriously as a psychological horror drama:

Frankly, this film is not going to please the literary people who want to see their favorite Stevenson story re-interpreted. So who is going to be pleased with this film? Not the splatter/slasher crowd. Not the people interested in sexual titillation. I don't know of an audience. I honestly think Kanefsky could have been on to something with Jacqueline Hyde if he had simply thought in advance, "Who is my audience? How am I going to deliver a kick-ass film for that audience?"

Rolfe Kanefsky made a pretty good film when he was only 21 years old - the rough but promising There's Nothing Out There, a self-referential precursor to "Scream." Fifteen years later, that is still his highest-rated film at IMDb ...

• (5.84) - There's Nothing Out There (1991)
• (5.67) - Tomorrow by Midnight (1999)
• (5.65) - The Click: Balls of Thunder (2002)
• (5.31) - The Hazing (2004)
• (5.04) - Sex Files: Alien Erotica (1999)
• (3.93) - Corpses (2004)

Just as Jacqueline Hyde is a genre film looking for a genre, Kanefsky is a director searching for a niche to match his abilities and interests.

Maybe next time.