As expected in the hands of Ulmer -- responsible for a number of low- or no-budget classics including Ruthless, Bluebeard, Strange Illusion, The Strange Woman, and the seminal Detour -- what is basically an anonymous spook show is dressed up with flashes of strangeness and poetry that lift it above its generic origins. The film’s primary attraction is the intermittently powerful atmosphere, though some viewers won’t notice it amid the hokey acting and confused script. Miniatures figure prominently in Ulmer’s career, and they’re always eerie and disturbing even when it’s clear they’re fakes. (See Ruthless and Strange Illusion for good examples.) Daughter of Dr. Jekyll opens, after a hilariously weird pre-credit scene, with a miniature of the Jekyll estate, and with its gnarled surrounding vegetation and creepy-castle look, it sets an otherworldly tone for the entire film.

Gloria Talbott lends some much-needed credibility to the role of Janet, the ingénue with a cursed bloodline. The plot pivots on convincing us that she is indeed as monstrous as her ancestor, creeping out at night to attack, particularly, some of the local young women. (Unfortunately, the quasi-lesbian nature of these assaults isn’t really exploited.) These scenes are by far the film’s most notable, fabulously weird montage sequences of an anima -- clearly not Talbott but some sexier, darker vamp -- chasing various village women to their doom. Ulmer uses noirish lighting and double-exposures to give these sequences the tenor of a nightmare, enhanced by Talbott’s convincing hysterical screams when she wakes up with blood on her hands and a shredded nightie.

One of the film’s strongest sequences is Shields’s agonizing transformation from Dr. Loomis to the real Dr. Jekyll. Ulmer shoots the scene mostly in close-up, with Shields’s face undergoing increasing distortion that impart a powerful sense of physical and psychic dislocation. Purists may not appreciate the film’s blithe attempts to dovetail all sorts of monsters -- vampire, werewolf, warlock -- into the character of Dr. Loomis. After all, Dr. Jekyll was not a werewolf, or either of the other two. But Shields manages to make whatever kind of monster it is he’s playing simpatico and even to some extent tragic.

In the Ulmer canon, Daughter of Dr. Jekyll occupies the middle range. It’s better than dreck like Isle of Forgotten Sins or St. Benny the Dip but decidedly worse than Ruthless or The Strange Woman. All Day’s DVD makes it as palatable as possible with a slew of extras: interviews with John Agar and Arianna Cipes Ulmer; an isolated music and sound effects track; the original theatrical trailer; and a photo archive. The print is for the most part excellent. The interiors are razor-sharp; "exteriors" (also interiors in a sense, since this is a totally studio-made movie) have some compromising grain and soft focus that appear to be a problem of the original rather than of the transfer, so this is undoubtedly the best version we’re likely to see. We gleefully await All Day’s next treasure in the Ulmer series, the bizarre 1949 costumer The Pirates of Capri!