CBUB / Database / Horror / D / Dr. Henry Pride

Dr. Henry Pride

CBUB Wins: 0
CBUB Losses: 0
Win Percentage: 0%

Added by: Z451

Read more about Dr. Henry Pride at: Wikipedia

Official Site: VCI Entertainment

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde is a 1976 blaxploitation horror film loosely inspired by the 1886 novella, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. The film stars Bernie Casey and Rosalind Cash and was directed by William Crain, who had also directed the successful Blacula for American International Pictures in 1972. Along with Crain, the film was written by Larry LeBron and Lawrence Woolner with cinematography by Tak Fujimoto. The movie was filmed primarily in Los Angeles and at locations such as the Watts Towers. Along with other blaxploitation films, Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde is filled with themes surrounding ideas of race, class and black power, yet it is unique in that the film depicts these themes through the genre of horror.

Los Angeles Dr. Henry Pride (Bernie Casey) is an accomplished, wealthy, African American medical doctor working on a cure for cirrhosis of the liver along with his colleague, Dr. Billie Worth (Rosalind Cash). Desperate to create this remedy, Pride conducts unethical experiments on others and himself, which turns Pride into a white, Frankenstein-like monster with superhuman strength and invincibility, as he begins to rampage throughout Watts killing prostitutes and pimps. After not being able to test his remedy on Linda (Marie O'Henry), Pride goes into a rampage, which results in him being chased down by the police. Cornered at Watts Towers, Pride attempts to escape by climbing up the towers, which leads to the police gunning him down and causing him to fall to his death. According to Frederick Douglass in the Atlanta Daily World, the film was "for escapism and fun" as "everything is taken in an extreme and comes off as being comical rather than serious."

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde is one of many films which constitutes the blaxploitation genre. Specifically, it was part of the blaxploitation horror genre that came about in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the box office success of American International Pictures’ Blacula, which was also directed by William Crain. With Blacula s success, American International Pictures saw a new opportunity to produce classic horror films with black actors and actresses to attract a new black moviegoing audience. As a result, the production company wanted to play off the classic story and horror film, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. According to Harry M. Benshoff, many of the films that were part of the blaxploitation genre exhibited similar themes and symbols to other blaxploitation movies such as “references to the Black Panthers, Afrocentric style, soul food, white racism (both institutionalized and personal), and urban ghetto life". Dr, Black, Mr. Hyde exhibits many of these qualities that have been seen throughout the blaxploitation genre of the 1960s and 1970s.

A subtle, but also very important, part of the film that goes unnoticed by many scholars is how Dr. Pride attempts to use Linda and others as involuntary test subjects for his remedy. At one point in the film, Pride takes Linda back to his house after a date, where she refuses to be tested on; subsequently, Pride asks, "What if I insist?" Andrew L. Grunzke acknowledges how this is eerily similar to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Grunzke adds that the "horrors of the Tuskegee experiments were a major impetus for the development of modern research ethics. An African American doctor willing to violate those ethical rules created a highly charged situation in the film." Because of this connotation, Pride reinforces how other African Americans are uneasy with him in that they question the authenticity of his blackness.

Dr. Henry Pride has not been a contender in any CBUB matches.