"Wouldn't it be marvelous if the two natures in man could be separated -- housed in different bodies!"

This Sunday is the day many of you mortals will spring your clocks forward by one hour to fully enjoy more daylight. This means your little blue marble in the cosmos is rolling back toward Halloween, and for me, it means the end of a cycle.

One year ago, I swore to go all the way back into the annals of horror cinema and review one film every week in chronological order. When it was time for your clocks to fall back, I reviewed the newest watchable film I could find online, and worked backward through the years.

This approach to film criticism has taught me one thing: it can be a frustrating way to enjoy watching movies. So it ends here. Next week I'm going to start reviewing things in whatever order I want, but this week, I'm going to tell you about the second-oldest feature-length horror film I could find.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

This 1920 John S. Robertson film is about Dr. Henry Jekyll (John Barrymore), a highly moral and hardworking doctor who is betrothed to a woman named Millicent Carewe (Martha Mansfield) who doesn't have very much to do until the end of the movie. Her father Sir George Carewe (Brandon Hurst) has Jekyll over for dinner and questions his morals and manliness. They adjourn to a London music hall, where they watch a dancing girl named Miss Gina (Nita Naldi) and Carewe sends his waiter over to the proprieter with an offer. It's uncertain what exactly he offers, but it must have been a lot because Miss Gina is immediately ordered off stage in the middle of her act and sent over to flirt with Jekyll. He denies her advances because he's engaged, but kinda wishes he hadn't because how often does your father-in-law try to buy you a prostitute? So he goes home and invents a drug that allows him to compartmentalize his lust and other base impulses into an alternate personality -- Mr. Hyde, who spends most of the movie looking weird and occasionally tramples a child and treats Miss Gina in an unkindly fashion.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came out the same year as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but was neither the first nor the last screen adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novella. Filmmakers have been out to spoil the ending of Stevenson's story since 1912.

The Scottish author's story reads more like a mystery, and you don't find out Jekyll is Hyde until the end. My memory of 1886 is a little hazy, but the first time reading that was a lot like finding out Darth Vader is Luke's dad. Stevenson's telling is gripping and suspenseful, but doesn't really translate into movie magic without a couple revisions. The novelty of motion picture allows you to watch Jekyll change into the evil Mr. Hyde before your very eyes, so that shit's gotta go in the first half hour. With a little makeup and a few simple editing tricks, actor John Barrymore carries off one of the great transformations in film.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde streams on Amazon Prime, Shudder and YouTube.