There must be some middle course between Hammer horror and the reverential to produce a dynamic new version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but this grim and dimly-lit piece isn't it.

Played out at a stately, suspense-stifling pace, the plot centres on Mary, a housemaid in the Jekyll employ, who gets involved in the whole can of worms when Jekyll, falling in love with her, leaves the murderous Hyde to conduct the more physical side of the relationship.

There is some subsequent blood-letting and one sudden shock amidst the suffocating gloom.

Julia Roberts' Mary attempts a Southern States Irish accent, while tending to an impossibly flourishing garden in the backyard and, in the house, to a metamorphosing John Malkovich, who isn't attempting an accent at all.

Butler George Cole, cook Kathy Staff and the rest look suitably aghast as if sniffing some impending disaster...

Not quite as bad as you may have heard - but not terribly successful either.

TAGLINE: Evil loves Innocence.