This summer, the International Museum of Surgical Science and Stephanie Sack present SCALPEL SUMMER, a film screening series exploring surgery, science, and bodily transformation through some of cinema’s most delirious visions of 20th century medical obsession.
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, 1959, UK
Thursday, July 23, 2026
7:00–9:00 p.m.
Doors at 6:30 p.m.
Presented inside the International Museum of Surgical Science's magnificent Hall of Immortals, the screening places Hammer's fever dream of medical transgression in direct conversation with one of Chicago's most extraordinary cultural spaces -- a museum where centuries of surgical history provides the perfect setting for one of cinema's most memorable stories about science run gorily, gloriously amok.
After launching June 25 with a sold-out screening of David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, SCALPEL SUMMER returns to the International Museum of Surgical Science on Thursday, July 23 with one of Hammer Horror's boldest and most delirious creations: Roy Ward Baker's Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1959). Released during Hammer's adventurous late period, the film stars Hammer leading man Ralph Bates and genre favorite Martine Beswick in a Technicolor collision of Gothic horror, Victorian melodrama, medical experimentation, and gleefully transgressive storytelling.
Following the screening, guest speaker Matt Kasin brings his gloriously outsized sensibility to the evening's post-film Q&A. As Gaudy God, Matt blends cinema, fashion, music, and performance into one fabulously gaudy package. A longtime Music Box fixture, DJ, filmmaker, and vintage curator, he has a particular gift for finding the camp, subversion, and sheer style hiding in plain sight. With Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde gleefully scrambling gender, Gothic horror, and Hammer excess, there could be no better accomplice for the evening's conversation.