Directed by Herbert Brenon for producer Carl Laemmle's company IMP (which he later changed to Universal Pictures), the production stars King Baggot in the dual role of Jekyll and Hyde.

[2][3] Dr. Henry Jekyll (King Baggot) sends a note to his fiancée, Alice (Jane Gail), and her father (Matt B. Snyder) to say that instead of accompanying them to the opera, he must give more time to his charity patients.

At Jekyll’s practice, his friends Dr. Lanyon (Howard Crampton) and Utterson (William Sorrel), a lawyer, ridicule him for what they consider his dangerous research.

While assuming the dual role of Jekyll and Hyde, King Baggot employed a variety of different greasepaints and a tangled mass of crepe hair.

[1] The film used a slow dissolve effect to show the transformation, as opposed to a quick matching cut, and the critics were impressed, George Blaisdell of Moving Picture World commenting "It is through the means of the dissolving process that the transformation is made peculiarly effective...You see the change of the man of good to the man of evil right before your eyes".