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 This is alleged to be a "dazzling special effects film classic." Vincent Price
stars as Geoffrey Radcliffe who is falsely accused of killing his brother. Dr.
Griffin gives him a drug that makes him invisible so that he can investigate
who really murdered his brother. Radcliffe does not know the drug's
side-effects include "gradual delusions of grandeur." 1940, 82 minutes, VHS
The first of a number of sequels to The Invisible Man , this one is not surprisingly not as entertaining as the Invisible Man's first
misadventure, but it is a solid performer in the series. This one returns a
single cast member from the first film. The husband of the woman that owned
the inn and bothered Jack Griffin is also in this one as an old caretaker type
dude of the country house where this new and vastly unimproved Invisible Man
hangs out and parties with his "distraught" fiancee. I can't believe they
didn't hype his return on the back of the box. Also along for the ride this
time is Sir Cedric Hardwicke who apparently was knighted for being a character
actor in Universal horror sequels (he also appeared in The Ghost of Frankenstein and another Invisible Man epic, Invisible Agent ). Cecil Kellaway plays a police inspector and one wonders why he shouldn't be
known as Sir Cecil Kellaway as he also appeared as that tubby magician who
funded the expedition in The Mummy's Hand from Universal the same year! The voice of Vincent Price plays the title role
and it's a pleasure only having to hear him for a change instead of watching
him make those faces like the ones my dearly departed grandmother made whenever
my grandfather asked someone to pull his finger.  Those of you that are slaves to continuity should be aware that like several of
the Universal horror sequels (I think we all remember the Babe Jensen/Babe
Hanson fiasco in The Mummy's Hand and The Mummy's Tomb), that there are things in this movie that don't quite seem to follow from the
previous movie. First of all the drug that Jack Griffin chugged like he was a
Tri-Delt pledge during rush week, was called monocane. For some reason the
drug is now known as duocane. Maybe one is the generic brand. Luckily for us,
the effects are still the same - invisibility followed by a rapid descent into
madness. The other thing is probably more of a bother. There's a Dr. Griffin
in this one farting around with invisibility but this time it's Jack Griffin's
brother Frank. How in the world did Frank ever get involved with his brother's
research? Wouldn't all that have died with him? Did he somehow leave all the
monocane/duocane to little Frankie in his will? There weren't very many people
who knew about the formula in the first movie. In fact, Jack was the only one.
For some reason, they felt the need to have some relation to the first film
and this was it, it just wasn't too convincing. And wasn't this drug supposed
to be a really rare one that no one knew about? As you can see, all the pieces
are in place for a sequel that is merely a shadow of its illustrious
predecessor. Things begin heavy on the exposition so that we can launch right into the need
to recreate the Invisible Man. It seems the Mr. Geoffrey Radcliffe is
imprisoned for the murder of his brother. As you can tell this is gonna be one
of those "clear my name, catch the real killer" kind of situations. But how
can Geoff investigate and find the real culprits if he's about to walk the
Green Mile? Luckily Geoff runs a big coal mine. Now at this coal mine, there
is a coal miner first aid station. This building is staffed by a doctor named
Frank Griffin, as in "I'm the little brother to Jack Griffin, whom you may
recall was the Invisible Man once upon a time." It may seem that just because
the mine doctor on staff is the obviously less successful little brother to the
first Invisible Man, this is really no help to Geoff who is probably telling
the prison guards what he wants on his Tombstone. But, this just isn't any
ordinary miner infirmary. It is also a full scale secret lab where Dr. Frank
torments poor little stinky guinea pigs into turning invisible! So in between
squirting bactine on the miners' black lungs, Frank is trying to perfect the
invisibility formula first dreamed up by Jack in the previous picture. Dr.
Frank visits Geoff in prison and the next thing you know, there's a heap of
clothes on the floor, Geoff is missing, and Dr. Frank is pretending like he
never heard of his brother that was a scientist and became an Invisible Man (oh,
you mean that brother!). The Invisible Man has returned!  So who could have wanted to kill Geoff's bro and implicate Geoff? Those of you
who are his cousin with designs on the mining operation and his "distraught"
fiancee raise your hand. Ahh, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, glad you could join us as
the heavy. So Geoff is on the loose and he immediately hooks up with his
fiancee, Helen. Now, Geoffy-boy has been parked on death row for awhile and
I'm willing to wager a sawbuck that you don't get to go to too many mixers in
the big house, at least not the kind a dude with a fiancee would appreciate.
You would think that Geoff's second order of business would to catch the real
killers, if you know what I mean. Shoot, he could start taking his clothes off
and say, "but babe, I'm just getting invisible!" Anyway, they share a chaste
hug and she faints when she finds out the him being invisible means, that she
can't see him if he takes his gloves or bandages off. Classic. And both Geoff
and his no good Snidely Whiplash cousin are after this dame? To be fair they
do manage to play up the whole girlfriend angle better than they did in the
original, it would just have been better if she weren't such a shrinking
violent, but it was 1940 and the Japanese hadn't yet created the need for Rosie
The Riveter. Geoff decides to check in with Frank to see what's shaking in the
antidote department. Since Frank is a Griffin, he of course doesn't have any
antidote, but he is getting pretty good at killing off guinea pigs (yeah, but
can you give them human hands and feet?) then Willie Spears busts into the lab.
Willie is a loud, braying drunk who threatens to shut Frank's lab down since he
has suddenly been named supervisor by Richard Cobb, Geoff's cousin who is
running the mine since all the Radcliffe boys have been mysteriously murdered
and/or framed for murder. Hmmm, thinks Geoff, why would Cobb give this no
account souse such a kickass job? Unless... this looks like a job for the
Invisible Man! Geoffrey tracks Willie down and confronts him on a deserted country road. This
is a fairly entertaining sequence as Vincent Price pretends to be the ghost of
Geoffrey Radcliffe, complete with cliched dialogue about dying in a swamp and
coming back to haunt people since he can't find eternal rest or something. It's
also somewhat poignant as Geoffrey is for all intents and purposes a ghost and
may be consigned to stay that forever if Frankie can't come up with an
antidote. It's also amusing to watch Vincent Price make fun of dialogue that
he would be delivering without tongue firmly planted in cheek in countless
horror movies years later. Well, Willie gives up the ghost so to speak about
what really went down at the mine the day Geoff's bro took a dirtnap. It turns
out that after Geoff left the mine and his brother who was still alive, Cobb
came out after Geoff and apparently killed the brother in the meantime. Old
drunk Willie saw all this and immediately parlayed his silence into a cushy
position as the drunk supervisor. I don't know why Cobb just didn't kill old
drunk Willie. They'll already hang you for the first death and you just know
that Willie is going to be in some roadhouse one night getting oiled up and his
lips will start a flapping and the next thing you know, you're cuffed and
stuffed and on your way to ride the lightning. The Invisible Man then tracks
Cobb down and brings him to where he's got Willie captured and there's a little
pow-wow where the blame game is played and somehow Cobb manages to escape and
kill Willie. This Invisible Man is obviously an amateur when it comes to
taking care of business. Cobb is then put into protective custody by the
police.  Through hook and by crook, IM manages to spirit Cobb away for a final
apocalyptic showdown at the Radcliffe Mines! They engage in a life and death
struggle atop a mine car which is slowly making its way to a pit where all the
coal is dumped. The cops somehow manage to shoot the Invisible Man, and
he releases his hold on Cobb. Cobb can't get out of the mine car in time and
is dumped on that stack of dimes he calls a neck along with about a
million-bazillion tons of coal. Sir Cedric still has a death scene in him
though, so we get to see him rasp with his last, rapidly escaping breath to
Helen that he always thought she had a bony ass! Wait, that's what I would
have said. What Sir Cedric said is that he was the one that put the brother
into the Big Sleep (he's an English gentleman, after all). Then he croaks and
waits for filming of Invisible Agent to begin. The Invisible Man is still at large and we are treated to a
monologue Vincent has with a scarecrow (he's stealing its clothes) that severely
tests the gag-reflex. Eventually he wanders back to the mine, almost dies, and
is saved by a transfusion of normal blood, while Dr. Frank stands around and
says, "now I know how to save my guinea pigs!" This is a solid sequel with none of the attitude or viewpoint of the original.
Whereas the first one looked at how power corrupts and its inevitable
consequences, this is merely a standard "man against the clock" kind of affair.
The invisibility is used merely as a gimmick to propel one of those
wrongly-accused plots. This Invisible Man isn't as nasty as the first one and
comes across as a bit of priss. Since he was played by Vincent Price, you may
find
that somewhat redundant, but the proof is on the screen. In the original, the
whole idea of him being driven insane was central to what the movie was about.
Here it's played as an irritant, a remote possibility that once in awhile
someone will remember to refer to. Oh, he had an episode where it looked like
he was going mad, but this was only after he sucked down some champagne and
never progressed beyond the talking stage. There were no crazed-induced
murders, no derailing of passenger trains, he just tossed off some catch phrases
about ruling the world, then he succumbed to the roofie that Frank spiked his
drink with. The rest of the movie he was fine and bent on fixing the people
responsible for his brother's death. The special effects still were top-notch
and served to keep viewer interest in an otherwise pedestrian plot. It's not
bad if you take it on its own, just don't go thinking your going to get
anything more of the evocative ideas the original picture brought forth. Also
remember
that in this Vincent Price movie, you only have to see his face at the very end
for a few seconds, and that was when he was still young and purdy.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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