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 This is a tale of "intrigue and invisibility that gives the Allies a secret
weapon during the heated battles of World War II." Jon Hall plays Frank
Raymond who is the "secret weapon" since he becomes invisible when injected
with a certain chemical. He takes his new ability and uses it to "bewilder the
Nazis as well as the Japanese." 1942, 82 minutes, VHS
By 1942 Universal had pretty much abandoned the horror and/or science-fiction
aspects of its Invisible movies and they devolved into gimmick movies that
would seem right at home with those 60s and 70s Disney movies that Tommy Kirk
and Kurt Russell starred in. "Wouldn't it be funny if a woman turned invisible
and used her powers to get revenge on her uptight boss?" "Wouldn't it be
whacky if a guy was turned invisible and became a secret agent and tripped
Nazis?" "Wouldn't it be hilarious if a chimpanzee programmed the new fall
schedule of a major network?" You get the idea. With the release of Invisible
Agent, all remnants of a serious horror franchise had been eschewed in favor of
cliffhanger propaganda. I'm not sure that that's really a bad thing because
the alternative would have followed the lead of the Frankenstein,Dracula, and
Wolfman movies which had them team up in proto-Godzilla melees or it would have
gone the route of the Mummy movies and degenerated into pointless rehashes of
the
same story over and over (He's in New England! Now he's in Louisiana!"). And
besides they even tried to keep this movie a little bit related to the first
one by saying that mild-mannered Frank Raymond was really invisible-super-agent
Frank Griffin, grandson of the original Dr. Griffin who pioneered the
invisibility drug Monocane (or Duocane depending on the sequel). There's no
mention as to whether the kinks have been worked out in the drug, and by kinks
I mean that it first turns the user invisible and then turns the user crazier
than a pet coon.  Things get off to a nasty start when a group of shady-looking characters linger
about the outside of Frank Raymond's print shop. When the coast is clear they
go in and ask to buy some stationary. Frank wonders whether its for
business or personal use. For personal use, I usually go with a nice white
paper without gloss so the reader doesn't have to fight glare. For business
use, I find that the classiest approach is with a 100% cotton fiber 24 lb.
paper, preferably ivory in color and with watermark. It just says,
"professional." So Frank goes about showing them this stuff when suddenly
there all in his face about some dang secret formula his grandpappy cooked up
back in the day. Frank says that he's just a simple printer and doesn't know
nothing about any invisibility formula that he has hidden in a box in a secret
drawer in his desk. You'll notice that Peter Lorre is part of the group as the
Baron. We later find out that he is a Japanese dude, but I didn't know that
until later in the movie when Sir Cedric Hardwicke (who was playing a German
dude) has a falling out with Baron Ikito and makes some snide comments about his
Japanese pal. Heck, I just thought he was a character-actor from
Austria-Hungary. Lorre plays a character similar to that of Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark looking like a sweaty weasel and talking like he's he hasn't quite seen
puberty yet. The Baron is one of those dudes that sees a good piece of
industrial equipment and recognizes it for its torture value. Frank's not
talking
about where he hid the formula until they get his hand in a giant paper cutter.
Whoa, he says, now that you mention it, I do seem to recall something about a
super-duper secret formula hidden in my desk. He is allowed to retrieve it,
and then beats the tar out of everybody with the box it was hidden in. He
escapes into the night with the formula. The U.S. government pressures Frank to let them use the formula, but he
politely declines, saying that it is just too dangerous and he doesn't mind if
his kids have to grow up learning to speak German. You know, if this was the
real world, I don't think the government would ask this traitorous dog twice.
You can either hand it over you pansy, or we will take it. In the movie
though, our government is disappointed but understanding. Then you get your
parade of headlines about Pearl Harbor and all that good stuff and suddenly
Frank is willing to let the good old U.S. of A use the formula. There is one
catch. The only person who can use it is Frank. Fabulous. The most powerful
weapon of the war and the only guy who is going to take advantage of it is a
dude that squealed like pig to the enemy the first time they threaten to chop
his hand off. Wuss. I'll bet G. Gordon Liddy wouldn't have done that and you
can sure bet that Liddy would tell you so over and over and over. All the
military guys are moaning about shooting this boob up with the serum, but give
in because it wouldn't have been as dramatic if we sent two million
invisible soldiers straight to Berlin and on to Tokyo and ended the war in
about a week. So they send Frank on a secret mission to do something or other
in Germany. He's suppose to meet with a few people and maybe steal some
information. I really don't remember what he was doing over there. He just
seemed to hang out at this sexy German's house and pull tricks on this tubby
little Nazi turd named Heiser who bore an uncanny resemblance to TV funnyman
Dorf. Heiser is trying to put the make on this double-agent named Maria, but makes
the mistake of doing so when the Invisible Agent is hanging out in the house.
The results are predictable invisible mayhem with food disappearing and being
spilled on that scummy Nazi and with the Nazi doing pratfalls and walking into
mysteriously closed doors. Eventually Heiser is arrested by his own people for
something (either going after Sir Cedric's girl or scheming to take his job)
and tossed into jail with orders for his execution. Meanwhile on the other
side of Hazzard County, Invisible Agent is busy getting tricked into getting
himself caught by one of Sir Cedric's clever ruses. Cedric figures an
invisible man is on the loose and devises a brilliant plan to catch him. He
tells Maria that an ultra-top-secret book that tells everything about the
German and Japanese spies and who won Survivor 2 is just laying around his
office and he hopes that there aren't any invisible men skulking about who might
try to take it. He says all this knowing that Frank is indeed eavesdropping
and Frank being the stationary salesman turned invisible secret agent takes the
bait and hauls invisible ass over to Sir Cedric's office. Once there, he gets
his hands on the book and then Ced reveals that it was all a trick and now
they've got him and in your face and all that. Invisible Agent simply sets the
place on fire and climbs down the ladder of the fire truck with the secret book
in his hand. You know what I would have done differently if I was coming up
with that plan? I probably wouldn't have used the real book with all the
secret information in it. I think I would have maybe used a different book or
a fake book. Maybe I would have dummied up a copy of Tuesdays With Morrie with a new dust jacket titled "Secret Book of Axis Secrets - Invisible Agent
Edition." Of course hindsight is always 20/20, right?  Things get pretty much out of control from here on out, with Invisible Agent
busting Heiser out of prison since Heiser gave up all the info on the secret
bombing campaign the Germans were going to carry out on America. Before he
busted him out Heiser and the audience had to endure one of those speeches that
these propaganda movies of the time always shoehorned in to boost morale for an
apparently ignorant public. You know the speech, the "you Nazis are really
bad, and you can't win, and the devil is going to be seeing you in bunches, now
let's bust out of here so I can try to get in that double-agent's
double-drawers." They get out in a good sequence that sees our invisible dope
dressed up like a Nazi, with no face and no hands. Eventually Heiser gets
shot, Invisible Agent gets himself captured in a net of fishhooks by the
Japanese led by Baron Ikito and then he escapes while the Baron uses some judo
and a knife to take care of himself and Sir Cedric. Somehow or other,
Invisible Agent has also gotten it into that invisible brain of his that Maria
is double-crossing him. This is based on exactly nothing except perhaps an
effort by the filmmakers to squeeze a little more suspense out of a movie that
is
about 10 minutes too long. It's a pretty rip-roaring, flag-waving affair, that
gets bogged down after Frank and Maria escape in a stolen German bomber and we
have to sit through her trying fly it into friendly airspace without getting
shot down. It does get shot down (women drivers!) and they all bail out and
eventually are rescued, she's really working for the Brits, the invisibility
serum wears off and they live happily ever after. After the insipid antics of The Invisible Woman , this one is a welcome change in tone moving from
straight out slapstick comedy to an pulpy kind of adventure tale. It's always
fun to watch the Nazis made fools of, but you wish Frank had been a little
smarter or more inventive. For a guy that was invisible, he sure seemed to get
himself into more trouble than James Bond ever did. What you really have to
love is Universal "doing its part" for the war effort and at the same time
trying to milk
a franchise that had kind of gotten off track, for a few more bucks. The
jingoism comes off as pretty shrill these days, but I imagine it didn't seem so
bad in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Cedric Hardwicke and especially Peter
Lorre elevate this effort into something that's not as forgettable as say
the third or fourth Mummy sequel (Quick! Name either of them!). The picture
moves along, the war time milieu is an entertaining and interesting change and
the effects are still pretty cool in this one. Probably the most entertaining
of the sequels. Doesn't really address any of the darker aspects of the serum
(you know: going crazy, no antidote), but hell, we've got a war to fight! Jon
Hall would turn invisible again two years later in The Invisible Man's Revenge , proving that making the Invisible Man a comic book super hero wasn't enough
to kill off the concept completely. That would be Abbott and Costello's job.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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