 |
 Claude Raines makes his screen debut and "delivers a remarkable performance."
He plays a doctor that develops a serum that makes him invisible. He goes to
an English village and tries to hide his "amazing discovery." The drug that
allows him to become invisible also "slowly drives him to commit acts of
unspeakable terror." 1933, 77 minutes, DVD
It's been about 70 years since The Invisible Man snuck into movie palaces, but the H.G. Wells' created character still is fresh
enough that filmmakers continue to make movies about the idea of what would
happen if no one could see us and we could run around buck naked without anyone
being the wiser. Frankly, I think that takes a good deal of the fun out of
running around buck naked, but I'm on some meds to fix that. Recently, Paul
Verhoeven made The Hollow Man in which Kevin Bacon played a hotshot scientist who developed an invisible
potion
and then ran amuck complete with expensive and gory computer generated effects.
Claude Raines, you can rest easy in your grave old boy (or in your recliner if
you're still living) because you are still the best actor I've never seen!
Okay, I know some of you remember him from the Hitchcock movie Notorious, but I
think if we all go back and look at that stellar review, you will see that it
is Claude's hairpiece that got the majority of the bad press. Anyway, his
hairpiece is only seen briefly and plays its part well (it gets thrown at
someone!).  Raines plays hotshot scientist Jack Griffin. He works at some kind of lab with
an old distinguished scientist (he's distinguished because he has greying
temples and quotes obscure German studies about rare drugs) and with a slug
named Dr. Kemp (he's a slug because he is jealous of Griffin and hits on his
girl). Things open up in an inn where greasy locals that apparently don't
have even
a passing familiarity with a razor and bar of soap play darts, drink, and
wait for mysterious strangers to come in out of the blizzard. A man comes
tromping down the road in the driving snow and enters the inn. Everyone gets
real quiet and stares at him. H's head is wrapped in bandages and he's wearing
these goggles that looked as if he ripped them off from U2's Bono or something.
I
think to myself, "well, what do we have hear? It's either an invisible man or
a self-important rock star." This dude immediately demands a room and is
generally an unfriendly chap. The woman who runs the inn is a nosey little
nuisance and frequently harasses the Invisible Man about his breakfast and
mustard and other important matters. He says he wants to be left alone so she
barges on in to bring him stuff and he gets really peeved. I bet that if we
could
see him that he was turning beet red, but we couldn't so we just had to go by
the fact that he yelled at her and pretty much threw her down the stairs to
figure out he wasn't entirely satisfied with the service (has he tried Holiday
Inn Express?).  Now, the Invisible Man isn't just a cranky monster. He's got a couple a
reasons as to why he's feeling stressed out. The first is why he's there in
the first place. It seems that our hotshot scientist has figured a way out to
turn himself invisible, but he hasn't quite got the reverse figured out. At
this point the invisibility serum is a one way trip. There's another problem.
As Dr. Cranley (the old scientist) tells it, Jack has used the super-secret
(even Dr. Kemp doesn't know about it!) and super-dangerous drug monocane to
make his serum. Four out of five German dentists surveyed say that monocane
when used with a healthy and balanced diet can turn you invisible and drive you
horribly insane! Whoops! Griffin doesn't know about this because, as Dr.
Cranley glibly explains, "I just happened to stumble across it while looking
for German porn." Off course he never mentioned this to Griffin. I mean, who
thought he'd been dumb enough to drink a gallon of monocane like it was a
bottle of Boone's Farm? Jack wants to work in private because he didn't want
anyone to know he'd turn invisible or something. Dude, you're invisible, how
would anyone know you turned invisible unless you told them? In any case, Jack
is somewhat on edge and can't quite seem to get the antidote working. All the
while, he grows more insane... Eventually his co-workers wonder where's gone
and why he's burned the file entitled "I've turned invisible so I'm leaving to
work on an antidote in private." Griffin's gal pal Flora, who is Dr. Cranley's
sexy-for-1933 daughter is worried sick and Dr. Kemp sucks in his gut and
squirts some Binaca Blast in his mouth and heads on over to the lovely-for-1933
Flora. "You know Flora, Jack may have been a hotshot, but I do work on ways to
preserve food a long time. Here check out this kiwi that's been in pants since
last week." He's a player, but she's a player-hater, so that's it for that. Back at the flophouse where the Invisible Man is hanging out, the cops are
called to roust IM from his room. Apparently it's against some type of local
ordinance to throw the owner of the inn down a flight of stairs. The constable
shows up and I'm figuring that this is turning into an episode of Cops. The
Invisible Man will answer the door and be wearing a ratty white tank top, have
a pack of Camels in his hands and try to explain to the cops through stank
breath and slurred speech that "it was all a mizunderstandin, she and me love
each other, its jus that sometimes I drink a little and she's all in my face
with the whole child support thang." Then there would be some kind of struggle
and the cops would subdue him and drag him off as he's screaming at her "I love
you! Why are they doing this?" and she's crying (along with her three kids who
are half dressed and filthy) and saying "you need help! I love you! Don't
take him away!" Then she starts fighting the cops because she's a little
toasted, too. Then we go to break as one of the cops observes something like,
"yeah, that family's in crisis. I hope they get the help they need. Somedays
this is a real hard job." Of course, absolutely none of this happened because
once the cops show up, the Invisible Man gets naked! Whenever an invisible man
gets naked, you can be sure that whacky crap is going down real soon. People
get pushed, stuff is thrown, chairs are moved, and wedgies are given. As you
can imagine, the Invisible Man makes his escape and heads off to look up his
old pal Dr. Kemp.  Dr. Kemp is somewhat surprised that his buddy Jack Griffin, now known by his
monster name, The Invisible Man, has chosen to drop by. "Dr. Kemp," IM says, "I
have the job opportunity of a lifetime for you! You are going to be my right
hand man in all my nefarious and tricky schemes!" You see at this point, the
effects of the monocane have become acute and Dr. Jack Griffin has degenerated
into a homicidal maniac, which is good, because they're always more
entertaining then earnest scientists trying to save themselves. IM says that
he's going to be large and in charge since nobody can see him and the first
order of business is a 'reign of terror." He actually says that like he was
debating between doing that or getting a haircut first. That wussy Dr. Kemp is
kind of appalled by the idea that he's going to have to help out on the reign
of terror, but that's what you get for being the closest thing an invisible
maniac has to a friend. A reign of terror ensues and the Invisible Man kills a
cop and derails an entire model train off of a miniature mountain set, killing
all the pretend people aboard. Kemp kind of double crosses IM and gets Flora
involved in an effort to capture him. Kemp finally figures out that the only
person he's double crossed is himself as he goes over a cliff in his car thanks
to his invisible buddy. Eventually the cops get wind that the Invisible Man
has crashed in a barn and is sleeping off the reign of terror on some hay.
They ring the barn and set it on fire in effort to flush Dr. Griffin out into
the falling snow. The pitter-patter of little invisible feet can soon be seen
in the freshly fallen snow and the cops shoot him down like the mad cow he is.
The invisibility wears off and he eventually croaks in a hospital with Flora
drooling on his face. Like The Mummy, this one stands tall at the ripe old age of 68. The film has lost none of
its power or luster. The special effects where the Invisible Man took off his
bandages and was partly visible, still amaze and stand up well
when compared with the computer generated effects of today. It's a nice
cautionary tale about absolute power corrupting absolutely with the drug
monocane as metaphor for authority. The longer he had it in his system, the
more he became irrational and distant from people until he became completely
unhinged and used his powers to do pointless acts of destruction and mayhem and
to settle old scores. It was entertaining to watch him become more deranged as
the movie went on from
simple pranks of stealing a bicycle and a pair of pants on up until he became
a mass murderer. The invisibility gimmick allowed some humor to lighten an
otherwise deadly serious film. Most of the humor came from the Invisible Man
himself in scenes where he went skipping down the lane clad only in a pair of
dancing pants singing a nursery rhyme. I also need to send out some props
(that's
what the kids say, right?) the innkeeper woman, who was just great, harassing
the Invisible Man and screaming all the time. One time she thought the
Invisible Man was in the room and hopped up on a table hollering as if there
were a mouse in the room. Some have claimed that the love interest bit with
Flora was good and humanized Jack Griffin and was not tacked on. As you might
expect they are wrong and I am right when I tell you it was tacked on and it
didn't help the character of Griffin at all. Flora disappeared for most of the
middle of the movie and we never really saw Griffin when he was in love with
her, so you really aren't sold on any important relationship between the two.
It doesn't matter though,
because this isn't a beauty and the beast deal, it's a about an intelligent man
being undone by limitless power . As it said on the back of the DVD, this
spawned a bunch of sequels. Do they match up to this one? Well, the next one
does star a certain gentleman by the name of Mr. Vincent Price (No, wait! Come
back!).
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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