The Invisible Man Returns (1940) - 6.0
It took Universal seven years to make a sequel to the 1933 Invisible Man. In Hollywood in those days that is like dog years. They usually could pump out films in the time it takes me to boil an egg. Especially at Universal where they were knocking out one horror film after another. In 1940 they handed this over to Joe May to direct. May had been a very successful filmmaker in Germany though he never had that kind of success in America. To write the script he brought on a fellow German, Curt Siodmak, who was also happy to be out of Germany. He was to become one of the top scriptwriters at Universal, particularly in the horror genre with this one, Black Friday, The Wolfman, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman as well as two more in this series - The Invisible Woman and Invisible Agent. His brother was director Robert Siodmak. May also brought on John Fulton who had done the special effects for the original Invisible Man and was to for the rest of the series. But that barely touches on his contributions - he worked on the visual effects for about 250 films specializing in photographic effects like making a man invisible and then reappear.
This is more of a detective story than a horror film. But the man looking for the murderer just happens to be invisible and he is the one who has been convicted for the crime. The studio also had to look for an actor who would be willing to be invisible for 80 of the 81 minutes in the film. The audience doesn't see him till the very end. Well they found someone with a great deep voice that borders on melancholy and the maniacal and he does a fine job. Sadly, he went back into obscurity after this, his third film. Some fellow named Vincent Price.
His character is Geoffrey Radcliffe and he is about to be hanged for the murder of his brother. A crime he swears he did not commit and his girlfriend (Nan Grey) and his friend Frank Griffin (John Sutton) stick by his side. The name Griffin may strike a bell. The same last name of the original Invisible Man. He is his younger brother and luckily for Radcliffe he has some of that invisible potion! This allows Radcliffe to escape and go looking for the true killer. Who is pretty easy to figure out unless you have never seen a film before. But it is a race. One between Radcliffe finding the killer, the cops finding him and madness overcoming him. Because the potion will do that over time. And when the dog starts driving him crazy, you know he doesn't have much of it.
Good film though not very ambitious. Price is getting his horror voice down pat though it would be a few years before he moved into that genre so easily. The last few minutes are great as the invisible Radcliffe chases the killer down the street sending men flying - the cops not far behind - ending at a coal yard in which a large set was built specifically for the film. Appearing also is Cedrick Hardwicke, Alan Napier (future butler to Batman) and Cecil Kellaway.
The Invisible Woman (1940) - 6.5
They should have sent the Invisible Woman into Nazi Germany rather than the Invisible Agent. She sure is a lot more competent and takes out a gang of thugs singlehandedly. The only question I have though with this film is who in their right mind would want to make Virginia Bruce and her dramatic cheekbones invisible. Not me. This Invisible film from Universal has no connection to the original which allows them to turn it into a light screwy comedy that if never hilarious is constantly cheery. Margaret Sullavan was suppose to take the Virginia Bruce role but refused saying it was beneath her. This was after The Shop Around the Corner, Three Comrades and Mortal Storm so one can see her point of view. The fact that she would be invisible for much of the film probably factored in as well.
At 72 minutes this edges awfully close to B film territory and the subject matter doesn't help. But what a cast it has. Besides Bruce there is John Barrymore, John Howard, Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges fame (no relation as far as I know), Charles Ruggles, Oskar Homolka, Edward Brophy, Donald MacBride, Margaret Hamilton (Wizard of Oz), the always curmudgeonly Charles Lane, Thurston Hall and in a small non-speaking role Maria Montez in only her second film.
By 1940 Barrymore was far from his days of being a glamorous well-paid film star. Alcohol had taken care of that. But he is great here as an eccentric be-wigged be-mustached inventor named Professor Gibbs. According to John Howard, Barrymore was unable to remember his lines and so they had them placed in strategic areas where he could pick them up. He also tended to make up his own lines if the mood struck him. It works and he overplays his character to a delightful degree. He lives on the estate of Richard Russell (John Howard) who has just found out from his lawyer (Hall) that he is broke from all his womanizing. But when Gibbs tells him his experiment with invisibility has worked and he needs a human specimen, Russell thinks he is back in the money. Gibbs puts in an ad in the paper for anyone interested in becoming invisible and only Kitty (Bruce) replies. She only wants to be invisible for a few hours in order to kick her weaselly boss (Lane) in the pants.
And invisible she becomes but a crook (Homolka) stuck in Mexico sees the ad and decides being invisible is just what he needs to come back to the USA. He sends three of his boys - Shemp, Brophy and MacBride to steal the machine and then to kidnap the Professor and the Invisible Woman has to save the day. Just seeing Shemp, Brophy and MacBride together was a pleasure. A piffle but a pleasant one.
Invisible Agent (1942) - 5.0
This is one of Universal's Invisible Man spin-offs. They had the original The Invisible Man (1933), The Invisible Man Returns (1940), The Invisible Woman (1940), The Invisible Agent (1942), The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944) and Abbot and Costello Meet the Invisible Man. Some of them are slightly connected to the original, a few not really at all. This one has a much better cast than it deserves. With Jon Hall who was a fairly big star at the time in his adventure films, the always wonderful Peter Lorre, Cedric Hardwicke, John Litel and Ilona Massey it deserved a smarter script. But it is as dumb as rocks. Not the Invisible Man part - we accept that - but just how clunky the plot is. First, if I was ordering an invisible man to penetrate into Germany, it would not be to steal some papers but to kill Hitler, Goring, Goebbels, Himmler Eichmann and others. I mean come on. You are invisible.
A mix of German and Japanese spies (Hardwicke and poor Lorre getting stuck playing a Japanese man again - like all those Mr. Moto films were not enough) walk into a printing shop with a small demand. Hand over the invisible formula. Raymond who owns the shop is really Griffin, the grandson of the original Invisible Man, Dr. Jack Griffin. He has been hiding his identity as well as a vial of the potion. Conveniently, in a drawer in his office. This should have tipped us off what an idiot he is. But he escapes from their clutches and goes to the US govt. He won't give them the vial - so not totally stupid - but once the war begins he offers his services to go into Germany for a mission. To steal documents. He won't let anyone else go.
Which is a shame because he may be the worst agent they could have sent. He is an idiot and makes mistakes constantly. He makes contact first with the agent who will send out any messages and then with a high society woman (Ilona) who has managed to become friends with high ranking Nazis. When he is there she is visited by a top Gestapo official and he does all these things to announce he is there - eat chicken, drink champagne, spill food over him. Later he says I didn't like how close he was getting to you. Good grief. How American. Then he falls asleep in cold cream and a robe and the Nazis are coming back. And poor Ilona had been totally turned on by his invisibility. Oh you are a big man aren't you and was giving him the bedroom eye treatment. Later he easily falls into a trap and then after escaping incredibly stupidly makes a phone call from the first contact to the woman - giving away both of them. And he is supposed to be the hero of the film? Only Lorre comes off well here - devious and a step ahead. When he is torturing Raymond - who fell into yet another trap - and threatening the woman in that Lorre way, he says to him "Occidental decay is nowhere more apparent than the childish sentimentality of white men for their women".
The script was written by Curt Siodmak who had escaped from Germany and had no love for the Nazi regime. This is most apparent in a monologue that Raymond delivers to a Nazi who is in prison. It is a scathing rebuke of the Nazis and doesn't really fit in the film but this is 1942 and I imagine audiences ate it up. He also wrote the scripts for The Invisible Man Returns and The Invisible Woman.
The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944) - 5.5
After two Invisible films from Universal that strayed far off from the original - The Invisible Woman and Invisible Agent - this one is back on firmer ground - more murderous ground. I always appreciate how in the opening credits they mention that the film was "suggested by H.G. Wells". That was nice. I am sure Wells who was still alive appreciated it. He probably would have appreciated a good film even more though. This definitely has potential to be an out and out horror film but they pull back on the reins and the Invisible Man in this one is a lukewarm killer as opposed to the original. The thing about becoming invisible as cool as it sounds is that eventually it will drive you crazy if you are always in that state. The lack of human contact, of seeing your own body, of being able to touch someone drives one to madness as it did with Jack Griffin played by Claude Rains. Now in this film the fellow - named Robert Griffin though no connection to Jack is ever attempted - is already crazy before he becomes invisible so invisibility doesn't really make much of a difference. With Jack there was an element of tragedy - here there is none - just an insane man acting insane.
Robert arrives in London hidden in a crate on a ship from South Africa. I can't imagine how he did that - that would be a long journey and it wasn't that large a crate. I hope he had sanitary conditions in there. He is played by Jon Hall causing some slight confusion since he played Michael Griffin grandson of Jack in the Invisible Agent. But again there seems to be no connection though in truth if he had been the same man as in Invisible Agent, who had lost his mind it would have been more interesting. He is escaping from committing two murders in an insane asylum there and conveniently carries the newspaper story around in his coat pocket.
He has come for revenge. Five years previously he had discovered diamonds with his two friends Jasper (Lester Matthews) and his wife Irene (Gale Sondergaard - the Spider Woman). Robert was left behind when he was hit in the head and they thought dead. Now he is back and wants his share - and their daughter Julie (Evelyn Ankers). They kick him out but in his wanderings he finds Doctor Drury. John Carradine. You know he must be mad just because he is Carradine. He happens to have an invisibility potion tried only on dogs and parrots. Ah. Just what the doctor ordered. Now Robert can get that revenge and marry Julie - but wait he is invisible - how can he marry Julie - a conundrum for sure.
Abbot and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951) - 5.5
I have been watching a few of the episodes from their TV show lately. They are just right for me. 25 minutes and I am done. 90 minutes of the pair is closer to a marathon for me. Very hit and miss. When they get a routine right, it is great but too often it is just the same back and forth silliness between them of Abbott conning Costello and Costello being an idiot or terrified or both. This one for me was about 40% hit and 60% ho-hum. Which isn't bad really. But this just isn't my style of humor - give me the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy and even dare I say it The Three Stooges over these two. But it is the last one in the Invisible Man series from Universal and so I was curious enough to see what they did with it. Basically, it is a remake of The Invisible Man's Revenge from 1944 - with a few changes of course!
A&C already had Meet Frankenstein and Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff in the bag - both with connections to Universal as was Meet the Mummy later on, so this was a natural. Universal had the rights to the Invisible Man and again they give a nod to H.G. Wells. The boys are graduating from Dugan's Detective Agency. Costello wonders how he graduated to which Abbott answers "I slipped him $20". Their first case comes quickly - a possible killer and professional boxer on the run comes to them saying he needs their help proving he is innocent. They go to a doctor's home - who has a picture of Claude Rains on the wall - well not Rains but Griffin. He has the potion to turn invisible but warns Tommy (Arthur Franz) that he has no antidote and it will make him insane within a week.
But with the cops coming through the doors he takes the serum and turns invisible. He forces our heroes to help him out. How? By having Lou pretend to be a boxer and having Tommy doing the boxing. Hilarity ensues. There are some good bits here. I loved the money in the pocket/hand routine. Probably as old as vaudeville but it was great timing. The dinner at a restaurant was good - sort of stolen from Invisible Agent - with the Invisible Man getting drunk. And the boxing match was lovely. The film has a surprisingly unknown supporting cast with only William Frawley (Fred Mertz) making any sort of impression as the police man. Adele Jergens is the sexpot and Sheldon Leonard is the tough guy. I was disappointed not to see John Fuller's name in the credits. He had created the special effects for all the other Invisible films but had moved on to Paramount by this time. It is directed by Charles Lamont who had helmed their Foreign Legion film and was to direct seven of their films after this one.
From other reviews this film seems to be held in high regards. Just not my cup of tea. Spending too much time listening to their banter is like being in a boxing ring for ten rounds for me.