The Invisible Man [Blu-ray]

Invisibly Yours...
THE INVISIBLE MAN- Claude Rains is awesome as the man whose invisibility serum slowly rots his brain. Hunted by police, he sets out to cure himself and get revenge on the man who betrayed him. Excellent stuff! Check out the running pair of pants scene! THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS- has Vincent Price as a man on death row, framed for a murder he did not commit. He gets some help in the form of the invisibilty serum and simply walks out of prison! Can he prove his innocense and find the real killer before te serum drives him mad? Great sequel! THE INVISIBLE WOMAN- This one is strictly for laughs. A scientist (John Barrymore) invents an invisibility machine with his assistant (Margaret "Wicked Witch Of The West" Hamilton). A young woman volunteers to be turned invisible and the slapstick begins. A gang of thugs wants the machine for obvious criminal reasons. The gang even includes a stooge (Shemp Howard)! Worth a look. THE INVISIBLE AGENT- Jon Hall is the title character, dropped behind...

The Invisible Man: One of the Best Films of the 30s
Between directing the original "Frankenstein" in 1931 and his masterpiece "Bride of Frankenstein" in 1935, James Whale put out a little gem called "The Invisible Man" in 1933. In some ways I rate "The Invisible Man" above "Frankenstein." For one thing "The Invisible Man" has a great musical score which heightens the drama in many scenes and helps to speed the pace of the film. The original "Frankenstein" had no musical score (strange one was never added for re-release as it would have improved an already great film tremendously) as musical scores weren't commonplace until a few years later. I also think that Whale had developed greatly as a director between 1931 and 1933. "Frankenstein" has many scenes that seem to be stagey and lack the finesse of Whale's later films.

In many ways "The Invisible Man" is Universal's most horrific horror film of the 1930s. Dracula was a vampire who killed to sustain his own existence, Frankenstein's Monster was a misunderstood and...

The Trials and Tribulations of Invisibility
The movie Van Helsing may have been pretty awful, but it did do one good thing in giving Universal a reason to release a lot of its old monster movies. The Invisible Man boxed set is the second best in the bunch, behind only Frankenstein but ahead of Dracula, the Wolf Man and the Mummy. (I have not viewed the Creature boxed set).

The strength in this set is due to two things: the high caliber of the original movie and the fact that all five movies have unique stories. Compare this with the Mummy boxed set in which the four sequels to the original movie all have essentially the same plot.

The original movie is top quality, principally due to the direction of James Whale, clearly the best of the monster movie directors (his other works include the excellent Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein). Claude Rains plays the title character, initially sympathetic but eventually a villain as madness accompanies his invisibility. For those familiar with Gloria Stuart...

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