The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944, Ford Beebe)

When Leon Errol saves lead Jon Hall from drowning, even though they’ve previously established The Invisible Man’s Revenge takes place in England, I was sure they’d teleported to Australia. Errol is very Australian. Openly Australian. He’s also the closest thing to amusing as Revenge gets.

Despite being the fourth in the series, starring the same lead as the last entry with the same family name, The Invisible Man’s Revenge is unconnected to the previous entries. It opens with Hall getting to England. He’s escaped a South African mental hospital, murdering his way through interns to freedom. We don’t see any of the murdering, it’s just in a newspaper clipping after we get some of Hall behaving peculiarly while buying a new suit. The suit buying sequence, much like the one where Errol tries to shake down English lord Lester Matthews, is just filler; Revenge runs under eighty minutes and it needs lots of filler.

It’s hard to pick on the script too much given the context—Hall’s a terrible lead, no better script is going to help him out. Beebe’s direction is middling. The special effects aren’t great. They have a few better moments and a few worse moments, but the only memorable Invisible Man set piece is Errol playing darts and naked and invisible Hall running them over to the dart board for the bullseye. The other big set piece involves Hall attacking romantic nemesis Alan Curtis in a dark wine cellar; the lights are out so they don’t have to do any Invisible Man effects. It’s a rather lackluster finish.

Curtis isn’t very good either. So Curtis is bad. Hall’s bad. Matthews isn’t good. See, years ago Matthews and wife Gale Sondergaard (who apparently quit the movie halfway through when she decided it got too stupid; she just vanishes, never mentioned again) were on a diamond expedition with Hall. He bumped his head, fell unconscious, they abandoned him, heard he was dead, took his stake in the diamond mine, but now he’s back and they don’t want to pay up. Not only does he want his money, he wants their daughter, Evelyn Ankers, who’s barely in the movie—like she too knew better—but there’s the definite implication Matthews and Sondergaard promised her to him. Even though they’d never met. There’s also the not zero chance Matthews and Sondergaard did try to have him killed. They certainly did the second time around. Or maybe Sondergaard just thought she was in a different movie.

John Carradine is fine as the scientist who makes his pets invisible then convinces Hall to try the serum. The film’s only got the one screenwriter—Bertram Millhauser—credited but between Sondergaard’s disappearance and Carradine’s change of behavior, it really seems like someone else fixed up the second half. Or at least changed it. It’s hard to say if it’s a fix. Because Carradine goes from encouraging Hall to get invisible so he can murder the rich people who pissed him off, but then when Hall wants help in that mission, Carradine has forgotten how he convinced Hall to do the serum in the first place.

Again, not a competent script, but also again… what help would a competent script have been.

Actually impressive photography from Milton R. Krasner—the one scene with day-for-night is excellent—is the only technical standout. The dog’s good? Carradine’s got a dog and it figures big into the plot. Sort of absurdly but whatever. So long as it brings the movie to the end.

Revenge is a bad movie. Worse, it’s a slow bad movie; realistically, Sondergaard’s fate is in a cut scene—Hall doesn’t actually kill anyone for quite a while in the film and the body count is very low—so maybe she was a plot sacrifice, but the idea of there being cut scenes and subplots to Revenge is more a threat than anything else. Less might be incomprehensible but a coherent narrative isn’t worth more minutes on the runtime.

The Invisible Man’s Revenge plays like the movie’s punishing you for watching it.

Invisible Agent (1942, Edwin L. Marin)

Just about an hour into Invisible Agent, Axis allies Cedric Hardwicke and Peter Lorre have a falling out. See, Lorre’s smart, actually, while Hardwicke’s just devious. The film had been establishing those traits from the first scene—when they try to strong-arm the Invisible Man formula out of Jon Hall—but what I didn’t realize was Lorre was supposed to be Japanese. Hardwicke says something about how it works in Germany and Lorre starts talking about his country and I’m like… surely he’s not supposed to be Italian.

Nope. He’s supposed to be Japanese. After the falling out scene, the Japanese embassy in Berlin and its staff become a plot point (of course, Lorre’s the only non-Asian person playing a Japanese person so it’s still uncanny and gross and then also problematic just on the propaganda level). But until then… I was giving Invisible Agent a lot more—okay, maybe not more credit, but I certainly wasn’t cognizant of all its defects. If I ever suffer through again, I’m sure I’ll be all the more punished.

Invisible Agent is one of those bad then worse pictures. Sometimes it’s not terrible, but rarely. The first act, before the film introduces femme fatale Ilona Massey (also bad, but gets worse) shows up, is slightly better than what follows. Maybe because there’s still the potential for something in the first act. The concept—the grandson of the original Invisible Man (Claude Rains in the original, who the second film in the series established murdered hundreds) Hall becomes a spy for the Allies, going to Berlin to find some secrets—does at least have possibilities for good set pieces. But the execution of the concept is quite bad. And gets worse as things go along. When buffoon Nazi J. Edward Bromberg is going his screwball comedy thing, it’s actually surprising how bad Curt Siodmak’s script has gotten over the runtime.

There aren’t any good special effects set pieces. The special effects themselves aren’t bad and are at times even effective—the invisible man stuff is more reliable than the military-related stuff, which occasionally has something like a matte painting at an entirely wrong angle and director Marin and editor Edward Curtiss rely on speeding up the film way too much. But if you don’t see the remnants of Hall’s eyes under the cold cream (he’s caked in it so Massey can see him and they can flirt, or whatever it’s called when actors acting badly perform a poorly written script), it’s pretty impressive. Or impressive enough.

Because Invisible Agent is never enough. Hardwicke being really effective as a pervy old Nazi or Lorre being able to be good in an impossible, bad part are not surprising revelations. If Hall weren’t terrible it’d be enough. If Massey weren’t a combination of bad and lost, it… no, it wouldn’t be enough. Hall’s too bad. Siodmak’s script is too bad.

I hope Invisible Agent proves forgettable. I fear it will not. But I hope it does.

The Invisible Woman (1940, A. Edward Sutherland)

It’s entirely possible The Invisible Woman’s concept is a good one—instead of a horror movie, doing a screwball comedy where the female lead is invisible most of the time. Woman is—at best—indifferently acted, poorly directed, atrociously written, without even reasonable special effects. But the idea itself isn’t necessarily bad.

The film opens with suffering butler Charles Ruggles—he gets lots of jokes, they’re always terrible, he’s always bad. His bits are so universally bad, it seems like it has to be director Sutherland. Even Shemp Howard is occasionally amusing. He’s mostly godawful, but every once in a while, some gag won’t completely fail. Everything with Ruggles is a fail. Every single joke. And there are probably four Ruggles jokes every twelve minutes, if not more. The movie runs seventy-two minutes total. So thirty-some lousy Ruggles gags.

Ruggles works for John Howard. Howard is the romance lead, a playboy who funds lovable mad scientist John Barrymore’s projects. Only Howard never asks to see results—not until the movie starts, when Barrymore needs to turn someone invisible. It needs to be a person; Howard apparently won’t believe it if Barrymore turns the cat invisible. The human subject is going to be Virginia Bruce. She initially wants to get invisible to seemingly erase herself from reality. Bruce isn’t good in the scenes where she’s getting philosophical about woman’s place in the universe and so on but at least it’s character.

When she does get invisible and gets to do whatever she wants, it’s just messing with crappy boss Charles Lane. When Lane’s bad, it’s a sign Invisible Woman is never going to be good or even okay. Even with Ruggles, even with Howard, even with Barrymore basically letting his elaborate make-up do all the acting, if the movie were at least funny with its big supporting cast of comedy regulars… it’d have a chance.

But no.

Because Sutherland’s direction is terrible.

And the script—from Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo, and Gertrude Purcell (from a story by horror guys Curt Siodmak and Joe May)—is terrible. So the movie doesn’t have a chance. Ever.

The best part of the movie is Margaret Hamilton, who plays Barrymore’s assistant and her dismissive, impatient attitude is perfect for the part and movie. She doesn’t camp it up, but she seems to be acknowledging the quality constraints and so on and excels—reasonably—within them. The movie sort of trades her screen time for Oscar Homolka, which is appropriate for Invisible Woman. Hamilton’s the best, Homolka’s the worst. Now, obviously, dramatically speaking, Howard’s the worst. But for the comedy—and Woman’s a comedy–Homolka’s an endless pit of bad comedy.

Invisible Woman gets so painfully bad in the last third—it’s also a slog of seventy-two minutes, probably because there’s not a good “Invisible Woman” set piece. Sutherland is clearly inept at the special effects sequences but the movie needs them. There’s not even a big screwball number, just more plot, as Homolka’s gang goes after Barrymore and friends.

Howard—Shemp—is in the gang. Donald MacBride is in the gang. Edward Brophy is in the gang. Invisible Woman wastes Edward Brophy. Wastes him in a way you think they’d never seen an Edward Brophy performance before. Including the one he’s giving here.

Terrible editing from Frank Gross doesn’t help things either. Occasionally the cuts make it seem like they’re doing a lot of work—revised audio looped in to dialogue-free visuals, jokes muted and faded out on—and maybe Gross was doing the best he could with Sutherland’s footage. It’s sadly immaterial, other than to correctly portion the blame.

The Invisible Woman’s laugh-less and charmless, only impressive because they can never find a good joke, not even on accident.

The Invisible Man Returns (1940, Joe May)

The best thing about The Invisible Man Returns is quite obviously Cecil Kellaway. He’s a Scotland Yard inspector who’s spent the eight years since the last movie preparing for another invisible man attack, making sure the Yard’s ready to go technologically.

Worst thing about The Invisible Man Returns? It’s a little long? There’s nothing really too bad about it. There’s just nothing too good about it either. John Sutton’s not bad. He’s just not good. Ditto female lead Nan Grey, who somehow manages to remain unaware of dirty old man Cedric Hardwicke’s lusty devotion to her. Hardwicke’s real obvious. He’s not ineffective either.

Okay, actually—worst thing about Invisible Man Returns? New Invisible Man Vincent Price. Despite being set in England, Price does this blandly gruff, very American voice. I was hoping he’d start, you know, using a Vincent Price voice once he got invisible but no. Sticks with the gruff thing the whole time. I can’t imagine it helped his performance anyway—scary thought, maybe it did.

With a better “monster,” the movie would be better. Especially given the contortions the script makes to get through the Code. Lester Cole and Curt Siodmak’s script, in that context, is easily the most impressive thing about the film. Otherwise, it’d be the effects, which aren’t every fantastic or narratively ambitious—the biggest effects set piece is a snorer with Price messing with Alan Napier. But the contortions….

Returns opens with an exposition dump in the kitchen of Hardwicke’s manor. None of the downstairs staff are important, it’s just for the exposition, which should be a better move than it turns out to be because there’s not much narrative efficiency later on.

Grey’s boyfriend (Price) is on death row—or whatever the English equivalent at the time—for killing his brother. Since going to prison, Hardwicke has taken over the brothers’ family mine business. From the first shot of Hardwicke it’s clear he’s madly in love with Grey and she doesn’t notice because he’s an old man with a terrible mustache.

Though maybe she doesn’t mind the mustache. Every guy in Returns except Kellaway and maybe Napier has a terrible mustache. You can’t tell with Napier because he’s covered in grime. Kellaway just doesn’t have one.

It’s the day before Price is going to be hanged so Grey finally has to plead with Hardwicke to call his friends in the government, which neither of them thought of doing until this moment, apparently. But, no, the Home Secretary is in Scotland so Price is going to die.

Or would die if it weren’t for Sutton, who just happens to be the brother of the original Invisible Man, something Kellaway figures out right away but apparently Hardwicke didn’t know about despite working with Sutton for a substantial time.

Sutton gives Price the serum, Price escapes, movie starts (after at least ten minutes of increasingly tedious exposition). Price has to figure out who killed his brother while Sutton has to figure out how to turn Price back to visible before Price goes criminally insane and starts murdering people.

The original Invisible Man, Kellaway tells us, murdered hundreds in the original movie, which doesn’t seem right but Kellaway would’ve exaggerated to get funding for his anti-Invisible Man task force. The task force turns out to be a red herring as the latter half of the film doesn’t have any big set pieces.

If the cast were better or showed signs of being better, their mediocre turns would be more disappointing. Any of them—Price, Grey, Sutton, Hardwicke—should’ve been able to walk away with the movie. Instead, they just manage to keep stride with it.

May’s direction is fine. Not at all distinctive, but fine. Frank Gross’s editing is probably the worst technical feature and, again, it’s not really bad, it’s just never, ever good.

The Invisible Man (2020, Leigh Whannell)

The Invisible Man is surprisingly okay. I mean, once you realize it’s just going to be lead Elisabeth Moss in constant terror of an invisible abusive partner lashing out at her and Moss is good at being terrified for long periods, it seems like a bit of a gimme, but until the middle of the movie… it could potentially be good even.

Unfortunately director (and writer) Whannell can’t figure out how to turn his actual invisible man into a good visual monster—the eventual set pieces are like video games where you’re in stealth mode and the biggest effects sequence ends the second act, which… I guess is good if it’s because Whannell’s got no confidence in his abilities to pull off a bigger set piece. Odds are it would’ve been disappointing.

The movie stops being scary once they “visualize” the invisible man, it stops being much good in the third act. The Invisible Man runs two hours. Even with ten minute end credits, Whannel has to pad a bunch of it out so there are multiple twists and reveals. Especially since there are no subplots and the whole “everyone thinks Moss is making it up” stuff only matters for a bit at the beginning of the second act and then it’s inconsequential because everything’s a long suspense sequence. Moss’s friends not believing her is just the longest expository section before the next suspense sequence, it’s not like Whannell’s actually got narrative ambitions.

The movie opens with Moss escaping abusive boyfriend Oliver Jackson-Cohen (who’s terrible). Moss’s sister, Harriet Dyer (not good and definitely the worst performance before Jackson-Cohen gets to shine), helps her but they’re not close enough Moss has told Dyer why she needs help.

Moss stays with family friend Aldis Hodge, who’s a cop we find out later–Invisible Man loves cops, at one point Moss tells Dyer she’s awesome because she’s like a cop, it’s a weird flex but Whannell’s dialogue is fairly vapid and Moss’s worst scenes are the expository ones so whatever. Hodge being a cop isn’t really going to be important. The movie pretends it’s important, up until the very end, but it’s not important at all.

Hodge isn’t good. He’s profoundly disappointing.

Storm Reid is his precocious teenage daughter. She’s pretty good. It’s not a good part and she’s eventually and inevitably reduced to potential slasher victim number four or whatever. But she’s pretty good. Especially compared to Hodge and Dyer.

After some relative calm and good news and putting her life back together stuff, we get to the invisible man antics. Only The Invisible Man is low budget and pragmatic about it so the antics are mundane, pseudo-inventive stuff. Pseudo because there’s CGI and it’s easy to get rid of any strings.

And because Whannell shoots everything in long shot and then has the action unfold in the long shot. Again, easy now thanks to CGI and relatively effective so long as Moss can stay terrified. And she can.

Before The Invisible Man and during the ineffective stylized opening titles, I wasn’t expecting much. By the hour mark, I was expecting at least something. With the blah third act and so many middling (at best) performances, it comes in definitely about not much but decidedly below at least something.

But still much better than expected regardless.

The Invisible Man (1933, James Whale)

The Invisible Man is a filmmaking marvel. First off, R.C. Sherriff’s screenplay sets things up speedily and without much exposition. The film introduces Claude Rains’s character through everyone else’s point of view–first the strangers he meets, then his familiars–all while Rains is front and center in the film. Even though he is, after all, invisible.

Rains is another marvel. The script is excellent, Whale does a peerless job directing (more on his contributions in a bit), but Rains makes the whole thing possible. With him, Invisible isn’t some horror picture or a sci-fi one, it’s a very simple, very tragic story of a man going mad. It doesn’t need the special effects, it just needs Rains. Everything else is a bonus. It’s an outstanding performance.

The whole cast is great–Gloria Stuart has to sell the idea Rains was once a lovable guy, so goes Henry Travers for instance. William Harrigan gets to be a sleaze bag but a decent enough minded one.

Now for Whale. Many of the special effects in The Invisible Man are unbelievable. Even the ones where they obviously used some kind of matte decades are sort of unbelievable, but the practical effects–where the bandages must have been suspended by wire–those are astonishing. And Whale knows, early on, to wow the audience. But he never lets up with it; it’s one wow after another.

The Invisible Man gets better on every viewing. The work from Whale, Rains and Sherriff is singular.