Covered head to toe in bandages and overcoat, Dr. Jack Griffin (Claude Rains) takes up a room at the Lion’s Head tavern, where his innkeepers discover that their new lodger is actually an invisible man. Griffin flees, abandoning his scientific work to reverse his invisibility, and sets about seeking revenge instead – particularly on fellow scientist Arthur Kemp (William Harrigan).
The Invisible Man has the unique honor of being the fifth and final Universal Monsters film to be released before the Hays Code was enforced, beginning in 1934. (We’ll see next Friday whether the Hays Code had much effect on the first monster sequel, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein.) Among its monstrous predecessors, The Invisible Man is by far the most violent. Frankenstein may have it beat for gruesome subject material, but The Invisible Man, while not overtly gory, is garish and unflinching in its brutality. Within the body of the film, Griffin bludgeons a policeman to death, derails a train, and murders a man by driving his car off a cliff – and all of this is shown in clear detail on the screen! Moreover, each sequence is scored by the gleeful laughter and grim humor of the titular Invisible Man, juxtaposing terror with sardonic cheer to brilliant horrific effect. Where each preceding monster had some redeeming quality about him, the Invisible Man revels in the violence he’s all too happy to wreak.
So very much of The Invisible Man works because of Claude Rains’s go-for-broke vocal performance. Selected for the role after Boris Karloff’s contractual pay fell through, Rains was evidently a favored choice for Whale because of his crisp delivery, and in terms of elocution Rains is a champion. More victorious, though, is the way Rains is able to fluctuate between cold rationality and mad misanthropy, hooting and cackling as he goes. It’s no wonder that Mark Hamill has admitted he drew a great deal of inspiration for his Joker voice, making this performance a bit of a Rosetta Stone for Hamill’s Batman work. Completely unseen until the literal final frame of the film, Rains is nevertheless commanding, compelling you to hang on his every word. It’s a shame, then, that Rains, like Lugosi, would never truly return to the role, though Rains enjoyed a much more extensive career in Hollywood than Lugosi ever did.
It’s a good thing Rains is so first-class as Dr. Griffin, because the rest of the cast is serviceable at best. Gloria Stuart has a role that amounts to an extended cameo as Griffin’s fiancée Flora, who nominally incites the action of the film by announcing her paramour’s disappearance but never fully selling her affection for him. William Harrigan, too, is largely indistinguishable as Arthur Kemp, to the point where I had legitimate difficulty picking him out of crowd scenes. Elsewhere in the film, Henry Travers puts in a memorable turn as Flora’s father, though I can’t be sure if he’s exceptional here or if I simply recognize (and will always love) him from It’s a Wonderful Life. If there is a scene-stealer in the bunch, it’s Una O’Connor, whose shrieking innkeeper is both hysteric and hysterical, hollering her way through the film’s first act. It’s certainly one of those performances that leaves you wanting more.
After Rains, though, the star of the film is its special effects team. Even by 2020 standards, the 1933 special effects are fairly stellar. Sure, you can see the seams and strings on a 4K television today, but nevertheless it’s effectively spooky to watch Griffin unravel his bandages to reveal the hollowness underneath. There are several sequences where one senses Whale and his crew are just showing off – as when Griffin removes his bandages and tucks himself into bed. It’s a scene that serves no real purpose in the plot other than to highlight the uncanny special effects of the day, but this sort of narrative indulgence, even in a film that’s a tight 71 minutes, can be pardoned because of how well it works. It’s all well and good to be told that Griffin is invisible, but seeing – or not seeing, as the case may be – is believing.
The Universal Monster movies are nominally horror films, though there is seldom anything truly horrific about them, particularly to a desensitized audience in 2021. There’s gothic drama in spades, suspense and chills, but is anyone truly terrified of Frankenstein’s monster or of vampires? (Van Helsing’s admonition, “there are such things,” notwithstanding.) Meanwhile, the Invisible Man is genuinely scary, preying on the visual nature of film to expose the purest terror in cinema – the terror of the unseen. “There is no terror in the bang,” Hitchcock famously said, “only in the anticipation of it.” Likewise, the true terror of The Invisible Man is in not seeing him, not knowing when this otherwise common murderer may wrap his unseen fingers around your throat. The only warning you’ll get is that velvety voice snapping into a snarl before your car plummets off a cliff – that’s the stuff, Bogart might say, nightmares are made of.
The Invisible Man is not rated. Directed by James Whale. Written by R.C. Sherriff. Based on the novel by H.G. Wells. Starring Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan, Henry Travers, and Una O’Connor.
Next week for See-Thru Thursday, The Invisible Man Returns (1940), though he does and doesn’t, starring Vincent Price and Sir Cedric Hardwicke. But for bonus invisible shenanigans, Silly Sunday kicks off with Invisible Woman (1940), starring Virginia Bruce and John Barrymore.
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