Tuesday, October 27, 2020

31 Days of Horror: The Invisible Man (1933)

Directed by James Whale.
1933. Not rated, 71 minutes.
Cast: Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan, Dudley Digges, Una O'Connor, Henry Travers, Forrester Harvey, E. E. Clive, John Carradine.

    I must've watched Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein a dozen times during my youth. It led me to seek out Dracula and Frankenstein (also directed by James Whale), both from 1931, and The Wolf Man (1941). All of the main characters of those movies have a major part in Abbott and Costello's masterpiece. I enjoy them all and confirmed it by revisiting them in recent years, along with Bride of Frankenstein, arguably the best of them all. At the end of the Abbott and Costello flick, we get a teaser of a finale featuring The Invisible Man. Yet, for some reason, I never watched his movie, until now.

    What struck me right away is that when the movie starts, our titular character already possesses the powers announced by the title and has already fled the life he once knew. We meet him, Dr. Jack Griffin (Rains), as he's procuring a room at a local inn that sits above a bar in a small village. We see him because he's trying to appear as normal as possible, wearing all the clothing of a man of his station, and his head completely wrapped in bandages. Dark glasses hide the hollow-looking holes where his eyes should be and a toupee passes for hair. Everyone thinks him odd, especially with his angry demeanor and the demands he barks at the staff, but they don't think anything is too off. Once alone, we see him pull all sorts of scientific equipment out of his bag and begin experimenting. Soon enough, we get confirmation he is indeed invisible and is desperate to reverse his condition. His desperation is fueled by his longing to get back to Flora (Stewart), the love of his life. Eventually, things go sideways and Jack's goals become bigger and more sinister.

    Jumping into the story where we do is a double-edged sword. It helps the pace because it puts us much closer to the meat of the story. One thing about the Universal Monster pictures of this era, they're short. This is no exception, barely stretching beyond an hour. With not a minute to waste, we're already halfway through what should be the rising action and closing in on the climax. On the other hand, we never get the chance to like Dr. Griffin. This is key because the movie clearly wants you to sympathize with him. It's power lies in you doing just that. It just doesn't give us quite enough tools to do the job. We here him lament not being able to be with Flora, but for the first half of the movie she's barely in it. We spend most of that time with him treating everyone like crap. We learn that his condition affects his mind state. Not long after, he gives over to this, without much of a fight. We merely shrug our shoulders at the idea. After all, we didn't know him when he was this up and coming brilliant, yet charming scientist his friends and colleagues speak of whenever they appear. He's just a guy who goes from asshole to supervillain in the blink of an eye. That's not exactly breaking our hearts. Flora is the next logical person to get our dander up. However, like I said earlier, she doesn't get much airplay until late in the proceedings. When she does, she spends most of it moping about how much she misses her beloved Jack. It's naturally sad, just not sad enough for us to really care. Having only characters we either don't like, or are indifferent towards permeates our viewing. We keep waiting for something to pull us all the way in, but we never get it.

    We're left with marveling at, and/or nitpicking the special fx. Some of them look phenomenal and still hold up almost 90 years after the film's release. Visuals of things floating around, or otherwise moving on their own look great. I didn't see any visible strings (I don't think), or other things that would keep me from believing they were being manipulated by an invisible being. Unfortunately, some of that visual flair is subverting by the film's sound design. During scenes when The Invisible Man is wreaking havoc we get a lot of goofy noises. I gather that for a 1933 audience, these may have been needed help guide them through the action. However, this was the one place where my 2020 sensibilities took over. The noises combined with all the pratfalls people were doing come off like slapstick. The Invisible Man felt more like a mischievous prankster than a menacing unseen force.

    Star Claude Rains is, himself, an effect. Nearly his entire performance is given while buried beneath many layers of clothing and gauze. For those of you who remember the movie Darkman and what the hero in it wore, it's that, but to the nth degree. In scenes where the character is fully invisible, it's a voice-over performance. Rains does very well under both conditions. As far as nitpicks go, there are a few instances, when Rains has have parts of him visible and others not, that we clearly see his image is superimposed on the image of the whatever scenery he's supposed to be inhabiting. I can forgive it because there is some cgi out there right now that looks nearly as bad. 

    The Invisible Man is a mixed bag. There is lots to admire in terms of craftmanship. Putting what they did on screen is proof of the ingenuity of the filmmakers. They got creative where they had to and kept it simple in other spots. Unfortunately, from a storytelling standpoint, the film isn't as successful. It develops its main character, but only from what's naturally the halfway point of his arc. The missing half is critical to the feelings they're trying to evoke, but it's simply not there.


12 comments:

  1. I saw this film a few years ago and thought it was really good with what they had to use at the time. Plus, I think Claude Rains was awesome in this.

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    1. Rains is great, and they made great use of their tools as far as visuals go. The story itself knocked it down a bit for me.

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  2. I'd agree that the story could have been more fleshed out but you have to remember that Universal at the time was a sausage factory turning out a vast amount of product as rapidly as possible to fill their theatres. The fact that they spent the money for decent special effects in and of itself is a little surprising, they weren't MGM or Paramount which were still "factories" per se but ones that were willing and able to lavish money on production design.

    Horror however was Universal's bread and butter at this point (even it would falter over the next couple of years with the studio coming close to bankruptcy until a fortuitous set of circumstances led to them signing Deanna Durbin in 1936. Her musicals proved to be so enormously popular and profitable they save studio.) so they were willing to be a bit more risky. Again his character could be more incisively drawn but with Claude Rains's voice doing so much of the heavy lifting the lack of his physical presence isn't felt as keenly as a it would be with a less adept actor in the role.

    I don't love it (but you know me how many horror films do I really love anyway?) for its age though it is an entertaining and impressive flick. Love seeing Gloria Stuart in her early films, she's very different from Old Rose in Titanic but you can still see a connection and she was a lovely actress. Not as forceful as say Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck but not a pallid blank either.

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    1. I get what you're saying about Universal. The problem with that is that a number of the other monster movies from the same era were more successful at telling their stories. I don't get the same sense of lacking when watching them (the ones I've seen).

      Agreed, Rain's did a whole lot to help this movie along.

      I'm not so familiar with Stuart, but she seems pleasant enough. I wish she had been given more to do.

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    2. I'm not surprised you aren't familiar with Gloria Stuart. Though she was a favorite of James Whale and appeared in several of his films besides Invisible Man including The Old Dark House she was never a major star more of an important leading lady throughout the 30's. But she grew dissatisfied with the parts being offered and being happily married with a young child she retired from acting for the next 30 years turning her focus to her passion for the creative physical arts (painting, printing and the like). She returned to acting after her husband passed away in the 70's in small roles as a sort of hobby but by the time Cameron approached her she had more or less retired again.

      She wasn't first choice for Old Rose. Cameron wanted an experienced actress who had achieved some level of fame but one who hadn't been a huge star with the baggage that carries and first offered the part to Fay Wray who long retired said no. He then turned to Ann Rutherford, who had held about the same level of recognition as Stuart but at MGM (her greatest claims to fame were as Polly Benedict Mickey Rooney's steady girlfriend in the Andy Hardy series and she had played Scarlett's youngest sister Carreen in Gone with the Wind) but also like her had retired to a happy marriage and motherhood and also demurred. The only other serious contender after Ann passed was Marguerite Chapman who had been a B level star in the 40's & 50's but she was too ill to accept and die shortly afterwards. Then the casting director of the film approached Gloria and Cameron felt a connection with her instantly. She's one of the best parts of this version of Titanic so it worked out very well and she received an Oscar nomination to boot!

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    3. She was excellent in Titanic. Obviously, I have some catching up to do on the rest of her work.

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  3. I agree with you that the story is lacking. This needed half an hour at the start to sell the whole thing. However, I think it's accurate to the source material, which starts in the same place if memory serves.

    Still, I want to see the descent into madness rather than starting at the bottom of the slide.

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    1. Exactly! It may be accurate to the source material, but that doesn't mean it's what works best for the film. Also, the book could get away with it easier because it's a full novel which has a lot more space to build than a 70 minute movie.

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  4. I. With Joel I. His critique of this film. I remember my dad saying that when he saw this in the theatre( yup he was 20 at the time...51 when I was born), he so enjoyed the film and he didn’t consider it so much a horror film but more a dark comedy. I think, due to Rain’s brilliant performance, this is why the invisible man, in other films is more of a jokester( not the nutjob from the recent film). The special effects was excellent and makes me long for the time when CGI was not the go to effects that so many use today. It is short and I do long for more but I still love this film.

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    1. Your dad was 51 when you were born. Wow! I'm almost 50 and cannot imagine my wife and I having a new baby. Anyhoo, this is the first time I've heard it called a dark comedy. It makes sense. Had I approached it like one, I may have liked it a bit better. Then again, maybe not, since my main gripe is where it started. The problem with cgi is that it has become the go to. It's used on things unnecessarily. I just watched the new version of The Witches and for some odd reason, they have a cgi cat. The cat has exactly one scene less than a minute long where it does anything noteworthy, the rest of the time it just walks or trots from one spot to another and/or hisses. Instead of using a real cat for that and only going digital for the extraordinary thing it needs to do in that brief (and dark) scene, they just went with a computer generated rendition that's pretty easy to spot. Sigh.

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  5. The thing I've always found most amusing about this movie is how much he laughs when he's invisible. Like, you're kind of giving yourself away, dude.

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