The Invisible Man (1933)
“It's easy, really, if you're clever! A few chemicals mixed together. That's all. And flesh and blood and bones just - fade away.”
The Invisible Man, as a character, has fascinated me since I first saw The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He just looks really cool, and putting the character on film is an excuse to do fun visual effects and gags. In the original 1933 adaptation of H.G. Well’s novel, The Invisible Man is great, but the wacky assembly of background characters manages to be as interesting as the villain.
The Invisible Man centers on Dr. Jack Griffin who has made himself invisible with science. The film opens on him hiding away in an Inn to continue his experiments to gain more control over the invisibility. He quickly angers everybody at the inn before returning to an old colleague, Dr. Kemp, to assist him in continuing his work. All the while his betrothed, played by the iconic Gloria Stuart, wants to find and save Jack from himself.
Boris Karloff was originally considered for the role of the Invisible Man AKA Jack Griffin, but James Whale didn’t think he was right for the role. I think it would have been interesting if Karloff were given the role, as his previous horror roles were unspeaking, physical parts, and Griffin is literally invisible and the role is largely focused on voice acting. It seems Boris was typecast.
A bunch of Hollywood writers attempted to do something with the story before John Weld wrote a treatment that R.C Sherriff (writer of Journey's End, the play that put James Whale on the road to Hollywood), touched up. The script is really good.
H.G. Wells had final say on the script, and perhaps that’s why some of his social commentary comes through when similar adaptations flatten the central message of the source material. Allegedly, Wells requested to see scripts before shooting adaptations of his work as he was disappointed when The Island of Lost Souls failed to capture the central theme of the original story. Much of Dr. Jack Griffin’s monologuing is about using his invisibility for profit and amoral global domination—selling the technology as a weapon to the highest bidder. RIP Dr. Jack Griffin, you would have loved the 21st century.
It’s hard not to see Griffin through the 21st Century lens as a tech bro—he is solely focused on progress as a boost to his ego and has a self-made narrative that he shouts at his partner in one of their few scenes together. He doesn’t care about the larger social impact of his ideas—aside from his desire for his work to make an impact. He also doesn’t care about the interpersonal impact of his work—he leaves his partner, mentor, and colleagues without warning and only a vague note explaining his disappearance. Like many mad scientists we’ve seen in the 90 years since, Griffin is an egomaniac who is obsessed with making breakthroughs that show his own cleverness and making a profit off of them.
The script tells us that the same chemicals that make Dr. Griffin invisible also make him cuckoo crazy. It seems, however, that he was always an ass. He admits that he’s obsessive and secretive before he ever undergoes his invisible transformation. I notice a lot of parallels between this and the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptation—Dr. Jekyll is also a man who pushes science too far and ‘becomes evil’, but was always sort of a tool. Director James Whale is quoted saying “only a lunatic would want to make himself invisible in the first place”. I think Whale’s perspective comes through in this, which makes it more digestible and enjoyable than similar mad scientist films that lean into the “the science made them crazy” trope too much.
I think the Invisible Man aged well compared to similar stories because the story isn’t about a normal guy who snaps, but about a crazy guy who embraces his inner truth—to be a problem. Its central concept bothered me less than the “criminal brain” in Frankenstein, but I also have little patience for “crazy” villains.
This may be the most British of James Whale’s films I’ve seen. Much of the film takes place in a small working-class village populated by the wackiest Brits I’ve seen outside of Monty Python. Una O’Connor plays a hilarious innkeeper's wife. She’s loud, bossy, and funny.
And, of course, the effects in this movie make it worth a watch for visual effects nerds. John P Fulton (originally from Nebraska) did the visual effects on this movie.
The filmmakers used a sort of proto green-screen to make the actor invisible. In many scenes, Rains or a stuntman wore a black velvet bodysuit and hood and stood in front of a black velvet backdrop. The black velvet works like a black and white version of the green screen—the editors can layer the footage of the stunt man unraveling the bandages from his ‘invisible’ face over a filmed background or foreground shots. When the film is re-exposed, the black velvet ‘disappears’.
“Our actor was garbed from head to foot in black velvet tights, with black gloves, and a black headpiece rather like a driver’s helmet. Over this, he wore whatever clothes might be required. This gave us a picture of the unsupported clothes moving around on a dead black field. From this negative, we made a print, and a duplicate negative which we intensified to serve as mattes for printing. Then, with an ordinary printer, we proceeded to make our composite: first we printed from the positive of the background and the normal action, using the intensified, negative matte to mask off the area where our invisible man’s clothing was to move.”
— J.P. Fulton
While the black velvet trick looks a little clumsy watching in 2024, the prop effects age well. There’s lots of sequences where they used wires to push and pull props around as if Jack is manipulating them. This was made 60 years before Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and some of those tricks are done as good as in later movies.
Claude Rains’ face is only on screen for 20 seconds as Griffin is dying, and the filmmakers do the old “double exposure cross-fade” effect. This shot reminds me of similar shots in Jekyll & Hyde and The Lost Boys where the antagonist dies and we see their face transform from their “evil” appearance back to their default human one. That shot here, as well as in those other movies, drives home that this monster is just a guy. Here, though, there’s the added impact that this is Rains’ only moment in the entire movie where we see his uncovered face. I don’t see it in this film, but Claude Rains sort of looked like a less-rugged John Wayne to me (and ‘round these parts we don’t take kindly to John Wayne). Griffin is handsome and super dead at the end of the this movie, which leaves us with a great and tragic end.
Unfortunately, our leading lady Gloria Stuart is given fuck all to do in this movie. Like Elizabeth in Frankenstein, she spends her scenes fretting over her missing partner. I really loved Stuart in The Old Dark House, and she plays distraught well. Unfortunately, the script seems to think she is an afterthought, so she doesn’t get to shine like she did in our previous film where she is a proper protagonist.
I enjoy each James Whale movie I watch more than the last. Invisible Man is far goofier and quicker paced than Frankenstein and The Old Dark House. If you are a special effects nerd or like horror comedies, watch this movie. Claude Rains is my crush for this film. I love pathetic men in movies. His voice acting is top-notch, and Jack Griffin is cartoonishly bat shit. I want to acknowledge that Claude Rains’ co-lead Gloria Stuart found him egocentric and difficult to work with (perhaps this is part of the reason he was divorced 5 times).
Thank you so much for reading. I’ll be back next week to review my final James Whale horror film, The Bride of Frankenstein.
Sources:
Curtis, J. (1982). James Whale. Scarecrow Press.
Skal, D. J., & Rains, J. (2008). Claude rains : An actor's voice. University Press of Kentucky.
Wikipedia contributors. (2024, February 26). The Invisible Man (1933 film). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:02, February 29, 2024, fromhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Invisible_Man_(1933_film)&oldid=1210407141