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Rating:  -
Claude Rains is amazing. The special effects are amazing. This is 1933 folks! And yet the "invisable man" fx isn't a mere gimmick, the acting from Rains really pulls the story dramatically. I love this movie.
Rating:  -
Claude Raines began a long and distinguished career as an actor who could mesmerize with his rich and resonant voice. In THE INVISIBLE MAN, it is his voice that captures the audience even as his body is either buried in a mummy wrap or cavorts about the countryside unseen. The special effects of 1933 were quite primitive but director Jack Whale makes effective use of the ordinary: unwrapping of bandages to reveal blank space, doors opening and closing, and footsteps appearing in the snow. The film closely follows the novel by H. G. Wells as it presents in a thinly veiled allegory the wasted potential of one man however powerful to challenge the world. Raines is scientist Jack Griffin, who tests a new and unproven drug on himself, the result of which is to render him invisible. An unexpected side effect is that the user goes unmistakeably mad. His fiance Flora (Gloria Stuart) tries to stand by his side but all she can do is to hear him rant about how he will make the world grovel at his feet. The film is divided into two clear parts. In the first, we see Griffin as a man who seeks the solitude needed to find a cure for his then unwanted invisibility. As he takes a room, he is irritable, grumpy, and just plain mean to his landlady (Una O'Connor), who, through her habit of non stop screaming and whining, swiftly justifies his harshness toward her. One would think that had Griffin sublimated his need to wax nasty, then he might have convinced her to allow him to finish his experiments in peace. Kemp (William Harrigan), Griffin's fellow scientist, is intimidated enough to try to help Griffin, not just to find a cure but to create an army of invisible soldiers whose leaders will pay handsomely for the secret. The second half allegorically and occasionally humorously depicts the fate of anyone who challenges the world alone. Griffin escapes from the police and sets tricks and traps that amuse, but in a frenzy of mania, he derails a train causing the deaths of hundreds. No one can escape the collective power of established society, and his inevitable fate punctuates the finality of those who try. THE INVISIBLE MAN is a stunning film that, despite the irritating screaming of Miss O'Connor, is as spellbinding today in its implications of the one against the many as it was way back in 1933.
Rating: -
The Invisible Man is one hour and eleven minutes long and was released on November 13, 1933. This film marks the debut of Claude Rains, who plays Dr. Jack Griffin (The Invisible Man). We only see Claude Rains briefly at the end of the movie when he is dying from a gun shot wound and becoming visible once again. During the rest of the film his face is covered in bandages or we only hear his voice. Before blue screen technology was invented the special effects on the invisibility are great. Talk about being creative. This movie was way ahead of its time. There is only one minor flaw in the movie. Since the movie is set in England; Dr. Jack Griffin looks up at a sign that says "Iping ½ mile." England has a metric system so it should of read kilometers. This is by far a great movie to watch and own. I will give The Invisible Man an AAAAA+++++.
Rating: -
I actually enjoyed this movie a little more than the book. What makes this movie so interesting is that it gives us an invisible man for show, but we see that it is insanity which is the true horror.
The movie starts with Dr. Griffin (the invisible man) coming to a tavern/hotel. Many patrons are uneasy about him, but some feel there is no real reason to dislike him despite his oddness. Later, he wreaks some havoc as he tries to find a way to make himself visible again. (He almost kills the owner of the tavern.) This is when the chase starts; at this point, the movie looks more like a comedy than anything, as the townspeople try hopelessly to catch an invisible man.
Dr. Griffin reunites with his friend Dr. Kemp, and Griffin reveals to some extent why he did this experiment. Now the movie stops being funny and becomes quite disturbing as Griffin reveals his intentions: "We'll begin with a few murders. Murders of big men, murders of little men. Just to show we make no distinction. We might even wreck a train or two." It turns out that the drugs that made Griffin invisible had an ugly side effect. (They gradually drove him insane.) The invisibility is not so bad. That could have been cured. But the insanity is very frightening, and very plausible I may add. Griffin even rebukes the man who may be able to help him. ("He has the brain of a tape worm, a maggot compared to mine.")
People start getting killed, and Kemp fears for his life because he can not play along with these killings. The townsmen and police try harder to catch the invisible man and start finding methods that might make more sense, but Griffin becomes more insane, and more brutal. And perhaps the most scary thing about this movie is that we can see (possibly through Claude Rains's great acting) that Griffin was at one time a good person.
Overall, this is a phenomenal movie that shows us that insanity is the true (and lost) meaning of horror.
Rating: -
Many reviewers say the film's special effects look "dated". Well, DUH! What do you expect?? The movie is almost 80 freakin' years old, people! And you know what? Like all of the Whale films, it holds up better than 99% of the films made back then. Believe it or not folks, just because a movie is in black and white and doesn't have blood/gore does not automatically make it boring or bad. For example: there was a great, unbelievably frightening little film made in the early '60's called The Haunting. It was a b/w haunted house drama with Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Russ Tamblyn and Richard Johnson, and it relied on atmosphere, suspense, and psychological horror. They remade the movie in about 2000, thinking that they could really work wonders with today's state-of-the-art special effects and technical wizardry. The result was an awful and overblown mess of a movie which no one cared about.
But hey--I'm not revewing The Haunting, am I? My point is that a great film can be made using old equipment and methods, as long as the director and photographer really know their stuff. And that there is a real danger in assuming that more money, bigger names and modern equipment will automatically yield a better product.
This movie is still fabulously entertaining. Like all of Whale's work, it contains moments of laugh-out-loud humor, tender emotions, tragedy and horror. It's beautifully photographed, and the lighting is wonderfully artful (black and white at its best). We can't see Rains, but at least we can hear that splendid voice. We get to see Gloria Stuart, an incredibly beautiful young thing in the early '30's, who also appeared in another Whale masterpiece, The Old Dark House.
One of my all-time favorites.
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