The Invisible Man

The early monstrous mass of Universal bogeys put down roots in the pop-culture zeitgeist as deep as any to be found in the most ancient burial grounds. The mesmeric hold of Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man is formidable; they’re almost impossible to escape, no matter how watered down that culture becomes, as though the cemetery had been flooded in an attempt to turn it into a reservoir, corrupted drinking water and all.

Right behind these monsters—in terms of cinematic potency, if not widespread influence—is the Invisible Man, played—mostly unseen—by Claude Rains in the film of the same name directed by James Whale in 1933. One suspects that those who know the movie love it dearly, while others, having read a summarizing line or two, are apt to give it a pass on the basis that this monster is heard rather than seen—at least directly. We’re often left with an indirect visual of him as he leaves footprints in the newly fallen snow, knocks over a stroller with a chubby-cheeked innocent inside, or swats the hat off a copper’s head.

The story is adapted from H.G. Wells’s 1897 novel. Wells could induce scares and laughs in equal measure (try his short story “The Inexperienced Ghost” as a perfect example). Whale was similar, and this picture, like his Bride of Frankenstein, is a mordant-monster tour de force. It’s pre-Code horror for smart people, more intangibly bookish than Edgar G. Ulmer’s very loose 1934 Poe adaptation, The Black Cat. The Invisible Man wasn’t really meant for viewers primarily (and oft-exclusively) interested in fangs being sunk into necks and the overnight guard getting his throat torn out behind a bush. Its brows are rather higher than lower.

We have a science-gone-wrong-because-of-man’s-vaulting-ambition tale, and thus a scintilla of academic gravitas. There will be “commoners” here, but also people who ought to be more enlightened, at least in theory, which, as we know, often means nothing at best and the inverse at worst.

Rains is Dr. Jack Griffin, a young scientist stewarded by the older Dr. Cranley, played by the always delightful Henry Travers. A strange brew is invented by the younger man sans regard for natural order—a virtual gimme of doctor-based horror films—and the problems begin.

We first meet Griffin on a lonely, snowy road as he makes his way to one of those quintessential horror taverns that we’d love to be able to frequent ourselves for mugs of porter and stories told round the fire by people who look like they were grown in the very dirt outside. You could say that that the rogue doc has a wasting disease of the extreme variety. Take away his clothes—and never has there been a movie with more nudity, in theory, without any actual nudity—and he looks like the air.