The Invisible Man is a 1933 pre-Code American science fiction horror film directed by James Whale loosely based on H. G. Wells's 1897 novel, The Invisible Man, produced by Universal Pictures, and starring Gloria Stuart, Claude Rains and William Harrigan. The film involves a stranger named Dr. Jack Griffin (Rains) who is covered in bandages and has his eyes obscured by dark glasses, the result of a secret experiment that makes him invisible, taking lodging in the village of Iping. Never leaving his quarters, the stranger demands that the staff leave him completely alone until his landlady and the villagers discover he is invisible. Griffin goes to the house of his colleague, Dr. Kemp (William Harrigan) and tells him of his plans to create a reign of terror. His fiancée Flora Cranley (Gloria Stuart), the daughter of his employer Dr. Cranley (Henry Travers), soon learn that Griffin's discovery has driven him insane, leading him to prove his superiority over other people by performing harmless pranks at first and eventually turning to murder.
The Invisible Man was in development for Universal as early as 1931 when Richard L. Schayer and Robert Florey suggested that Wells' novel would make a good follow-up to the studio's horror film hit Dracula. Universal opted to make Frankenstein in 1931 instead. This led to several screenplay adaptations being written and a number of potential directors including Florey, E. A. Dupont, Cyril Gardner, and screenwriters John L. Balderston, Preston Sturges, and Garrett Fort all signing on to develop the project intending it to be a film for Boris Karloff. Following Whale's work on The Old Dark House starring Karloff and The Kiss Before the Mirror, Whale signed on and his screenwriting colleague R. C. Sherriff developed a script in London. Production began in June 1933 and ended in August with two months of special effects work done following the end of filming.
On the film's release in 1933, it was a great financial success for Universal and received strong reviews from several trade publications, and likewise from The New York Times, which deemed it one of the best films of 1933. The film spawned several sequels that were relatively unrelated to the original film in the 1940s. The film continued to receive praise on re-evaluations by critics such as Carlos Clarens, Jack Sullivan, and Kim Newman, as well as being listed as one of their favorite genre films by filmmakers John Carpenter, Joe Dante, and Ray Harryhausen. In 2008, The Invisible Man was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2004, Universal released The Invisible Man: The Legacy Collection on DVD as part of the Universal Legacy Collection. This two-disc release includes The Invisible Man, along with The Invisible Man Returns (1940), The Invisible Woman (1940), Invisible Agent (1942), and The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944), as well as a short documentary Now You See Him: The Invisible Man Revealed, hosted by film historian Rudy Behlmer. In 2012, Universal Studios celebrated its 100th anniversary and released a restored version of The Invisible Man as it had done for Dracula, Frankenstein, and Bride of Frankenstein. Universal engaged Technicolor Creative Service to prepare a new print, combined with Universal's preservation acetate dupe negative and a nitrate dupe found at the British Film Institute. This new print featured long-missing frames, and digital repair of scratches, stains, and improved sound. In the same year, The Invisible Man was released on Blu-ray as part of the Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection box set, which includes nine films from the Universal Classic Monsters series. The film received a standalone Blu-ray release in 2013, followed by a six-film release of the films in the Invisible Man series in a Complete Legacy Collection on Blu-ray. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released the film on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on October 5, 2021.
Reception
Contemporary
Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times and the critic credited as "Char" in Variety commented on the originality of the material, with Hall finding the film to be a "remarkable achievement" that surprised him that it was not attempted earlier. "Char." reflected on this, stating it brought "something new and refreshing in film frighteners". Critics also praised the crew, such as Thornton Delehanty of The New York Post who referred to the film as "one of the best thrillers of the year", complimented the work of Sherriff and the "quality of awesomeness and suspense" Whale provided.
Kate Cameron of the New York Daily News gave the film a three and a half star rating, praising Rains's performance, stating, "his voice carrying a sinister note that is very effective in this kind of horror role" and declared the film to be one that "should not be missed". More general praise came from other publications from Film Daily wrote: "It will satisfy all those who like the bizarre and the outlandish in their film entertainment" and John Mosher of The New Yorker called the film a "bright little oddity". The New York Times placed the film at number nine on its 1933 Ten Best list.
Retrospective
In his 1967 book The Illustrated History of Horror and Science-Fiction Films, Carlos Clarens praised the film, stating that "the scene where Griffin first flaunts his invisibility is the kind of cinema magic that paralyzes disbelief and sets the most skeptical audience wondering". Clarens noted that "not only is the show a technical tour de force, The Invisible Man also contains some of the best dialogue ever written for a fantastic film". Jack Sullivan wrote in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986) that the gags in The Invisible Man were "the opposite of strained", noting that Griffin singing wearing only his pyjama pants was "a piece of unabashed prankishness, but it's also something beyond that: the sudden eye-opening enchantment of the scene is worthy of Grimms or L. Frank Baum" concluding the scene was "the perfect image to define Whale's lightly horrific fairy-tale magic". In Phil Hardy's 1984 book Science Fiction, he praised Fulton's special effects as "deservedly [...] widely praised" noting they "still create a primitive sense of amazement and wonder". While describing the screenplay as "slow-moving" he felt that, "Whale's impish sense of black comedy remains a delight". In Kim Newman and James Marriott's book The Definitive Guide to Horror Movies (2006), Marriott praised the film as "a perfectly judged marriage of menace and comedy, anchored by superlative special effects and a bravura performance from Rains". Newman praised the special effects in the film, declaring that "special effects genius John P. Fulton accomplished with 1930s technology was certainly on a par with anything in 1992's Chevy Chase vehicle Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992)". Newman also praised Rains's role as Griffin, noting the "expressive gestures" as "vital to his performance" and his "terrific voice: velvety with a sly twist, perfect for those wonderful mad scientist speeches". Newman concluded in his five-star review of the film in Empire that "if you set aside Frankenstein as more of a horror film and King Kong (1933) as a fantasy, The Invisible Man is the first truly great American science fiction film".
Retrospective response to the film includes it being listed on several "Best-of" genre lists. In the book The Variety Book of Movie Lists, The Invisible Man is listed among the best films of certain genres by artists in their respective fields. This included directors Joe Dante (Best of Horror), John Carpenter (Best Science Fiction) where he referred to the film as "brilliant", and Ray Harryhausen (Best of Fantasy) where Harryhausen stated that "where do science fiction and so-called horror films begin and fantasy films leave off? Surely they must overlap". In Phil Hardy's Science Fiction (1984), when critics were asked to list the greatest science fiction films of all time, critic Denis Gifford included it in his top ten. In 2008, The Invisible Man was selected for inclusion in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Legacy
Universal revived an Invisible Man character for future films but did not attempt to connect the films with any direct storyline as they had done with their films The Mummy or Frankenstein. Examples of these connections include The Invisible Man Returns where the character Geoffrey Radcliffe (Vincent Price) receives the invisibility formula from Dr. Frank Griffin (John Sutton), a relative of Jack Griffin from the first film and Invisible Agent where Frank Raymond is the grandson of Jack Griffin. In The Invisible Man's Revenge, the screenplay does not connect Robert Griffin with the previous Griffins who either created, understood, and or operated with the invisibility formula. Universal Pictures first announced the development of The Invisible Man Returns in March 1939, around the time Son of Frankenstein (1939) had been performing decently at the box office. The Invisible Man Returns was distributed theatrically on January 12, 1940. The Invisible Man character shows up in Son of the Invisible Man, one of the episodes of the film Amazon Women on the Moon (1987). The scene is directed by Carl Gottlieb and features Ed Begley, Jr. in an inn similar to the 1933 film where he only thinks he is invisible.
Rains' career benefited greatly from his role in the film, allowing him to become one of Hollywood's most valuable actors. It led him to roles that Newman praised as "everything from The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) (as Bad King John) to Casablanca (1942)". In his 1934 autobiography, Wells only mentioned the film version of The Invisible Man briefly, stating that it was "a tale that, thanks largely to the recent film produced by James Whale, is still read as much as ever it was". Reflecting on her work at Universal, Gloria Stuart described working at the studio as very low quality, noting how ramshackle it was with make-up rooms and wardrobe areas being "very, very primitive" and that apart from the films she made with Whale, she declared all her work at Universal was "terrible" and "real B stuff", noting that the cast and crew working at Universal "considered it slumming".
Reboots
Unlike other Universal properties, The Invisible Man did not receive any immediate remakes such as those done by Hammer Film Productions.
A remake of The Invisible Man entered development as of February 2016, when Johnny Depp was announced to star in the remake with Ed Solomon writing the film's script, and Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan as the producers. Kurtzman and Morgan moved on to other projects the following year on November 8. In 2019, Universal began production on the new The Invisible Man that was written and directed by Leigh Whannell and produced by Jason Blum, starring Elisabeth Moss and Oliver Jackson-Cohen as the titular character.
When a trailer for the film was released in December the same year, Robert Moran of The Sydney Morning Herald commented that it "met with the kind of confusion that could rattle a filmmaker, not to mention a studio. It seems monster movie fans, long-attuned to the bandage-wrapped antics of The Invisible Man of yore, weren't expecting Whannell's allegory on domestic violence trauma". Whannell commented on his change from the norm on the style, explaining that he knew there was going to be some backlash against the film as he was "modernizing it and centering it not around the Invisible Man but his victim". Whannel compared his The Invisible Man film to the popular image of the character: "The iconic image of the Invisible Man is one of a floating pair of sunglasses, you know? I knew I had to move it away from that". Whannell's The Invisible Man was released on February 28, 2020.
See also
- 1933 in science fiction
- List of horror films of the 1930s
- List of science fiction films of the 1930s
- List of Universal Pictures films (1930–1939)