I've always liked Claude Rains, so it's about time I watched his breakout film. He's so great in classics like CASABLANCA and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA it's easy to forget he got his start in Universal horror flicks. Then again, before I saw this one, I saw him in THE WOLF MAN, where he stole the show, so INVISIBLE MAN isn't such a stretch.
INVISIBLE MAN must be one of the strangest breakout performances of all time. Because the movie is about an invisible man, you don't see Claude Rains until, literally, the last scene of the movie. He spends the rest of the movie either wrapped in bandages or running around completely invisible, his movements rendered with special effects. So, a reasonable audience member might wonder, is this actually Claude Rains we're seeing? I guess the answer is "sometimes." The important thing is his voice: it carries the movie with its theatrical and over-the-top mad-man antics.
Watching the opening credits just hammers home the level of talent involved in this production. The first name you see is Carl Laemmle, the dude who produced all the great early Universal horror flicks. Then, Claude Rains as the Invisible Man. Then, based on a novel by H.G. Wells. And finally, directed by James Whale, the guy who brought us FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, two of the greatest horror films ever made.
Now, once you see James Whale involved, you know the movie's going to have a warped sense of humor. Whale was a master at delivering the horror film Universal wanted while subversively slipping some dark comedy in on the side. THE INVISIBLE MAN gives a lot of opportunities for comedy, as you imagine a story about an invisible dude running around might. He steals bikes, knocks peoples' hats off, throws ink in the face of police men. It also features Una O'Conner in one of her screaming old biddy roles as an inn-keepers wife. Her performance doesn't stand the test of time well, but you can see what Whale was going for and Una O'Conner really put everything she had into it, much as she did later with THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and to a lesser extent THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD.
The story is very similar to a lot of the other old horror movies I've been watching lately -- an otherwise good-natured scientist gets obsessed with his experiments to the point where he alienates his colleagues and his lady-friend. He ends up turning himself into a monster, in this case, an invisible man, and spends the rest of the movie alternatively attempting to solve his problem and make himself normal again and giving into his more monstrous urges and exacting revenge on those who would be his undoing, who, tragically, sometimes turn out to be his former buddies.
This time around the larger theme is the idea of absolute power corrupting absolutely. The Invisible Man gets so obsessed with how cool it is to be invisible, that he decides he's untouchable and can always be one step ahead of everyone who stands against him. There's also some talk about the drugs he took to become invisible in the first place also turning him insane, so I guess he's not just drunk with power, but only half drunk with power.
Aside from the comedic moments listed above, Whale gets a lot of mileage out of Britain itself, lampooning the stoic Britishness of the ineffectual police officers and contrasting the mania of the mad scienist against simple pub-dwelling villagers. It gives a quaint flavor to what could just be a by-the-numbers thriller in lesser hands.
Oh yeah! And the special effects! Man, this was when special effects were really special. I defy you to tell me how they did some of the invisible man effects in this flick. Sure, they're not all perfect and some of them show somewhat fuzzy edges, but for a 76 year old flick, they're pretty impressive. And keep in mind, these dudes sat around and made this stuff up from scratch. The best part is when the Invisible Man unwraps his bandages to show nothing underneath, but there are also some sweet parts where disembodied pants and shirt run around rooms, clearly not done with wires and empty shirts, but with a physical performer who has been carefully removed from the image, no computers involved of course.
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