The Invisible Man's Revenge

The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944)

Directed by: Ford Beebe

Written by: Bertram Millhauser, suggested by The Invisible Man by HuG Wells

Starring: Jon Hall, Leon Errol, Alan Curtis, John Carradine, Evelyn Ankers, Lester Matthews, Gale Sondergaard

Okay, to continue on my rant about the Griffen family, this guy, Robert Griffen, doesn't seem to have anything to do with any of the other ones (though he does look suspiciously like Frank from Invisible Agent. I wonder why...).

Anyway, this one is a great deal more interesting than Agent. It's about this crazy guy who gets injected with the magic invisibility potion by John Carradine (no relation to the discoverers of the potion in the previous films) in order to kick the asses of the people who stole his money.

I sort of sympathized with invisible guy for a while there. I mean, he was having a pretty bad time. First he got hit on the head, then his friends ditched him and stole his diamond mines or something, and them he wakes up in a mental institution. Sure, he killed three of the people working there, but he was under a lot of stress.

Of course then he had to go turn into a vampire and abuse the Carradine. Not cool. Oh well, the cute invisible dog gets it's revenge on him.

Yeah, so in this one the Invisible Man has to inject people's blood into him in order to revisible himself, which is different, and kind of interesting.

Also different and interesting was that the Invisible Man was crazy before he got invisible. (I suppose Claude Rains might have been insane prior to his invisiblation, it's hard to tell, but according the logic provided in earlier films (if that really can be trusted) the magic potion makes you crazy).

Not strictly a comedy, like Invisible Agent or Invisible Woman, though it did have some comic relief with Leon Errol, which was pretty amusing. I always find it slightly disconcerting when that stuff starts to be funny to me. I don't know, it's just kind of weird.

I always love the FX in these Invisible Man movies, too. They're just so great. I mean, yeah, you can see the strings and the silhouette or the guy, but I find that stuff kind of cute. I love the hugely complicated string systems for putting keys in doors and crap like that.

But yeah, this is probably one of the more worthy invisible man movies, equal to the first two. I guess. For those who are watching, oh, say, the Invisible Man Legacy Collection, and aren't psychotic nutbars about those old movies (because if you are, you won't really care if the movie's good or not, just as long as it's old and it's got great FX), I would suggest skipping Agent and Woman and getting straight to this one.

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