The Invisible Man (1933 film)

The Invisible Man
File:The-Invisible-Man.jpg theatrical poster
Directed by	James Whale
Written by	Novel: H.G. Wells Screenplay: R. C. Sherriff Philip Wylie (uncredited) Preston Sturges (uncredited)
Produced by	Carl Laemmle Jr.
Starring	Claude Rains Gloria Stuart
Cinematography	Arthur Edeson
Edited by	Ted J. Kent
Music by	Heinz Roemheld
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release dates	November 13, Template:Fy (US)
Running time	71 mins.
Country	United States
Language	English

The Invisible Man is a 1933 horror film based on H. G. Wells' science fiction novel The Invisible Man, published in 1897, as adapted by R. C. Sherriff, Philip Wylie and Preston Sturges, whose work was considered unsatisfactory and who was taken off the project. The film was directed by James Whale and stars Claude Rains, in his first American screen appearance, and Gloria Stuart. It is considered one of the great Universal Horror films of the 1930s, and spawned a number of sequels, plus many spinoffs using the idea of an "invisible man" that were largely unrelated to Wells' original story.

In his first American screen appearance, Rains portrayed the Invisible Man (Dr. Jack Griffin) mostly only as a disembodied voice. Rains is only shown clearly for a brief time at the end of the film, spending most of his on-screen time covered by bandages.

Plot

The film opens with a mysterious stranger, his face swathed in bandages and his eyes obscured by dark spectacles, taking a room at an inn at the English village of Iping (in Sussex). Never leaving his quarters, the stranger demands that the staff leave him completely alone. However, his dark secret is slowly revealed to his suspicious landlady and the villagers: he is an invisible man. When the innkeeper (Forrester Harvey) and his semi-hysterical wife (Una O'Connor) tell him to leave after he makes a huge mess in the parlor and drives away the other patrons, he tears off the bandages, laughing maniacally, and throws the innkeeper down the stairs. He takes off the rest of his clothes, rendering himself completely invisible, and tries to strangle a police officer.

The invisible stranger is revealed as Dr. Jack Griffin (Claude Rains), a scientist who has discovered the secret of invisibility while conducting a series of tests with a strange new drug called "monocane". He returns to the laboratory of his mentor, Dr. Cranley (Henry Travers), where he reveals his secret to his fiancee Flora Cranley (Gloria Stuart), Dr. Cranley's daughter, and to his one-time partner Dr. Kemp (William Harrigan). Monocane has rendered Griffin's entire body undetectable to the human eye; alas, it also has the side-effect of driving Griffin insane. Cranley has investigated and discovered a single note about monocane (Griffin has burnt all his other papers to cover his tracks) in a now empty cupboard in Griffin's empty laboratory, and realizes that Griffin has recently used it. On the evening of his escape from the inn, Griffin turns up in Kemp's living room and imprisons him in his own house. He forces Kemp to be his partner again, and together they go back to the inn where Griffin stayed and retrieve his notebooks on the invisibility process. While there, he picks up a wooden stool and cracks the police officer over the head, killing him.

Kemp calls Cranley, asking for help, and then secretly calls the police. Flora comes to him and they talk for only a minute, until the police show up. Their conversation reveals that the two are completely devoted to each other, and she is as infatuated with him as he her. In Flora's presence, Griffin becomes more placid, and calls her "darling". He rants about power, but when he realises Kemp betrayed him to the police through the window, his first reaction is getting Flora to flee, and out of danger. She begs to let her stay, but he says softly, "The only thing you can do is get out of here. Then they can't hurt you. Go, my darling." After promising Kemp that at 10:00 PM the next night he will murder him, Griffin escapes again and a reign of terror ensues, the Invisible Man running down the streets killing, robbing, and reciting nursery rhymes in a malicious voice. The police offer a monetary award for anyone who can think of a way to catch the Invisible Man.

They disguise Kemp as a police officer and lead him away from his house to protect him, but Griffin has been following them all along. He forces Kemp into the front seat of his car with his hands tied and releases the emergency brake. The car rolls down a steep hill, over a cliff, and explodes.

Finally, after derailing a train and throwing off a cliff two men who are searching for him with the police as volunteers, Griffin rests in a barn. Alerted by the farmer, the police set fire to the barn. When Griffin comes out, the police sight his footprints in the snow and open fire, mortally wounding him. Griffin is taken to hospital where, on his deathbed, he admits to Flora that he has tampered with a type of science that was meant to be left alone. The effects of the monocane wear off the moment he dies, and he becomes visible once again.

Differences between novel and film

Although the film is sometimes hailed for its fidelity to H.G. Wells' novel, it changes many aspects. The story is updated to 1933, rather than taking place in the 1890s. Griffin does not have a fiancee in the novel, there is no Dr. Cranley, and Griffin does not kill Kemp. (In fact, in the book, it is Kemp who pronounces Griffin dead at the end.) Kemp is neither an old friend nor an old partner of Griffin's in the novel, just an acquaintance. Most important, Griffin does not use monocane to make himself invisible in the book, but instead another unnamed formula, and it is strongly hinted in the novel that Griffin was already mad long before he ever made himself invisible. The film portrays Griffin much more sympathetically than the novel, in which Kemp describes Griffin as "inhuman" to the police. In the film, he is shown regretting what he has done to Flora; Griffin shows no such regrets in the novel.

Cast

File:Invisible Man Claude Rains.jpg

Claude Rains as The Invisible Man

• Claude Rains as Dr. Jack Griffin – The Invisible Man
• Gloria Stuart as Flora Cranley
• William Harrigan as Dr. Arthur Kemp
• Henry Travers as Dr. Cranley
• Una O'Connor as Jenny Hall
• Forrester Harvey as Herbert Hall
• Holmes Herbert as Chief of Police
• E.E. Clive as Constable Jaffers
• Duddley Digges as Chief Detective
• Harry Stubbs as Inspector Bird
• Donald Stuart as Inspector Lane
• Merle Tottenham as Millie

Cast notes:

• Several notable character actors appear in minor roles, including Dwight Frye as a reporter, Walter Brennan as a man whose bicycle is stolen, and John Carradine, acting at that time under the name Peter Richmond, as a Cockney informer.

Production

Claude Rains was not the studio's first choice to play the lead role in The Invisible Man. Boris Karloff was originally supposed to play the part, but withdrew after producer Carl Laemmle Jr. tried too many times to cut Karloff's contractual salary. To replace Karloff, Chester Morris, Paul Lukas and Colin Clive were considered for the part. It was James Whale, who was assigned to direct the film to replace Cyril Gardner, who wanted the "intellectual voice" of Claude Rains to play "Griffin" – Rains was his first and only choice, although he did temporarily agree to Clive as a tactic in creating a demand for Rains. Problems in developing the script held up the project for some time: in June Template:Fy the film was called off temporarily.

The Invisible Man was in production from June to August Template:Fy at Universal's studios in Los Angeles. Filming was interrupted near the end by a fire, started by a smudge pot kicked into some hay, which damaged an exterior set.

The film was released on 13 November Template:Fy, and was marketed with the taglines "Catch me if you can!" and "H.G. Well's Fantastic Sensation".

Special Effects

The film is known for its clever and groundbreaking visual effects by John P. Fulton, John J. Mescall and Frank D. Williams whose work is often credited for the success of the film. When the Invisible Man had no clothes on, the effect was achieved through the use of wires, but when he had some of his clothes on or was taking his clothes off, the effect was achieved by shooting Claude Rains in a completely black velvet suit against a black velvet background and then combining this shot with another shot of the location the scene took place in using a matte process. Claude Rains was claustrophobic and it was hard to breathe through the suit. Consequently, the work was especially difficult for him, and a double, who was somewhat shorter than Rains, was sometimes used.

The effect of Rains seeming to disappear was created by making a head and body cast of actor, from which a mask was made. The mask was then photographed against a specially prepared background, and the film was treated in the laboratory to complete the effect.

Reaction, awards and honors

The Invisible Man was named by the New York Times as one of the Ten Best Films of 1933, but H. G. Wells, the author of the book the film was based on, said of the film, at a dinner in its honor, that "while he liked the picture he had one grave fault to find with it. It had taken his brilliant scientist and changed him into a lunatic, a liberty he could not condone." James Whale replied that the film was addressed to the "rationally minded motion picture audience," because "in the minds of rational people only a lunatic would want to make himself invisible anyway." Despite his misgivings, Wells did find favor with the performance of Una O'Connor who played the shrieking Mrs. Hall.

Whale, who had previous directed Frankenstein as well as the first version of Waterloo Bridge, received a Special Recommendation from the Template:Fy Venice Film Festival in recognition of his work on The Invisible Man.

The career of Claude Rains took off after The Invisible Man, which was his first American film appearance. He went on to be nominated for Academy Awards for "Best Supporting Actor" in Template:Fy (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), Template:Fy (Casablanca), Template:Fy (Mr. Skeffington) and Template:Fy (Notorious).

Monocane

Described by Dr. Cranley as "terrible", the fictional drug "monocane" was an obscure Indian drug with powerful bleaching properties. German scientists experimenting with it tried it on a dog, turning the animal dead white and driving it mad. Monociane was used by Dr. Jack Griffin as a key ingredient in his invisibility formula without knowing about its side-effects). Years later, Griffin's brother Frank used the drug in his experiments as well, as portrayed in The Invisible Man Returns Template:Fy. In that film, the drug's name is changed to duocaine.

In homage to The Invisible Man, monocane has a history of use as a nearly undetectable poison in made-for-TV dramas:

• Monocane is identified as the drug that was used to kill victims in two episodes of Matlock, "The Nurse" (1987) and "The Hucksters" (1988). In addition, it was the poison used in the combined Diagnosis: Murder / Matlock episode "Murder Two" (1997).
• Monocane was identified as the poison used for murder during the Perry Mason made-for-TV movie "A Perry Mason Mystery: The Case of the Lethal Lifestyle" (1994).
• It was also the poison used in the McBride made-for-TV episode, "The Doctor is Out… Really Out" (2005).

DVD

In Template:Fy, Universal released six legacy collections that included some of their best horror films. The Invisible Man collection included:

• The Invisible Man (1933)
• The Invisible Man Returns (1940)
• The Invisible Woman (1940)
• Invisible Agent (1942)
• The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944)

as well as bonus features, including Now You See Him: The Invisible Man Revealed, a detailed look at the making of the classic horror film and its sequels by film historian Rudy Behlmer.

External links

• The Invisible Man at IMDb
• The Invisible Man at the TCM Movie Database
• The Invisible Man at AllMovie
• The Invisible Man at Rotten Tomatoes
• Template:Mpdb movie

Template:Universal Horror Template:Americanfilms1930s