The Invisible Man (1933)

John Chard

9.0

Sep 26, 2018

It alters you, changes you. There's a snow storm blowing ferociously, a man trundles towards a signpost that reads Iping. He enters a hostelry called The Lions Head, the patrons of the bar fall silent for the man is bound in bandages. He tells, not asks, the landlady; "I want a room with a fire". This man is Dr. Jack Griffin, soon to wreak havoc and be known as The Invisible Man. One of the leading lights of the Universal Monster collection of films that terrified and enthralled audiences back in the day. Directed by genre master James Whale, The Invisible Man is a slick fusion of dark h…

We all know that necessity is the mother of invention, but there is another saying in Spanish that roughly translates to ‘sloth/laziness is the mother of all vices’ (the closest English equivalent I can think of is ‘idle hands are the devil’s playground’). I would say that the link between invention and laziness is largely computer-generated; that’s why a near-100 year-old movie such as The Invisible Man looks better than any modern CGI extravaganza, and it does so because it’s all there – even when it isn’t. Jorge Luis Borges once wrote about all the trouble that H.G. Wells’s Invisible Man…

Wuchak

7.0

May 7, 2025

**_Becoming invisible and… mad_** A wandering chemist in a snowstorm makes it to the town of Iping in southern England where he seeks to finish important tests in his room at an Inn, but the rural people find him too curious to ignore and soon discover that he’s… invisible! “The Invisible Man” (1933) was based HG Wells’ 1897 novel, just moving the events to the early 1930s. It surprisingly holds up for succinct cinematic entertainment. The first half is more interesting than the second, however, as the latter focuses on how the authorities can apprehend the unseen criminal. It led to…