The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

 The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

Despite Universal’s efforts to sell The Invisible Man as one of their Horror Movie Monsters, what we have here is the story of a falsely accused man who must clear his name.

To achieve this, he is smuggled a drug into death row which will allow him to escape by becoming invisible. Had anyone expected this it could have been stopped, but the one cop who immediately realizes this is elsewhere. Refreshingly, we get a mixture of acceptance and healthy skepticism but in this case the odds are in the invisible man’s favor.

While we are always unwaveringly on the innocent man’s side, a side effect of the drug is inevitable madness, so even when he never directly kills anyone, he does commit a series of crimes starting with breaking out of prison, assault, breaking and entering, kidnapping, etc.

We have seen invisibility is a valid subject of Horror, but the filmmakers clearly never intended to make a Horror film.

This is a murder mystery with science fiction undertones and a single potentially horrific sequence. The worst thing he does is leave a man to be hanged when he becomes exhausted, (and if you don’t think that constitutes attempted murder, then you haven’t seen Once Upon a Time in the West.)

The effects (many of us are here for) range from the excellent to the sloppy, (an empty suit in sunlight should still cast a shadow, regardless of the invisible man inside it.)

The original is a Classic, this one, not so much and would have improved were it to be made more intense in any of its many directions whether Murder Mystery, Horror or even Comedy.

With Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price (voicing The Invisible Man in a decidedly butch manner), Nan Grey and John Sutton.