“We’ve got a terrible responsibility. He’s mad and he’s invisible”.
This hugely enjoyable, James Whale-directed classic, a personal favourite of mine, kick-started
another Universal horror franchise to join Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy. But despite such parentage, its birth was a tortuous one.
James Curtis's' excellent biography: 'James Whale: A New World of Gods And Monsters summed it up: 'The gestation of The Invisible Man was the lengthiest and most convoluted of all of James Whale's films. It involved four directors, nine writers, six treatments,and ten separate screenplays' - all before the creatives realised that the key to success was to return to H.G. Wells' original 1897 novel.
The finished version has an essentially simple plot: scientist
ingests dangerous chemical, turning him invisible and increasingly into
megalomaniac instability. He goes on the run and causes homicidal mayhem until the
police capture him. Yet along the way, all sorts of goodies are layered in to
the mix – a masterful multi-dimensional turn from Claude Rains, characterful
supporting performances and confident direction, a cracking final script featuring oddball
humour, Whale's own mischievous dialogue input, and ground-breaking special effects. It’s no surprise that it became the
studio’s biggest hit since Frankenstein
(1931).
H.G. Wells had previously been dissatisfied with what he regarded as a
dumbing-down by Universal in their cinematic telling of his The Island of Dr Moreau in 1932's The Island of Lost Souls – (reviewed earlier). The studio’s crafty intention had been simply to buy the property in order to license its name and that of Wells for marketing purposes, disregard
the plot and invent a totally new one. But this time when Wells sold the film rights to them, he insisted on script approval in the contract. He was astounded at the
various screenplays Universal commissioned that branched off at such variance
with his story – notable writers who took a crack at it included John Huston,
Preston Sturges and a six-page treatment by Whale himself.
In the film's protracted development, even Whale's involvement was subject to change. He was announced as director as soon as filming had ended on Frankenstein in 1931 and stayed attached until he was offered The Road Back, the sequel to the silent masterpiece All Quiet On The Western Front, the prestige value of which was too good to resist. This left The Invisible Man temporarily in the hands of Robert Florey, the director who'd emerged from a troubled history on Frankenstein to direct The Murders In The Rue Morgue. Such was the the poor reception for the latter movie that after allowing Florey to collaborate on a screenplay with Garrett Fort (as they'd done on Frankenstein) studio head Carl Laemmle Jr fired him. Wells exercised his right to reject that script as well as three involving John L. Balderston who had done such great work adapting Dracula and Frankenstein.
By the time Preston Sturges came on board, Universal's now-established horror star Boris Karloff was settled as the lead. Sturges' plot was highly politicised, making him the avenging tool of a Russian chemistry professor, Dr Sarkov who renders Karloff invisible in order to murder the Bolsheviks who had killed Sarkov's family. Sturges was proud of the script he called 'an excellent hair-raiser", yet Laemmle nixed this too, not wanting to repeat the mistake with The Old Dark House of sidelining Karloff's new prominence into a supporting role.
Several more people took a crack at the project including James Whale in a six-page treatment, before novelist John Weld took what was literally a novel approach. He went back to the source book and produced a treatment of what he noted was a "simple story". Knowing that Wells thought highly of his novel, Weld cannily guessed he would readily approve of something so faithful. At last the progress of The Invisible Man was partially visible. The baton ultimately passed to the illustrious R.C. Sherriff. Although Whale persuaded his long-time
writer friend from Journey’s End to cleave fairly close to the original. a significant influence in the
film’s eventual darker tone than the novel was possibly due to the studio’s
purchase of Philip Wylie’s book The
Murderer Invisible whose title character goes on a killing spree in the
service of ultimate deranged power. This motivated the director to commit to a
similar bold edge in his work.
Over time, there were actually a number of significant
changes to the author’s plot. The 1890’s
setting of the novel was brought up to date, contemporary to 1933. Also, Wells’s
characterisation of Dr Jack Griffin was enigmatic, having
no real background detail, whereas in the film as played by Claude Rains, he is given associate
relationships to conflict with as well as a love interest (Gloria Stuart) who
instead of being a formula concession actually adds an extra dimension of
sympathy for him. One crucial improvement is in the matter of Griffin’s
insanity. For the movie version, in his
back story he was emotionally stable but rendered mad as a side-effect of the Monocaine
drug. In the novel, he is already a power-mad lunatic, meaning he loses a vital
character arc of somewhere interesting to go. (This is the same problem suffered between the book and film of The
Shining only in reverse, where Kubrick’s film showed us Jack Nicholson’s
central character as clearly verging on nuts before they even arrive at the demonic
Overlook Hotel).
I’m in
danger of getting ahead of myself here with plot highlights. There are plenty
though, spread throughout the film - right from its confident,
attention-grabbing opening. The mysterious figure of Rains, his head totally
swathed in bandages and topped with goggles, tramps his way through the snow to
the amusingly generic ‘country village’ pub, the Lion’s Head. He enters,
triggering that beloved horror movie cliché of the tavern’s locals brought to a
stand-still by his entrance. (To be fair though, who can blame them in this
case?). He gives terse instructions for a room and a private sitting-room to the
land-lady, a vivid battle-axe turn by Whale favourite Una O’ Connor, and
immediately sets the regulars’ tongues wagging with his reclusive eccentricity.
Incidentally,
the first line of the film would make a great pub-quiz question - a gossiping regular
asks his friend: “Did you hear about Mrs
Mason’s little Willie?”
Soon,
Griffin’s thwarted need for experimenting secrecy turns to wrath and he ejects
the mild-mannered landlord (Forrester Harvey) down the stairs for trying to
evict him. When the village bobby shows up, Griffin goads him before unwinding
his bandage to reveal there is nothing underneath – and with insane mocking
laughter away he goes on the run, unstoppable. The landlord is nursed in a rare
moment of tenderness by his Wicked Witch of the Yeast wife, prompting one of
many little gems of off-kilter comedy as he groans “Ah shaddap” at her incessant yapping.
The elaborate
special effects work in The Invisible Man
led by John P. Fulton (with John J. Mescall and Frank D. Williams) is truly
remarkable for its time. Fulton originally wanted to become a director but
realised his forte was in transformative and in this case hard to detect invisibility FX with an amazing side-line
in miniatures. He would win two Academy Awards for his fine work. To
suggest Griffin’s bodily invisibility under full clothing as he moved around,
wires were used to suspend his garments. For the more difficult illusion of
revealing nothing under removed bandaging, Rains was cloaked entirely in a black
velvet suit against a background of the same material; this shot was then
combined with a matte shot of the same scene without Rains. The filming was arduous for the actor –
especially due to the disorienting claustrophobia of his head needing to be
smothered so completely. However, the result was highly-sophisticated for the
period and must have astounded audiences. Remember, cinema was still a
relatively young medium and much of the trickery was made up as its artists
went along. Only a moment where Griffin in pyjamas sits in a chair is slightly
marred by noticeable outlining shimmering around his body. The levitation of
beer glasses and other props and the climactic depiction of snow tracks are the
most impressive of all. On top of these, there are the other superb models used
in the spectacular vehicle stunt sequences we will come to later.
Many felt
the effects work in the film was the main ingredient in its success, but James
Whale’s care ensured that all the elements combined to create a terrific horror
film. The supporting performances vie for attention - with memorable Ealing
comedy turns from the pub locals with their 1930s Cockney ‘Orl roit, I’ll gow’
accents (albeit in a Surrey village). Whale lovingly crafted the population in these scenes, allowing his working-class childhood in England's Black Country area of Dudley to inform the local colour on screen.
Various police officers through the ranks
prove arresting as well if you'll pardon the pun. We have the bobby who registers his shock at Griffin’s
vanishing act with “’E’s all eaten away!”
(a movie debut for E.E. Clive, a Burgomaster for Whale in Bride of Frankenstein) and then the refreshingly resourceful
confidence of Dudley Digges’ Chief Detective. He becomes the victim of another
relishable comic moment from one of his own men. After a commanding manhunt
speech, reminiscent of Tommy Lee Jones’ famous ‘hen-house, out-house’ thoroughness
in The Fugitive, his authority is slyly
undermined by a watching PC’s faint approval: “Oh, I see. Pretty good”.
The
eagle-eyed will spot a brief, welcome cameo from Dwight Frye as a bespectacled
journalist. By now, he had become fatally typecast as creepy henchmen as a
result of playing Renfield in Dracula
and Fritz for Whale’s Frankenstein.
Here, he gets a chance to exude his high energy through a relatively normal
role, pestering the police with suggestions for trapping Griffin.
Whale expertly
plays R.C. Sherriff’s humorous dialogue against the horror, shrewdly balancing between
them instead of only hitting notes of unrelieved seriousness. Not that he was afraid of going for dark comedy even from the mouth of his malevolent lead. Whale even added some dark, twisted pay-off lines for Griffin dubbed in by Rains in post-production.
This brings us to the director's superb taste in casting Claude Rains to lead the film. Boris Karloff and the project parted ways earlier over an alleged refusal by the studio to match his requested
fee. Whale wanted Colin Clive who would certainly have had Griffin's tortured megalomania well within his wheelhouse, but Clive was homesick for England after shooting two more film in Hollywood after his fabulous dual success in Journey's End and Frankenstein. In Rudy Behlmer’s documentary Now
You See Him: The Invisible Man Revealed, Rains' daughter Jessica tells how
Rains, coming from a prestigious exclusively stage background, had filmed a screen test that almost scuppered his film career before it began. This was for the RKO film A Bill Of Divorcement the previous year and his overly demonstrative theatrical expression had no real previous screen experience to temper it for the more subtle
camera. Whale however viewed the test and immediately knew he was The Invisible Man by
virtue of his remarkable voice. (During filming, the director supported Rains' lack of movie skills further: after the actor told him he'd only seen about six films in his life, Whale urged him to use his use his plentiful downtime during the shoot to see three films a day to better understand the process.)
In TCM
Classic Movies’ short Tribute to Claude
Rains narrated by Richard Chamberlain, he described Rains’ voice
evocatively as a mixture of ‘honey and gravel’. Jack Griffin would not be half
so potent a character but for the versatility of Rains’ vocal
feeling fed through the otherwise restrictive mask of the character. He was capable of character range across the
spectrum from portraying cold, clinical evil through to touchingly sympathetic
characters – sometimes unexpectedly so as with The Invisible Man. In a career spanning five decades, Rains was a
sought-after and highly-respected talent, his credits including some of the
most famous films of his era such as Casablanca
(1942), Lawrence of Arabia
(1962). As we saw in the story of Charles Laughton who was taught by him at
RADA, he was also a much-appreciated mentor to other actors. This was likely a passing
forward of the kind influence of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree who’d paid for him
as a student to erase his cockney accent with the elocution lessons that freed
up his wonderful voice. This was an enormous aid to Rains, born into awful
poverty which had claimed the lives of all but two of the twelve children in
his family. The cultivating of the marvellous raw material of his voice into
cultured sophistication allowed him to portray roles beyond the normal
limitations of subservient working-class parts. In turn, he inspired
illustrious names such as Laurence Oliver and John Gielgud.
Rain’s
multi-faceted Jack Griffin in The
Invisible Man is a joy. He goes ‘up to eleven’ in his super-villain
declaration “Suddenly I realised the
power I held – the power to rule – to make the world grovel at my feet!”,
mischievously (and camply) teases his enemies with a high-pitched girly giggle
as he runs rings around them, hits full-throttle, gleeful evil in cold-blooded
murder and even finds shades of softer poignancy in his scenes with his lover
Flora. He confesses to her with beguiling tenderness that his monomaniac
pushing of the human potential envelope was because otherwise “I had nothing to offer you, Flora”.
Although Rains is largely unseen in the film, the actor certainly knew how to make his presence felt. According to James Curtis's biography, he tended toward repeated sneaky attempts at upstaging his fellow cast members by backing Una O'Connor and Gloria Stuart off-camera to emphasise him in shot more. Fortunately, both Stuart and Whale had the theatre backgrounds to always catch him out.
In terms of overall tone, another
welcome difference created in Whale’s movie versus Wells' novel is the harder edge supplied
by Griffin’s unbridled, merciless wave of murder, firstly on a grand scale as
he diverts the signals to send a train splendidly crashing off the rails - then
the personal vendetta of killing former colleague Dr Kemp instead of his life being
saved as in the novel. Griffin gleefully sends him over the cliff in his car to
a fiery death in a high-pitched vengeful cackle. Who wants a crazed villain to
just make a threat when we can see him carry it out like this? Griffin releases
the brake on the car, so too did Whale in allowing his protagonist’s maniacal vengeance
gloriously unfettered freedom – a quality he had been forced to curb at times
in Frankenstein. There is even a darkly
funny quality to how Griffin savours the path his betrayer’s vehicle will take,
savouring each step: “…Then you’ll have a
big thrill for a hundred yards or so till you hit a boulder”. The flaming
car stunt that plummets down the hill is another great John P Fulton effects
show-piece to go with the train sequence, sealing his reputation as a master
craftsman of thrilling movie illusions.
Readers of
my serialised reviews will know that even at the height of a tidal wave of praise I’m not
above drawing attention to the unfortunate things washed-up as well. William
Harrigan’s Kemp is largely a wooden performance, enlivened only by the voltage
put through him when his character’s life is in danger. Gloria Stuart as Flora,
although a crucial humanising force to underpin Griffin’s rampage, tends to hit
the same plaintive quavering note in her lines that is distractingly
irritating. Listen out for the radio newsreader who is also worth a mention,
his disembodied breaking-news bulletins are amusingly reminiscent of Criswell
the crackpot psychic from Plan 9 from
Outer Space in their melodrama.
Finally,
Griffin is caught after his movement in a shed’s hay-bales tips off a local
farmer as to his location. This is a cue for a climactic bravura touch of FX
magic showing the invisible footprints and Griffin’s fallen bodily impression
in the snow after being shot. At his bed-side, we are treated to the calm after
the storm, which pleasingly doesn’t feel like a tacked-on happy ending
(something else Whale had no choice but to film for Henry Frankenstein).
Griffin asks for Flora and her forgiveness before dying, and we at last see his
head materialise, morphing from a skull into the handsome visage of Claude
Rains, his berserk rage now soothed into eternal peace.
Having invested a total of 22 months in protracted development and filming, Universal needed a sizeable hit out of The Invisible Man and this is exactly what appeared. Its place in their Hall of Fame is summed up well by the Hollywood Reporter review of the time who called it "...a legitimate offspring of the family that produced Frankenstein and Dracula, but a lusty healthy willing to laugh youngster who can stand on his own two feet".
The Invisible Man inspired a number of sequels by the studio featuring Vincent Price, John Barrymore, John Carradine and Abbott
and Costello. A 1970s TV series starred David McCallum - and much later the
more violent, adult reworking, Hollow
Man (2000) directed by Paul Verhoeven. and recently Leigh Whannell's highly effective female victim-centred remake starring Elisabeth Moss . Let’s not forget
though, as with Frankenstein it was
James Whale who midwifed the happy birth of a legendary horror film series…
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