It might be Chevy Chase in John Carpenter's Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), or Kevin Bacon in Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man (2000), to name just a few ways in which the legacy continues. But The Invisible Man lives on in varied incarnations. The success of The Invisible Man would launch a sequel, a short-lived series, and culminated (like Frankenstein) in a confrontation with Abbott and Costello in the late forties. Just as Whale made a star of Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931), Claude Rains was also abruptly put in the spotlight but, as he is only glimpsed for a few seconds over the course of the film, this fame came almost entirely from the powerful performance of his voice alone. Wells' novel of the same name and deals with Griffin, a scientist who is ultimately driven power-hungry and mad by the side effects of the invisibility serum he both invents and ingests. It is a shining example of fantastic thrills filled with quotable dialogue and unexpected humor and shocks, all delivered with great mood and economy. As he dies, he becomes visible once more.Īmong the many vintage horror films released by Universal Studios in the 1930's, James Whale's The Invisible Man (1933) still packs a punch today. Still invisible, Jack is hospitalized, and confesses to Flora that he should never have tampered with the nature of life. Due to a fresh snowfall, they are able to follow his tracks and shoot him. One day, a farmer realizes Jack is sleeping in his barn and alerts the police, who set the barn afire to draw Jack out. Public terror mounts as the police are stumped as to how to capture an invisible man. He goes on a murderous rampage across the countryside and finally succeeds in killing Kemp. Outraged that Kemp has betrayed him, Jack vows to kill Kemp at ten o'clock the next night, then slips out. Flora insists on seeing Jack and attempts to communicate with him, but her presence incites, rather than soothes him. Later in the evening, while Jack is asleep, the frightened Kemp alerts Cranley and the police Jack's whereabouts. Jack begins to wreak havoc in the tavern just as a policeman has declared the whole "invisible man" episode a hoax. Jack forces Kemp to return to the tavern with him so he can retrieve his books. Jack intimidates Kemp, who is also in love with Flora, and appoints him to be his partner in his plans for a "reign of terror," which will ultimately result in Jack ruling the world. He goes to the house of his associate, Doctor Kemp, who has already determined with the help of Doctor Cranley that Jack has been experimenting with monocane, a plant extract known to cause insanity. He attacks the innkeeper and various inhabitants as he departs, eluding the police by removing his clothes and bandages and using his invisibility. The prying innkeeper's wife is terrified by Jack's apparent irrational behavior, and when she and her husband demand he leave because his rent is overdue, Jack becomes angry because their interruptions have ruined his experiment. There he attempts to find an antidote to his invisibility, the result of a secret experiment whose success has driven him away from his employer, Doctor Cranley, and fiancée Flora. With his face and hands swathed in bandages, and dark glasses covering his eyes, scientist Jack Griffin lets a room in a small inn in the town of Iping, England.
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