We are very pleased to tease a chapter on an upcoming new book to be published by BearManor Media in the near future , 40s UNIVERSAL MONSTERS: A CRITICAL COMMENTARY .
The Invisible Man Returns (1940)
Universal’s “Great Horror Revival” of the 1940s actually began in January of 1939, when the Frankenstein Monster – his post-explosion treatment and therapy having been successful – arose from the comfort of his stone slab and began exploring the architectural wonder that bore his father’s name.
As it was Karloff’s Monster who had followed Lugosi’s Vampire into the hearts and minds of Great Depression audiences only months after the release of Dracula in mid-February 1931, it was only fitting that Boris and Bela would join forces to lead their fellow grotesques – and the genre, itself – back into theaters now filled with patrons seeking escape from the dread of what appeared to be impending (and inevitable) war.
Son of Frankenstein was a resounding success – audiences were grateful for shudders that portended nothing more than a couple of sleepless nights, and Universal was grateful for the audiences – so it seemed reasonable to expect that the next move would be from Castle Frankenstein to Carfax Abbey to witness the imminent resurrection and subsequent predations of everyone’s favorite thirsty count.
Alas! The King of the Vampires would have to wait until 1943 for his next cinematic gig, and how he must have felt, what with his being beaten back to the screen by the Mummy (and not the one he had rubbed box-office elbows with earlier, either!), the Phantom of the Opera, the Wolf Man, the Frankenstein Monster (again!) and Ygor (Are you kidding?), some sort of Man-Made Monster, the Wolf Man (also again!), the Frankenstein Monster (for the third time!), a Wild Woman held Captive, and that second Mummy, once more.
And, for the love of Mike, by the Invisible Man, an Invisible Woman, and even an Invisible “Agent.”
To be fair to Count Dracula, his chagrin at coming in last may have been diminished a tad had he realized that – save for the Wolf Man and Ygor – not one of that ‘40s company bore the face of his original impersonator and not one of the horrific “reappearances” noted above featured the same actor twice. And – given his bandages, over-sized sunglasses, and total transparency – on the…errr…face of it, determining that the Invisible Man who returned was, in fact, an entirely different guy than the one who had expired in bed some seven years earlier was theoretically impossible.
Granted, Claude Rains had gone on to diversify quite substantially since his sound-film debut back then, but he was “The Invisible Man,” no? And even if we admit that we realize we’re talking about the character and not the actor here, the title blatantly states that “The Invisible Man” is the returnee here, so our finding out that we’re not about to… errr… not see Jack Griffin, but, rather, some nobody except Sir Geoffrey Radcliffe makes the more grammatically-anal among us a bit disconcerted.
Anyhow, with bits and pieces of some Tower of London interiors still on the back-lot – and having earlier bought the film rights to the character from Herbert George Wells – Universal determined that having a titled Brit take the heat (and the injection) might add a bit of fresh blood (and English box-office revenue) to the mix. With genuine-Brit Rains over at the Brothers Warner for the nonce, ersatz-Brit Vincent Price (late of both The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and the aforementioned Tower of London) filled the bill quite nicely. Price’s voice was as mellifluous and distinctive as was Rains’s and, what with his standing 6’4” tall, there was zero need to place the Missouri-born Price on a box whilst interacting with his onscreen fellows. Another advantage to using Price as the protagonist was that he could facilitate for the rest of the cast and crew director Joe May’s semi-incoherent instructions. As quoted in Universal Horrors, Price explained: “May was difficult to understand, as he spoke no English. I had something of a rapport with him because of my knowledge of German.”(1)
The most intriguing idea raised by all this is the claim (promoted and supported by the advertising of the release and subsequent re-release[s] on VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray of all the ’30 & ‘40s films + the ‘50s Creature trio) that the Invisible Man is one of Universal’s “Classic Monsters.” Really? Over the two decades or so that separated the character’s initial adventures from his run-in with Abbott and Costello, the recipients of Jack Griffin’s research had changed personage, motive, allegiance, and gender. We’d run the gamut from an appreciation of Wells’s original (married, so to speak, with Philip Wylie’s The Murderer Invisible) to a tale of anger and retribution (see: The I.M.’s Revenge) on the part of Robert Griffin, a psychopath in his own right who just happens to share coincidentally nomenclature with principals in the first two series’ entries. Come on… does every Griffin mess with invisibility juice, the way every Frankenstein pines to see Uncle Heinrich’s pride-and-joy at the peak of his powers? (Has any of this occurred to Seth MacFarlane?) All this, whilst we pause to consider the role of an unseen patriot in wartime and to picture – with our mind’s eye – that naked lady running about, unnoticed, in our midst. Come the ‘50s, “The Invisible Man” became a hero (of sorts) on the small screen, battling spies and generic bad guys seeking to do… well… whatever it was they had planned to do. Classic figure? Perhaps. Monster? Uh-uh.
Still, there is that moment late in Returns when a rain-soaked bobby speculates on the nature of the Invisible Man with his superior. “You’ll know soon enough,” advises his boss, “when he leaps on your back and starts sucking your blood.” Now it takes a fairly awkward bit of ratiocination to lump the unseen Radcliffe in there with such feral types as the WereWolf (of London, natch) or Dracula (late of Carfax Abbey), especially when the accounts of local boy Jack Griffin’s misadventures had earlier filled the British press and neither gymnastic feats nor intimations of vampirism has figured into Griffin’s megalomaniac delusions. But here, just after a series of off-camera transfusions from a batch of friendly collieries workers and just prior to the clench-and-close as the end-music swells, Dr. Frank realizes aloud that “The new blood itself is the antidote!” to all that went wrong with his pal. Perhaps had his older brother chomped down on an artery or two when those chuckle-headed townsfolk at Iping wouldn’t give him a moment’s peace, most – if not all – of the subsequent violence and destruction might not have taken place. Who can say for sure?
The Invisible Man Returns is the only picture in any of the runs of any of those “Classic Monsters” to acknowledge onscreen that it is a sequel. This confession undoubtedly was a requisite codicil to the paperwork that gave Universal the screen rights to Wells’s transparent protagonist. That brief flash of a snapshot of Claude Rains in the Scotland Yard file on Jack Griffin also served to tie-in the current offering directly with the 1933 production, which had almost immediately been considered a masterpiece by everyone except for Mr. Wells, who reportedly was less than thrilled with the picture because the screenplay turned his protagonist “into a lunatic.” The picture regurgitates a couple of bits from its 1933 Pater Familias. Like Dr. Frank’s brother, Geoffrey Radcliffe goes unseen throughout the entire film and is restored to full opaqueness only at the denouement whilst abed, up to his chest in bedclothes. The unwrapping of the head (before a mirror) likewise had been done earlier, as is the scene in which the bandaged protagonist rather operatically foresees a despotic future for himself while in the company of the woman he loves. We note en passant that while Frank Griffin has not packed a false nose in the suitcase left for the fleeing (and buck-naked) Radcliffe, neither had he pack any undies. One can imagine well enough the suffering one must endure, battling the English countryside during a cold spell whilst nude, without having to deal with the chafing that needs occur when one’s privates negotiate directly with the trousers of a tweed suit. That snippy attitude affected by Radcliffe fairly early on may not be due entirely to the invisibility solution.
The plot begins with an invisible Geoffrey Radcliffe escaping his prison cell to hunt down the man who had murdered his brother (Geoff himself is set to be executed for the crime) while trying mightily not to go mad a la the invisibility solution Dr. Frank Griffin has injected into him. Obviously as guilty as hell at first glance – without the savvy moviegoer even needing to know opportunity or motivation – is Richard Cobb, cousin to the Radcliffes and apparently heir to their “collieries” (ahem… coal mines and assorted buildings associated with them) should the brothers somehow be removed from the scene. Geoff chases after Willie Spears, a newly-minted (but perennially tipsy and wildly unqualified) foreman at the mines, rightly figuring Spears’ promotion was given in exchange for keeping his mouth shut. Spears fingers Cobb as the murderer, and Geoff – having sequestered Spears – captures Cobb, whom he brings at gunpoint to be confronted by Spears. Cobb escapes and runs into the collieries, but he is fatally injured when, battling the invisible Geoff, he falls from atop a coal cart emptying its load; luckily, he confesses to the murder before expiring. Geoff, who was shot during the struggle with Cobb, is restored to visibility and Helen’s embrace following a blood transfusion.
Interspersed through all this are several scenes in which 1) Geoff’s descent into madness and megalomania seems to be accelerating; 2) Scotland Yard’s Inspector Sampson – armed with knowledge of the misadventures of Geoff’s older brother and a cache of cigars – gets closer and closer to capturing the Invisible Man; 3) Frank Griffin putters around his lab, juggling test tubes, retorts and hypodermic needles as he works around the clock to find an antidote; and 4) legions of smartly-caped bobbies, hot on the case, are engulfed in smoke and rain. Again, while it’s true that the basic plot of the picture (Invisible Man is chased by police, chaos ensues, he is shot and becomes visible again) and a good bit of filler (experimentation to find a way back, expressions of love and regret to the skirt, bad guy in roadster speeding off with unseen passenger) were first onscreen in 1933, there are enough new details to keep one’s interest from flagging for the 81 minutes the picture is on the screen.
At one point, for example, Frank reveals that all that awful business with his brother had occurred some nine years prior to the mishegas concerning Geoff and the murder accusation. Some of us might wonder why Frank – who had been sitting on the invisibility solution for darn near a decade – waited only until after he had injected his good friend with it to begin working seriously toward an antidote. We might regard as facile the notion that adding colored powder to blood drawn from Geoff’s arm would make it visible but not affect adversely in any way the scientific conclusions to be drawn. We might tip our hat to blatant villain Cobb, who, having killed the lights in Spears’ house, shouts that now he is just as invisible as Geoff, as the two begin to throw the furniture about. We doff said hat completely in respect for and admiration of the lyric scene in which Geoff addresses a scarecrow in a field while simultaneously dressing himself in its clothing and then bidding it adieu. And one final question: Following his massive blood transfusion (how did Frank Griffin gauge the precise amount of blood needed, anyhow?), Geoff takes a moment to gaze gratefully at his arm. Under “normal” conditions, can the Invisible Man see himself?
As had Claude Rains, Vincent Price demonstrated a good bit of self-effacement for the body of the picture in the interest of a dramatic bonus at its end: for Rains, the movie-going public’s first glimpse at an actor who would captivate them for decades to come; for Price, an extended medium close-up that gave a much better look than audiences had been afforded via Tower of London or Elisabeth and Essex with their period hair appliances. The cinematic careers of both men would be lengthy and eclectic, yet each would be associated with a role or three in the genre we love so much. Whereas Rains had escaped from the Laemmles’ ongoing series of moody atmospheric thrillers after The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), within a lustrum he was to be tapped as Sir John Talbot in The Wolf Man and later signed on to do the titular honors in the Technicolor Phantom of the Opera (1943). Other than the film at hand, only The House of the Seven Gables (1940) and his brief, comic cameo as the Invisible Man in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) mark Price’s collusion with this volume.
With nearly three times the film credits of Rains, Price saw his involvement with the horror genre begin in earnest with 1953’s House of Wax, pick up steam through the rest of that decade, and then come into its own – thanks mostly to Roger Corman – in the ‘60s. The actor does quite well here as the ever more unstable Radcliffe, and his towering above most of his fellow cast members adds more than a hint of the physical menace that would be compounded by transparency.
Among the last pictures that featured Sir Cedric Hardwicke before filming began on Returns were RKO’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and M-G-M’s On Borrowed Time (both 1939). Sir Cedric was the villainous Frollo in the former and Death himself in the latter; little wonder the Worcestershire-born actor would be tapped to be the murderer of Sir Michael Radcliffe. Both the screenplay and the direction of Returns make it bloody obvious from the get-go that Roger Cobb is a creature of barely-concealed emotions, or that all of them are bad. Knighted in 1934 for his work on the British stage and screen (right between his appearances with Boris Karloff in The Ghoul and with Conrad Veidt in Bella Donna – both films being shot in Great Britain), Hardwicke as Cobb seems to be playing to the back row, as the dour expression on his face leaves little doubt as to where he stands in re: Nan Grey’s Helen. The picture offers no plot surprises – does anyone really believe that Geoff Radcliffe and Helen Manson will not end up in each other’s arms? – so with John Sutton’s Frank Griffin the only other “main” character in the mix, Cobb’s the man.
Unless you count 1939’s Wuthering Heights (a toss-up at best), Returns is Cecil Kellaway’s first venture into the genre. His Inspector Sampson is Johnny-on-the-spot with his file on Jack Griffin – a “Maniac-Murderer” readeth the description – some stogies with which to spot the invisible one’s outline, and more coppers than can be seen at the Policeman’s Ball. Granted, the inspector is still under the impression that Geoffrey Radcliffe is as guilty as all get-out, but his putting two and two together vis-à-vis the escape from the prison cell in the twinkling of an eye is impressive. Nine years after most of Britain was befuddled by the very idea of an invisible man, the local representative of national law enforcement takes his existence just for starters. And although neither Sampson nor that army of police appears to be within earshot of Roger Cobb as he whispers his confession, the subsequent hospital-bed drama attests that they’ve taken the word of Frank and Helen as to Geoff’s innocence, even though the entire movie is predicated on the fact that no one has taken anyone’s word on Geoff’s innocence at any time. While Kellaway brings his uniquely “semi-serious” take to the role, the gleeful resolve with which his character approaches the investigation is believable because of his certainty in the methodology he is following. There is more on Mr. Kellaway in the essay on The Mummy’s Hand.
Alan Napier, whose most memorable role may have been that of Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s butler and confidant, in the hit-‘60s television series, Batman, offers a memorable job here, as well. Physically, his Willie Spears is a bit taller and a lot grimier than anyone else in the cast, while behaviorally he is just filled with himself, as the former night-watchman revels in his newfound title and status. The British Napier would go on to a long and varied career and took full advantage of the job opportunities offered later in life by the introduction of the boob tube, appearing in dozens of TV series (including Thriller, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour) apart from his stint at “stately Wayne Manor.”
Holdovers from Tower of London include John Sutton and Nan Grey (plus Price, of course, and contract players like Ivan Simpson, Ed Brady, Cyril Thornton, et al). Most genre aficionados immediately think of Grey as the soulful victim of Gloria Holden in Dracula’s Daughter (1936), but the lovely Houston native had already wet her genre toes with an uncredited bit in the 1935 version of The Great Impersonation, and the Crime Club entries The Black Doll and Danger on the Air (both 1938). She and Vincent Price (and Cecil Kellaway and Alan Napier) would share the screen again in 1940’s The House of the Seven Gables, but Grey would retire from the screen a year later, her last role coming in Columbia’s rather exploitative Under Age (1941). Her Helen Manson hasn’t much to do but wring her hands and bite her lip, but Grey wrings and bites quite well. The only “flaw” in the portrayal is the actress’s noticeable lack of any “Englishness” in her delivery; going up against that gang of “born-elsewheres” (besides the Britons listed above, Kellaway was from South Africa, Forrester Harvey from Ireland, Sutton from India [!], and Price… well, he was Vincent Price), her lack of “vocal lilt” sort of stands out.
The aforementioned Mr. Sutton – born in Rawalpindi of British parentage – had quite a number of “uncredits” before stepping into the shoes of Jack Griffin’s younger (and taller) brother. The actor was in most of the Bulldog Drummond series, whether credited or “un-,” and he, too, was in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, albeit without enjoying the sight of his name in the cast crawl. Sutton managed to avoid following Returns with an armful of other, similar films and spent most of the ‘40s making a name for himself at 20th-Century Fox, usually in secondary roles. His Frank Griffin certainly goes through enough of the motions one would expect from a dedicated scientist under the most desperate of deadlines, although – even given the common elements of both “Invisible” pictures – it’s a tad difficult picturing Frank and brother Jack sharing a crumpet together.
The film got some good press, perhaps a bit because the 1933 picture had made such a positive impression, but quite enough on its own merits. Philip K. Scheuer, writing in the 16 February 1940 edition of the Los Angeles Times, opined:
People who look askance at sequels may safely relax in the current instance, for this follow -up to the original production from the pen of H.G. Wells is, although the work of two other fellows, fully as amusing, unexpected and pulsating an affair. … It will … give you a delightfully jittery 81 ½ minutes … As in the preceding film, no opportunity for imaginative humor has been neglected. The invisible one’s passing-by is the occasion for all sorts of whimsical horseplay, to which the trick camera responds nobly.
Sheuer’s colleague-in-criticism, Edwin Schallert, had recorded his approval in that paper more than a month earlier…
The Invisible Man Returns rates headline attention as an entertainment novelty. Portions of the picture may seem far-fetched and overly theatrical, but the technique is splendid, and the production keeps up its spell of excitement. It will take rating along with the first Invisible Man, which had Claude Rains is [sic] the ‘unseen’ personage of the plot, while James Whale directed… 10 January 1940
In the Times that was more familiar to folk on the East Coast, Frank S. Nugent mixed his opinion with a quite interesting fact:
Universal makes no peace offering, in the form of a credit, to Mr. Wells, for the non- appearance of his disembodied semi-phantom. One Joe May is billed as author, and among his adapters we find the name of Cedric Belfrage, who once wrote, as though in prophecy, a tome called ‘Away from It All, the Notebook of an Escapologist.’ Ghostly, isn’t it? … Somehow, we were not as astonished as once we were… This camera hocus-pocus still has its fascination, of course… but the script is annoyingly unoriginal…And for the sheer absurdity of the thing, we don’t suppose there has ever been a sequence to match the one in which Sir Cedric is being hustled along by the collar, with a pistol prodding him in the back, and not a soul in sight (except Sir Cedric). The New York Times, 16 January 1940
Belfrage, a socialist scribe who was co-founder of the National Guardian weekly newspaper, started his career as a part-time film critic for England’s Kinematograph Weekly in 1924. Although his name will ring more bells for political activists than movie buffs, Belfrage occasionally helped vet scripts at Universal. It was probably not because of his activity at the Big U that he was deported from the United States in 1955.
Joe May and Kurt Siodmak shared the “original story” credit (Mr. Belfrage went uncredited) for Returns and, as noted above, there’s not really all that much original about it. Still, reviewer Richard L. Coe, writing for the Washington Post, did note that “The present scenarists have created a background of realism and a story of mere murder [emphasis ours] as an accompaniment for the incredulous circumstances of the disembodied one” (3 February 1940). May, of course, also directed the project, and Siodmak, soon to be “Curt,” reveled in reviving the notion that Jack Griffin’s “Monocaine” (yclept “Duocaine” herein; after all, it is its second time around) would lead to madness. Much of Siodmak’s published fiction and many of his screenplays dealt with abnormalities to and/or hyper-extensions of rationality and, with Returns, he was just getting his brain wet.
In his autobiography, Wolf Man’s Maker, Siodmak speaks briefly of his contribution to the film:
The Return of the Invisible Man [sic] did not need much imagination. The subject of ‘invisibility’ was not new to me since my last novel written for the German market, The Power in the Dark, dealt with it… The theme of The Return of the Invisible Man was the seemingly inevitable corruption of power. The wish to be invisible is deeply ingrained in the human mind. To observe but not to be seen contains a temptation to misuse that potential… Since return was nominated for an Academy Award because of its special effects and was also a financial success, I had to write every one of Universal‘s ‘Invisible‘ pictures. (2)
Well, other than 1944’s The Invisible Man’s Revenge and the 1951 pastiche, that is.
Siodmak‘s German-language novel deals with a scientist who becomes transparent in order to commit acts of aggression/destruction against nations who are on the verge of starting a war between themselves in order to frighten them into different behaviors. Calling his book’s theme “prophetic,” the novelist claimed “The same thing on a small scale I used for my assignment,” namely, The Invisible Man Returns. Perhaps that might have been Siodmak‘s original intention, but Geoffrey Radcliffe indulges in megalomaniac blather only whilst at table with Dr. Griffin and Helen Manson; otherwise – despite his fear of succumbing to the mental lure of Duocaine – he stays pretty close to the road to revenge on Richard Cobb. Academically, at least, it might prove quite interesting to see the extent to which screenplay-collaborator, Lester K. Cole, may have altered Siodmak‘s thematic diminution so as to give us the picture we have today.
Joe May (like Kurt Siodmak) had emigrated from The Fatherland to the USA, although May hopped about Europe first before settling into the Hollywood lifestyle. Signing up with Universal in 1939, May quickly demonstrated the kind of flair he had shown during the Silent Era was just what the studio was looking for: he helmed The House of Fear (1939), Returns, and The House of the Seven Gables back-to-back-to-back. His vision in Returns was nothing extraordinary, but – as may be seen in Richard Coe’s comment, above – most audiences (and critics) of the time were more than willing to accept a fairly mundane Whodunit when spiced with a bit of exotica. May’s poor English and authoritarian manner with his coworkers did not lead to an extended contract with Universal, though, and the Vienna-born director ended his film career a few years later at Monogram. More on May will be found in our essay on House of the Seven Gables.
First of those “classic monster” movies to hit the screen after the ‘30s called it quits, The Invisible Man Returns reworked the original formula to its credit. A bit of head-scratching here and there – Whatever happened to the contents of your stomach taking a while to invisible-ize? Or why would a research scientist who works with guinea pigs have a couple of sets of manacles lying around the house? – but that comes with sequel territory, no? Best of the more serious of the invisible follow-ups, the picture boasts more advanced SPFX than the original – check out the inside of the bandaged head or the bit where Cecil Kellaway’s cigar smoke does its job – and an equally strong cast. Even if The Invisible Man didn’t make it back a second time, his gauze and goggles were worn (and his clothes tossed about the floor) by a worthy “understudy.”
The Invisible Man Returns – 12 January 1920 – 81 minutes (ST) CAST: Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Richard Cobb; Vincent Price as Sir Geoffrey Radcliffe; Nan Grey as Helen Manson; John Sutton as Dr. Frank Griffin; Cecil Kellaway as Inspector Sampson; Alan Napier as Willie Spears; Forrester Harvey as Ben Jenkins; Harry Stubbs as Constable Tewksberry; Frances Robinson as Nurse; Ivan Simpson as Cotton; Edward Fielding as Prison Governor; Leland Hodgson as Chauffeur; Mary Gordon as Cook; Billy Bevan as a Warden; Bruce Lester as Chaplain; Matthew Boulton, Frank Hill, Cyril Thornton and Ed Brady as Policemen; Paul England and Raoul Freeman as Detectives; Dave Thursby as Bob; Louise Brien as Dr. Griffin’s Secretary; Rex Evans as Constable Briggs; Frank Hagney as Bill; Jimmy Aubrey and Colin Kenny as Plainclothesmen; George Hyde, George Kirby, George Lloyd, Edmund MacDonald, Harry Cording, Ellis Irving, Dennis Tankard, Chet Brandenburg as Miners; with Mary Field, Stanley Blystone, Charles Brokaw, William Newall, Sidney Grayler, Boyd Irwin, Berry Hayes, Frank Colleti CREDITS: Director: Joe May; Associate Producer: Ken Goldsmith; Screenplay: Lester K. Cole and Kurt Siodmak; Original Story: Joe May, Kurt Siodmak and Cedric Belfrage (uncredited); Based on characters and situations from The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells; Director of Photography: Milton Krasner; Art Director: Jack Otterson; Associate Art Director: Martin Obzina: Special Photographic Effects: John P. Fulton, Cleo E. Baker (uncredited); Special Effects: David S. Horsley (uncredited); Film Editor: Frank Gross; Assistant Director: Phil Karlstein [Karlson]; Set Designer: Russell A. Gausman; Music Score H.J. [Hans] Salter and Frank Skinner; Musical Director: Charles Previn; Sound Supervisor: Bernard B. Brown; Technician: William Hedgecock; Gowns by Vera West
Shock Theater Catalog No. 711: “A whole city cried stop him, but how can you stop something you can’t see? Don’t miss the sensational ‘The Invisible Man Returns,’ the Shock feature film presentation starring Vincent Price and Sir Cedric Hardwicke on this channel (day) at (time).
– JTS
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