The Invisible Man (1933 film)

The Invisible Man is a 1933 pre-Code American science fiction horror film directed by James Whale loosely based on H. G. Wells's 1897 novel, The Invisible Man, produced by Universal Pictures, and starring Gloria Stuart, Claude Rains and William Harrigan. The film involves a stranger named Dr. Jack Griffin (Rains) who is covered in bandages and has his eyes obscured by dark glasses, the result of a secret experiment that makes him invisible, taking lodging in the village of Iping. Never leaving his quarters, the stranger demands that the staff leave him completely alone until his landlady and the villagers discover he is invisible. Griffin goes to the house of his colleague, Dr. Kemp (William Harrigan) and tells him of his plans to create a reign of terror. His fiancée Flora Cranley (Gloria Stuart), the daughter of his employer Dr. Cranley (Henry Travers), soon learn that Griffin's discovery has driven him insane, leading him to prove his superiority over other people by performing harmless pranks at first and eventually turning to murder.

The Invisible Man was in development for Universal as early as 1931 when Richard L. Schayer and Robert Florey suggested that Wells' novel would make a good follow-up to the studio's horror film hit Dracula. Universal opted to make Frankenstein in 1931 instead. This led to several screenplay adaptations being written and a number of potential directors including Florey, E. A. Dupont, Cyril Gardner, and screenwriters John L. Balderston, Preston Sturges, and Garrett Fort all signing on to develop the project intending it to be a film for Boris Karloff. Following Whale's work on The Old Dark House starring Karloff and The Kiss Before the Mirror, Whale signed on and his screenwriting colleague R. C. Sherriff developed a script in London. Production began in June 1933 and ended in August with two months of special effects work done following the end of filming.

On the film's release in 1933, it was a great financial success for Universal and received strong reviews from several trade publications, and likewise from The New York Times, which deemed it one of the best films of 1933. The film spawned several sequels that were relatively unrelated to the original film in the 1940s. The film continued to receive praise on re-evaluations by critics such as Carlos Clarens, Jack Sullivan, and Kim Newman, as well as being listed as one of their favorite genre films by filmmakers John Carpenter, Joe Dante, and Ray Harryhausen. In 2008, The Invisible Man was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot On a snowy night, a stranger, his face swathed in bandages and his eyes obscured by dark goggles, takes a room at The Lion's Head Inn in the English village of Iping in Sussex. The man demands to be left alone. Later, the innkeeper, Mr. Hall, is sent by his wife to evict the stranger after he has made a huge mess in his room while doing research and has fallen behind on his rent. Angered, the stranger throws Mr. Hall down the stairs. Confronted by a policeman and some local civilians, he removes his bandages and goggles, revealing he is invisible. Laughing maniacally, he takes off his clothes, making himself completely undetectable, and drives off his tormentors before fleeing into the countryside.

The stranger is Dr. Jack Griffin, a chemist who discovered the secret of invisibility while conducting a series of tests involving an obscure drug called monocaine. Flora Cranley, Griffin's fiancée and the daughter of Griffin's employer, Dr. Cranley, becomes distraught over Griffin's long absence. Cranley and his other assistant, Dr. Kemp, search Griffin's empty laboratory, finding only a single note in a cupboard. Cranley becomes concerned when he reads it. The note has a list of chemicals, including monocaine, which Cranley knows is extremely dangerous; an injection of it drove a dog mad in Germany. Griffin, it seems, is unaware of this. Cranley deduces Griffin may have learned about monocaine in English books printed before the incident that describe only its bleaching power.

On the evening of his escape from the inn, Griffin turns up at Kemp's home. He forces Kemp to become his visible partner in a plot to dominate the world through a reign of terror, beginning with "a few murders here and there". They drive back to the inn to retrieve his notebooks on the invisibility process. Sneaking inside, Griffin finds a police inquiry underway, conducted by an official who believes it is all a hoax. After securing his books, Griffin angrily attacks and kills the officer.

Back home, Kemp calls Cranley, asking for help, and then the police. Flora persuades her father to let her come along. In her presence, Griffin becomes more placid and calls her "darling". When he realizes Kemp has betrayed him, his first reaction is to get Flora away from danger. After promising Kemp that at 10 o'clock the next night he will murder him, Griffin escapes and goes on a killing spree. He causes the derailment of a train, resulting in a hundred deaths, and throws two volunteer searchers off a cliff. The police offer a reward for anyone who can think of a way to catch him.

Feeling that Griffin will try to fulfill his promise, the chief detective in charge of the search uses Kemp as bait and devises various clever traps. Trying to protect Kemp, the police disguise him in a police uniform and let him drive his car away from his house. Griffin, however, is hiding in the back seat of the car, surprising Kemp; he tells Kemp that he was also following him all day while committing his crimes. He overpowers Kemp and ties him up in the front seat. Griffin then sends the car down a steep hill and over a cliff where it explodes on impact, killing Kemp.

A snowstorm forces Griffin to seek shelter in a barn where he falls asleep. Later a farmer enters and spots movement in the hay where Griffin is sleeping. He notifies the police, who rush out to the farm and surround the barn. They set fire to the building, which forces Griffin to come out, leaving visible footprints in the snow. The chief detective opens fire, mortally wounding Griffin. He is taken to the hospital where, hours later, a surgeon informs Dr. Cranley that Griffin is dying and asking to see Flora. On his deathbed, Griffin remorsefully admits to Flora, "I meddled in things that man must leave alone". As he dies, his body quickly becomes visible again.

Cast

Cast sourced from the book Universal Horrors:

Production Background

Following the success of Dracula (1931), Richard L. Schayer and Robert Florey suggested to Universal Pictures as early as 1931 that an adaptation of H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man would make a suitable follow-up. Both Carl Laemmle and Carl Laemmle Jr. opted to make a film adaptation of Frankenstein (1931) instead. While Frankenstein was shooting, Universal bought the rights to The Invisible Man from Wells on September 22, 1931, for $10,000; he demanded script approval from Universal. Universal had purchased the rights to the Philip Wylie 1931 novel The Murderer Invisible, intending to lift some of the more gruesome elements from it to incorporate into Wells' story.

The director first set up for the project was James Whale, whom Laemmle Jr. had great faith in. He had directed R. C. Sherriff's play Journey's End in London and New York and the 1930 film Journey's End. Following the release of Frankenstein, which would break box office records across the United States, Universal had the film's star Boris Karloff signed to a five-year contract. On December 29, 1931, the Los Angeles Record stated that Karloff's next film would be The Invisible Man. By January 28, 1932, Whale had left the project, wary of being tagged as a "horror" director. This left Karloff as the only cast member of a film with neither a script nor a director.

Pre-production

The first director set to replace Whale was Robert Florey, whose film Murders in the Rue Morgue was released in February 1932. By April 9, Florey had a draft of The Invisible Man co-written with Garrett Fort who had contributed to the scripts of both Dracula and Frankenstein. Based mostly on Wylie's The Murderer Invisible, their outline included plot elements such as an invisible octopus, invisible rats, and blowing up Grand Central Station. Unwilling to wait while Florey worked out the script and the film's technical difficulties, Universal made The Old Dark House (1932) Karloff's next feature with Whale as director. Whale had decided to return to horror features following the financial failure of his film The Impatient Maiden (1932). By June 1932, producer Sam Bischoff left Universal to set up his own independent studio. Florey accepted Bischoff's invitation to join him and also left Universal. By June 6, John L. Balderston, whose name had appeared in the credits of Dracula and Frankenstein, submitted a screenplay for The Invisible Man in collaboration with the film's new director Cyril Gardner. This was Balderston's third attempt at the script based primarily on Wylie's novel. In mid-1932, Universal writers John Huston and studio scenario editor Richard Schayer attempted new treatments for the film. By July 18, there was still no officially approved script and Universal loaned Karloff to MGM to shoot The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932).

By November, following the release of The Old Dark House, Whale was again set to be the director of The Invisible Man with a new script being written by Preston Sturges. Sturges' script involved a Russian chemist who makes a madman invisible to wreak vengeance on Bolsheviks who have destroyed his family. After working on the script for eight weeks, Sturges handed in his screenplay; Universal fired him the next day. Sherriff described Sturges' draft as "a sort of transparent Scarlet Pimpernel". On November 5, it was reported that Karloff was to star in a film titled The Wizard to be directed by E.A. Dupont, while Whale would film Karloff in The Invisible Man in early 1933. Whale had also written his own treatment for the film, which is described by historian Gregory Mank as inspired by both The Phantom of the Opera and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde interjected with religious touches like those in his films Frankenstein and The Old Dark House. After Wells rejected this draft, Whale left The Invisible Man again. On January 17, 1933, Universal reported a loss of $1,250,283 in 1932 and planned to shut down for six to eight weeks after current productions had finished shooting. While Whale directed The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933), E.A. Dupont's project The Wizard was never filmed and he became the next person set to direct The Invisible Man. John Weld was signed to write the film's script and browsed through several rejected drafts, including one by Laird Doyle. Weld asked for a copy of Wells' novel from Universal. As they did not have a copy, he got his own to use for source material. Yet another new writer was attached to write the script by February 3. R.C. Sherriff was the screenwriter and Whale was once again set to direct. Sherriff worked on the script at his home in London and disregarded Universal's request he draw material from Wylie's The Murderer Invisible and the previous draft scripts. Universal Studios closed down on February 13 with only executives and a skeleton crew remaining on the payroll. Universal laid off Whale for twelve weeks before he directed The Invisible Man. Universal reported they planned on having Karloff return to The Invisible Man in May. After Universal reopened in May, they released his new film The Kiss Before the Mirror to critical acclaim, but it was among the studio's lowest-grossing films in Los Angeles and New York.