Tag Archives: classics retold

Classics Retold Wrap-up

Posted by melydia on September 30, 2013 2 comments

This has been fun. I haven’t been able to watch quite as much as I’d hoped, largely due to some unforeseen situations in the months leading up to September, but I made a decent go of it. Here are the posts:

If I were to do it again, I’d also include these:

That last one would have been especially nice to get my hands on, since it’s an actual adaptation of the book. That was the main problem I ran into: most of the retellings I could find were not the original story, but only the character of an invisible man placed in various scenarios. It’s a shame, because there’s so much that could be done with the original tale of Dr. Griffin.

One last homage to my subject, The Invisible Man: a monument in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia. The inscription reads: “The first monument to the Invisible man, the hero of Herbert Wells’ novel.” Hero? I’m not so sure that’s quite the word you’re looking for, but it might be a mistranslation. He’s certainly the central figure, but very definitely not a hero.

The Invisible Woman (1940)

Posted by melydia on September 26, 2013 1 comments

The Invisible Woman: The eccentric scientist this time around is Dr. Gibbs. (Amazingly, no one in the entire cast is named Griffin.) Broke playboy Richard Russell is his patron, and he plans to raise money selling Dr. Gibbs’s latest invention: an invisibility machine. Gibbs puts an ad in the newspaper for a human guinea pig, and is surprised to find it answered by a woman.

Kitty Carroll works as a department store model for a jerk of an employer. She takes the job as a guinea pig for the invisibility experiment so she can take revenge on him. Oddly, for all her talking, her boss doesn’t recognize her voice.

Meanwhile, a trio of gangsters are after the machine for themselves so their boss can escape Mexico, but when they fail to steal all the parts, their trials have some unexpected consequences.

The special effects are fairly minimal – some empty clothes here, some floating objects there. Something unique to this movie is that alcohol prolongs invisibility, and even can cause it to recur.

This movie is freaking hysterical. I’d gotten so accustomed to the dour horror-ish dramas that the silliness was quite unexpected. It’s fun to see some big names here too: John Barrymore, Margaret Hamilton, Charlie Ruggles, even Shemp Howard.

Now, I’m not being sarcastic when I say this movie is funny. Some of the dialogue is just classic. The butler is by far my favorite character, but they’re all pretty wonderful. And at only 72 minutes, it sure doesn’t drag. This is one worth picking up if you happen upon it.

The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

Posted by melydia on September 25, 2013 2 comments


The Invisible Man Returns: This claims to be a sequel to the novel, but it’s more like a sequel to the movie. Vincent Price plays Geoffrey Radcliffe, a man wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his brother. Through the help of his friend, Dr. Frank Griffin (brother of the original Invisible Man, whose tragic tale unfolded nine years before), he escapes and begins his search for the men who framed him.

Radcliffe takes the invisibility drug with the full knowledge that one of the side effects is madness. He worries that he’ll hurt those he loves, and of course once it he does start going mad, he doesn’t recognize it. His need for revenge upon the real killers gets the best of him.

Man, I love Vincent Price so much. And wow is he ever young – not yet 30! You don’t see his face until the final scene, as in the book, so this whole time I’d had middle-aged Vincent pictured in my mind, since that’s the era of his life I’m far more familiar with.

The re-visibility effect is an interesting mix of live action and what looks like an illustration from an anatomy text book. The other special effects are the same sort as we’ve seen before: the clothes superimposed upon the scene, with occasional glimpses of the actor shining through dimly. The wire work is much less obvious, though, which is nice.

I actually really enjoyed this one, but I think Price had a lot to do with that. He managed to play his madness convincingly, alternating between humorous and menacing, all while remaining quite sympathetic. The ending was honestly good, far less cheesy than it could have been, and didn’t drag out. This is one movie I’d watch again.

The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944)

Posted by melydia on September 21, 2013 None comments

The Invisible Man’s Revenge: Robert Griffin has escaped from the insane asylum! He believes his old friends, Sir Jasper and Lady Irene, have cheated him out of great wealth. He’s also determined to marry their daughter, Julie. After they throw him out of their house, Griffin wanders the countryside until he finds himself at the door of eccentric Doctor Drury.

Drury is the inventor of the invisibility serum, and Griffin is his first human subject, eager to be invisible so he can have his revenge on his former friends. Use of the Griffin name (and the fact that the same actor played Frank Griffin in The Invisible Agent) is a little confusing, but whatever.

Here, the invisibility is cured (temporarily, as it turns out) by a complete blood transfusion from another person. Thus the murders begin. I kind of like this twist, and I wish the movie was longer so they could take better advantage of it.

The plot here doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Griffin’s lost some five years of memory, but it’s never explained what happened or whether his friends really did betray him. It’s hard to buy the moral at the end if Griffin really was the victim.

Ultimately, this is a pretty forgettable film. I do like the idea of the temporary visibility caused by blood transfusion; that could make a great story on its own. I’ve also noticed in these older films that the invisible man really likes to make himself known, by talking or moving objects or what have you. He’d be so much more menacing if he could keep his trap shut.

The Invisible Agent (1942)

Posted by melydia on September 19, 2013 1 comments

The Invisible Agent: The screenplay is “suggested by” Wells’s novel, which to me sounds like it’s even further from the original material than “inspired by”. And, indeed, here the invisible man fights Nazis. Yes, really.

Our hero is Frank Griffin, grandson of the original invisible man. He rejects requests for the formula from both the Axis and the Allies, until Pearl Harbor is bombed and he decides to give it to the US military and become a spy himself.

Peter Lorre! Yay! Playing a Japanese man. What?

I’m not sure how the invisibility effect was done in this one, but you can often see the actor faintly superimposed against the background.

Anyway, the plot is pretty simple: invisible man spies on Germans, learns of a plot to attack America, thwarts the plot, saves the day, gets the girl, etc. There’s no mention of things like invisible eyelids, but the invisibility drug does cause narcolepsy for some reason. It also wears off after a certain period of time, which is convenient since it’s exactly the amount of time required to complete the mission and wake up in the hospital with the Love Interest at your side.

All in all, it’s a pretty meh movie, but it’s nice to see the invisible man as a hero for a change.

Hollow Man

Posted by melydia on September 18, 2013 None comments

Hollow Man: Believe it or not, I’d never seen this film. This is not an adaptation of the novel, nor does it claim to be, but the invisible man concept very clearly stems from Wells. We begin with Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon), cocky scientist experimenting with invisibility. A lot of the film is “hey look at these nifty special effects” but that’s all right – invisibility is a pretty cool effect.

Here invisibility is described as a bio-shift in quantum phase, or some such gobbledygook. Still, I was pretty excited that they did the “invisible eyelids” thing just like in the book. What causes re-visibility, however, is weirdly inconsistent. Why would being electrocuted make you become partially visible again?

Mostly, this is about what a sociopathic sexual predator would do if he was invisible. At one point, a guy asks him if it was the power or the side effects of the experiment that drove him mad, which is kind of hilarious because he’s so obviously horrible from the very start.

I won’t lie to you: this is not a good movie. I mean, I guess if you like generic horror films and Kevin Bacon and a fair amount of partial nudity, you might like this one. But it’s certainly not a classic for the ages.

The Invisible Man (1933)

Posted by melydia on September 11, 2013 4 comments

The Invisible Man (1933): I’m kind of surprised more versions of this story have not been made. (Most of the film versions have used the invisibility concept but not the actual plot.) My husband thinks it’s because the special effects are a pain in the butt. I’m not so sure. Most of the full-body shots here were done with black velvet to superimpose the empty clothing onto the rest of the scene. Moving objects were mostly done with wires or off-screen manipulation, and one particularly inspired scene was a fake “empty bandages” head being unwrapped by someone’s hands reaching in from out of frame, to make it look like Griffin is removing his own head wrappings. Very clever.

Anyway, this film starts out pretty true to the book, with the bandaged stranger showing up at the inn and generally being a jerk to everybody. However, here Kemp is Griffin’s colleague, looking into Griffin’s disappearance. Another addition: Dr. Cranley, who also works with Kemp and Griffin, and his daughter Flora, who evidently had some sort of romantic ties to Griffin. The addition of Flora is hardly surprising, but her character was underused.

Thomas Marvel, the vagrant Griffin basically kidnaps to do his bidding, is gone, though Kemp does partially fill that role. The ending is very different, but I suppose the filmmakers didn’t think audiences in 1933 would take “death by mob” too well. Considering the amount of slapstick comedy from Griffin invisibly bothering everyone, he’s more of a trickster than a menace, a man driven mad by the very chemicals that turned him invisible.

I actually really enjoyed this film. Some of the overacting is unintentionally hilarious (like the innkeeper’s wife who never stops screaming, or Flora’s tearful dive onto the window seat), but in general it’s quite well done. My favorite character was probably Kemp, whose mannerisms were mostly of the “please pardon me while I go have a nervous breakdown” variety. With a run time of barely over an hour, this is definitely worth watching.

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

Posted by melydia on September 5, 2013 3 comments

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells: The set-up to this story is somewhat unusual, as it begins with a stranger wrapped in bandages arriving at an inn on a snowy night. Everyone assumes he’s horribly disfigured, and the text goes on a bit as if that is indeed the case, but given the title we the reader are well aware that he is in fact invisible. That said, I did very much enjoy this story. It’s more of a horror story than I expected, with the titular character unquestionably playing the part of the villain (as opposed to a mostly well-meaning scientist cursed by his own hubris, as with Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll). The pitfalls of invisibility (such as being able to see through one’s own eyelids, for example) added a certain spark to the narrative, and parts were surprisingly suspenseful. The Invisible Man’s motivations were sort of vague and unsatisfying, but in general I recommend this book.

Classics Retold

Posted by melydia on September 4, 2013 2 comments

September is the month of Classics Retold, courtesy of Bookish Whimsy, among others. I decided to go with The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, one of my favorite authors. I’ll start with the book review tomorrow, then post reviews of assorted other things – mostly movies – based on this story.

I thought about making this a weekly thing, but instead I think I’ll just post things as I get to them, which will end up being distributed more or less evenly through the month, depending on how quickly Netflix delivers.

Note: many of these posts will contain spoilers, but I think most people know the general story of The Invisible Man – that is, there’s this dude who figures out how to make himself invisible and this ability makes him powerful, dangerous, and ultimately tragic. It’s a very short novel and is available online and via email for free, so you really ought to go read it.

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