OVP: The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

Film: The Invisible Man Returns (1940)
Stars: Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, Nan Grey, John Sutton, Cecil Kellaway
Director: Joe May
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Special Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

We're going for a double-dip today, with our second outing with The Invisible Man (as I said above, you can see all of our past monster outings below in the links).  The Invisible Man Returns boasts a pretty impressive cast: a knight, a horror icon, and an Oscar nominee, and so it continues its place as the "classiest" of the Universal horror outings.  That said, this one plays relative lip service to the previous film, only mentioning the plot once (in a similar way to how they'd handle all of the Frankenstein sequels-the characters continue to just be another random Frankenstein relative that can reawaken the monster).  Here, we have Price stepping into the shoes (and little more) as the titular character, but he has the same problems that befall all those who turn invisible.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Sir Geoffrey Radcliffe (Price), a wealthy man who has been framed for the murder of his brother.  He convinces Dr. Frank Griffin (Sutton) to make him invisible, similar to the Claude Rains' character in Invisible Man (our only shoutout to the previous film), and he succeeds, but knows there's a ticking clock on this experiment before Radcliffe becomes mad & murderous.  As it turns out, even with Inspector Sampson (Kellaway) on his tail, Radcliffe is able to prove that it is his cousin Richard (Hardwicke) who is the true killer, and while he flies into madness, he still maintains a goodness to his character, and when Richard confesses & then dies, Radcliffe is a free man, made visible again by a blood transfusion, and reunited with his fiancee Helen (Grey).

The movie differs greatly from the original, and indeed from most of the monster movies in that Radcliffe lives through the movie, and gets a happy ending.  This is rare-while I haven't seen every one of the Universal monster movies, happy endings for the monsters is not something you see, and in fact this is the only film I remember that the monster ends up in a truly happy ending (in almost every other case they die or are "left behind").  This makes the movie better than it should be, considering it's largely a knockoff of the first film without the great supporting cast (specifically Una O'Connor).  Price is a great horror actor, but no one else is elevating this work, and it's all fairly routine other than the ending.

This is one of the only Universal horror films of this era to get an Academy Award nomination, and since this is a blog devoted to the Oscars, I can't let this moment slide without discussion.  The Oscar nomination was for Best Special Effects, which wouldn't have been a category when the original came out (otherwise it probably would've been nominated but lost to King Kong).  This nomination in some ways makes up for that, but seven years after the fact, the technology isn't different from the original, and in some ways is less impressive as a result (we were already starting to see more impressive use of these effects by the 1940's).  It helps that in 1940 there were WAY too many nominees in this category, which is probably why an effects-driven picture like Invisible Man Returns gleaned a nomination for past-its-prime tricks.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Werewolf of London, Son of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The House of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death