31 Days of Horror Reviews 2018: The Invisible Man's Revenge

The Invisible Man’s Revenge was the last entry in the series and ends on a satisfactory note. 

REVIEW

The story is about a psychopathic killer named Robert Griffin returns to England after being presumed dead during an African expedition. He believes his partners cheated him out of his share of the findings and plans on getting every last pound. His partners who are now wealthy throw him out into the streets and deny any connection to him. This eventually drives him to the home of Dr. Drury who invented a formula to make living beings invisible. Griffin enthusiastically volunteers to be his first human test subject and when it proves a success, he uses his new found powers to get revenge. This is without a doubt the darkest entry in the Invisible Man series and definitely has a more violent main character.

 Jon Hall returns once again to the series, but he doesn’t play the same character as last time. This time he plays a psychopath who just escaped from a mental asylum. Throughout the whole movie, I kept thinking how that plot thread is rather ambiguous; we don’t really know if his delusions are real or if they’re just that: delusions. This adds to the overall terrifying nature of Griffin and Jon Hall gives an amazing performance. John Carradine plays Dr. Drury, the man who invented the invisibility formula. He’s a very quirky and overall charming individual; the way he interacts with his invisible animals like it’s a normal thing (well it is for him) is a great foil to Griffin.

When it comes to the visual effects, there’s some good ones and some bad ones, but those are only limited visible wires lifting the actors. What’s really impressive is that the crew was able to pull off fading to invisibility while the camera is in motion. Nowadays, it’s easy to pull off this effect with motion control cameras to get the same motion every take, but in 1944 they had to move a huge camera by hand multiple times to get it just right and then do it again with the actor. Even the small details like the background displacement around Griffin’s head as he fades is worth mentioning.

Overall, The Invisible Man’s Revenge was a great final entry for this series.