Thankfully, unlike with many other of the Universal monsters, the minds behind the Invisible Man series decided to parody the character before the villain exhausted his ability to terrorize audiences (and thereby diluting the figure’s reputation). At no time does A. Edward Sutherland imply that he’s attempting to make anything more than an enjoyable piece of lighthearted, escapist comedy and, with his sights firmly set on said goal, achieves such with a fair amount of accuracy aided by lively dialogue and a stellar comedic ensemble of comedians.
When Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore), after ten years of research, is ready to attempt to make a human invisible, he advertises in the local paper, calling for a voluntary guinea pig (his funding was pulled after his financier, Richard “Dick” Russell–played by John Howard–goes bankrupt). He is taken by surprise when Kitty Carroll (Virginia Bruce), a young model, responds to the request. However, after completing the experiment (which permits Carroll to settle a few scores with her tyrannical boss, Mr. Growley, played by Charles Lane), Carroll materializes before Gibbs can display his success to Russell. As the professor attempts to adjust his research in order to stabilize his results (which, once achieved, will make him and Russell millionaires), the local mob’s kingpin, “Blackie” Cole (Oskar Homolka), currently exiled in Mexico, catches wind of the experiment and begins frothing at the possibility that he could reenter America undetected, and sends his stooges to steal Gibbs’s invention.
One of the undeniable subconscious attractions to an invisible personage is the hypothetical scenario that for such an individual to go undetected, the person must be nude. Sutherland capitalizes upon this speculative necessity as he unabashedly exploits and satirizes the idea by presenting an invisible female (a model nonetheless) and accentuates the fact by having Carroll repeatedly reiterate how cold she is. (In all fairness, this sardonically counters the tentative fun that female audiences were permitted to indulge in with Claude Rains and Vincent Price in the first two installments in the Invisible Man series. If I’m off my mark in my assessment of sufficient female eye candy, I humbly admit I am a male film critic.) The director continues to highlight this theme by having Russell, a Clark Gable look-alike who employs his eyebrows to a perverse tee while brandishing a Cary Grant demure, cue his audience to visualize the nude Carroll standing before him as the latter coyly agrees to put on her pantyhose in order for him to see the lower half of her outline (which materialized in a previous scene just before it reached her . . . ). Playfully, Sutherland has Russell raise his hand and clasp the young lady’s, ahem, hand as he theorizes how the rest of her figure will ultimately fill out once she has been returned to normalcy. Poignantly mocking, Sutherland has Carroll complain that she’s tired, in part, of all of the “leering men buyers” which attend the Continental Dress Company’s showings shortly after she disrobes before the camera.
Sutherland doesn’t limit his farce to situational humor. Fortunately, he permits his all-star cast to exponentially multiply the laughs as Margaret Hamilton of Wizard of Oz fame plays the disapproving housekeeper to Gibbs as the role of her counterpart, Russell’s butler, is given to Charles Ruggles who, in many respects, steals the show as his master perpetually instructs him to load and unload the estate’s contents depending upon how the prospects of Gibb’s invisibility device is currently standing while taking numerous slapstick dives and pratfalls before futilely resorting to liberal amounts of fainting. The cast is topped off by the appearance of Shemp Howard, of Three Stooges fame, as the absentminded member of the covert gang (of which, who can restrain from laughing at the all-too-easy double naming of its leader, “‘Blackie’ Cole”?). This says nothing of Gibbs’s self-driving car, presented decades before the Batmobile, which happily responds to the command, “Put yourself into the garage, lazy bones!”
As a feather in the production’s cap, John Fulton once again stands at the special effect’s hilt of another Invisible Man film and was nominated for another Academy Award for his groundbreaking efforts. Ironically, we can yet again cite the complaint that the opposing side of the Invisible One’s collar is still missing. However, Fulton fully compensates as Carroll unapologetically floods the scene in all her “unseenness.”
A. Edward Sutherland’s third installment in the Invisible Man series naughtily indulges and taunts his viewers in the metaphysical reality of his character’s nudity. Never attempting to be more than a fun romp at the expense of its predecessors, The Invisible Woman doesn’t try to posit social commentary upon the stature of women in society (which would be too imitative of James Whale’s efforts in presenting the figure of the homosexual as unseen in his original), but allows its audience to merely sit down to a mind numbing seventy-two minutes of cinematic fun.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
