The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944)

Directed by Ford Beebe [Other horror films: The Phantom Creeps (1939), Night Monster (1942)]

I found myself feeling somewhat lukewarm toward The Invisible Man Returns, and I have similar feelings for this one. The Invisible Man’s Revenge isn’t without some decent ideas, but especially toward the end, I find myself losing interest.

Part of this is because I found myself on the Invisible Man’s side. Played by Jon Hall (and not becoming invisible until something like 20 minutes into the movie), he was cheated out of money by a wealthy couple (Lester Matthews and Gale Sondergaard), and despite a signed agreement, they refuse to pay him back. To be sure, Hall’s character wasn’t the most stable, but he did have rights to some of the money, and so we’re supposed to root against him?

It wasn’t so much Matthews’ character that bothered me as it was Sondergaard’s – she obviously had no intention of paying back any owed money to the man, and would have been happy to kill him herself if she had any plausible way to get away with it. When the so-called antagonist is in the right, it just sometimes makes movies harder to play ball with.

There were also a few moments of amusing mirth that I probably could have done without. Most of Leon Errol’s dialogue pegged him for comic relief, and he was good at it. He cracked me up a handful of times, and he was good fun. The scene in which he wins at darts, though – with the help of the Invisible Man, who’s running the darts from his hand to the bullseye – went on too long and felt wholly unnecessary. The first time was sort of funny, but he threw three more darts in increasingly improbable ways, and at that point, the fun was draining from the sequence.

I do think, though, that Leon Errol was one of my favorite characters, though. Jon Hall (The Beach Girls and the Monster) was a decent lead, but Errol was simply more fun. It was also fun seeing John Carradine (Voodoo Man, Revenge of the Zombies) here – his scientist character had charm, though I have to say that his house – which held a bunch of invisible animals – also felt a bit on the silly side.

I couldn’t stand Gale Sondergaard’s (The Spider Woman Strikes Back, Savage Intruder, The Cat Creature, The Climax) character – she was just awful, and deserved to get got. Lester Matthews (Werewolf of London, The Mysterious Doctor, The Son of Dr. Jekyll, The Raven) was more bearable, but I personally thought that both Alan Curtis and Evelyn Ankers (Jungle Woman, Captive Wild Woman, The Mad Ghoul, Son of Dracula, The Frozen Ghost) were shallow, and neither, in my eyes, added a lot to the film.

Certainly the special effects here were decent, and perhaps more advanced than they have been in previous films, but there’s also not really that much of interest, as far as the story goes, in the second half of this. I mean, the Invisible Man’s titular revenge lasts just 15 minutes or so, and then he becomes visible again, and it just wasn’t doing it for me.

I don’t think it’s a terrible movie, but it definitely lacks the charm of the 1933 classic. Also, given that Vincent Price doesn’t appear as he did in The Invisible Man Returns, we don’t have his charm to fall back on either. It’s fine, I guess, but I doubt it’ll be watching it again in the next 50 years, and it doesn’t seem to me that it’ll really stand out in my memory.

6.5/10