The Body Disappears

This is one of those thin little comedies that played the second half of a double bill back in the '40s. EDWARD EVERETT HORTON has a tailor-made role as an eccentric scientist who has inadvertently developed a serum that can make people invisible. On this one-note thread, the whole plot ambles on for little more than an hour in what seems like an endless comedy of errors.

While Horton at least does his best to keep things lively, poor JEFFREY LYNN has little more to do than pop up once in awhile in the flesh--remaining invisible for a good portion of the film. JANE WYMAN has the hapless task of making all the silly shenanigans look less foolish than they are--but she rarely succeeds. And WILLIE BEST does his best to look frantic and frightened by all the invisibility going on around him, as Horton's wide-eyed assistant in his usual stereotyped role as a black man.

It passes the time quickly but there's little substance to any of the plot with some nice cast members striving to make it agreeable enough--CRAIG STEVENS, MARGUERITE CHAPMAN and David BRUCE among them.

(1941) The Body Disappears COMEDY

It has yuppie and jokester, Peter DeHaven (Jeffrey Lynn) engaged to be married and having a bachelor party with his friends, George "Doc" Appleby (Herbert Anderson), Terence Abbott (DeWolf Hopper) and Jimmie Barbour (David Bruce). When as soon as it was time to leave, the only person who was passed out was Peter. Because Peter earlier played some jokes on his friends, while he was passed out they decide to put one on him by letting him sleeping it off in the college morgue. It is during then Professor Reginald X Shotesbury (Edward Everett Horton) instructs his assistant, William (Willie Best) to go into the college morgue next door to carry a body out into his lab, and it happens to be Peter DeHaven. The professor then pricks a needle into him calling his discovery a breakthrough, and it was at this point Peter disappears or turns invisible- hence the title "The Body Disappears". This was also during the time, the professor's daughter, Joan Shotesbury (Jane Wyman) happens to come home too. She becomes his eventual love interest.

Very amusing comedy with many gags that involves Peter's invisibility. It begins to be routine and it gets better.

The casting of Edward Everett Horton as a nutty professor is reason enough to watch The Body Disappears. Horton has been experimenting at the small college he teaches with both invisibility and resurrection.

He and his trusted assistant Willie Best steal Jeffrey Lynn's body from the morgue and bring it back to Horton's laboratory at home. Lynn isn't dead, just completely ossified from his batchelor party and his buds thought it would be fun to have him wake up at the morgue.

Horton gives the invisibility potion to Lynn instead of his experimental resurrection concoction and Lynn goes invisible like Claude Rains. Also like a monkey that he had tried it on earlier who escapes.

Meanwhile when he leaves his bride Marguerite Chapman at the altar a manhunt starts for him with the suspicion of foul play in the air.

The Body Disappears is a nice item from the B picture unit at Warner Brothers with none of their big box office stars. Jane Wyman who plays Horton's daughter falls for Lynn invisible though he may be. Lynn has a good line of patter that gets her.

This one really is Horton's film and it is nice to see him carry a film for once as brilliant as he in support.

Body Disappears, The (1941)

** (out of 4)

Weak Warner comedy was released the same year as the much better THE INVISIBLE WOMAN from Universal. In this film a professor (Edward Everett Horton) makes a serum that will bring the dead back to life. He accidentally puts it in a man (Jeffrey Lynn) who he thought was dead but since he wasn't it turns him invisible instead. I had heard a few good things about this one over the years but having actually seen it now I must admit that I found it to be quite boring from start to finish. I seems that the cast knew they were working with a bad script and went into overdrive in terms of trying to keep the energy up but it really doesn't work here. The biggest fault is the actual screenplay that has one lame invisible joke after another. I don't think THE INVISIBLE WOMAN is a masterpiece or anything close but it at least knew had to write for some good and funny jokes. The screenplay here seems to have been written in the matter of hours as there's never really any clear focus on what it wants to do or what type of humor it really wants to try for. Horton is full of energy and isn't too bad in his role but he doesn't get much to work with. Lynn is wasted and pretty much only lends his voice. Jane Wyman plays the daughter of the scientist but isn't given much and even Willie Best doesn't get any good lines. The special effects aren't any better, although they're not as bad as I was expecting. Whenever anything invisible is on the screen you can see the outline of their body but the center portions of them are pretty clear and hard to see. The film runs a brief 72-minutes but it feels at least a half-hour longer. Fans of sci-fi who must see everything in the genre might want to check this out but others should stay clear.

This frantic Warner 'B' comedy about how millionaire Jeffrey Lynne copes with being invisible succeeds, in large part, because of the great, great comedy chops of Everett Horton, who takes over the movie as the mad scientist who turns him invisible. Well, he's not mad, actually. He is, in fact, quite amiable, so amiable that he allows his colleagues to send him to an insane asylum after a lovely variation on the "Mayhem in the Classroom" vaudeville sketch.

Jane Wyman is also on hand doing her wide-eyed comedy gal, and Willie Best does a decent turn for the era. The cast is filled out by the usual competent Warners B cast of the the era.

Jeffrey Lynne, as the lead, is given very little do do and his plot is disposed of efficiently. This pretty much describes Mr. Lynne's career. But this comedy remains with some reasonable pleasures in it.