Invisible Ghost

The best quality this film possesses is a genuine creepy atmosphere. Especially good use of the weather (rain, stormy nights) enhances certain scenes particularly those in which Bela Lugosi's character Dr. Kessler is visited by his ghostly long-thought dead wife. Following this, Dr. Kessler is driven to unwittingly become a mad strangler. Just the result you'd expect?...no I didn't think so either.

Lugosi is actually quite good in the film and gives it his best effort. Also I felt Polly Ann Young, Betty Compson and Clarence Muse did fine jobs with what they had to work with.

The Inspector (played by George Pembroke) is an incredibly silly stereotype who comes across as thoroughly incompetent. However I did laugh when the visiting psychiatrist suggests it may be the Inspector who needs help.

If you haven't seen Invisible Ghost, I won't bother going into much of the plot. Most of it is silly and doesn't make much sense. Basically, the story involves a man who is driven to commit murder by seeing his supposedly dead wife. That's really all you need to know. And, it's not much of a spoiler as you discover most of this within the first ten minutes or so.

Lugosi is great as the mad killer. A really first-rate acting job that is by far one of his best from the Poverty Row movies he made (that I've seen). He does an excellent job of alternating between the kindly Charles Kessler and the mad killer. Clarence Muse is also a standout as the butler, Evans. Muse played Evans as smart, calm, strong, and nothing like the typical black character you find in a 40s horror/mystery movie. I call him the anti-Mantan.

Over the past few years, I've learned to enjoy the movies from the 40s that Monogram and others were putting out. Invisible Ghost is not the best of the bunch, but it's certainly not the worst. It's fun to watch if just to see Lugosi hamming it up. Just don't take these movies too seriously.

This murder shocker, featuring some typically hilarious plot twists and insane character reactions, is buoyed by that inimitable Lugosi magic. Also worth mentioning is the surprisingly inventive direction by Joseph H. Lewis, as is the comparatively dignified treatment of the black butler character, well played by Clarence Muse. Fans of old Monogram and PRC programmers will be well entertained.

Bela Lugosi plays Charles Kessler, a man whose wife left him years ago, apparently is dead, and comes out of a crypt and hypnotizes him so he will kill people by throwing his black cloak over them till they suffocate. Hmmm..okay. This is a real cheapie by Monogram, yet it is entertaining and even has a few inspired bits of direction. Not many, however. The biggest problem with this film is that nothing is really explained about Lugosi and his wife, why she is dead and comes back, what happened to her, etc... We are also to believe that a horde of murders have happened in the house, yet no one has ever really suspected the inhabitants of the house(Lugosi, his daughter, or reliable servant Evans). In fact the murders are taken with a grain of salt as more and more people are attacked by the dreaded cloak and killed. Help must really be hard to find under those circumstances. The film is under an hour in length and surely could have benefited by some deeper exposition. The movie also has some pretty annoying acting by the likes of John McGuire playing twin brothers(yeah right) and George Pembroke as a cigar-chomping policeman. These guys have no range at all. But the other actors are pretty decent, an unusual bonus for a film like this. Polly Ann Young actually is credible in her role as Lugosi's daughter. Betty Compson is effective in her brief role(you might remember her from the silent film era and in early talkies like The Great Gabbo with the great Erich Von Stroheim). Much of the film's credibility is due in large part to the acting of Clarence Muse, the black, dignified butler Evans. Muse plays his part with subtlety and dignity. He does nothing even remotely like the Mantan Moreland scared routine, and really is a pillar of strength for the film to build upon. I definitely would like to see more of him(He does have a brief role with Lugosi in White Zombie as a coach driver). As for Lugosi..what can I say...simply wonderful. He makes the common extraordinary..and is the heart of films like The Invisible Ghost. He keeps it beating long after it would normally have died from the memories of most. Lugosi is seldom over-the-top in this film, and I found it to be one of his more sensitive portrayals. The scenes with him looking out the window at an aged Betty Compson eerily made-up are really the film's best highlights. They are well-crafted mood pieces.

The best way to see this film is to catch an aged, scratched up print with bad sound on late night television. It seems to almost be made for that kind of antique, romantic creakiness.

Bela Lugosi plays a husband who murders his house guests overnight at the command of his hypnotist wife. The story isn't very well executed and is pretty ridiculous, actually, BUT what redeems the film and makes it very worthy of seeing is it's bizarre, ghostly atmosphere. The film is not about suspense, it's about mood. It's all about white figures moving around shadowy black backgrounds. It's about the interiors of the house looking like furnished crypts or like secret rooms not shown on the board of a Clue game.

This whole film is texture. It's very dream-like.