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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.

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.

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.

Another cheapie from Monogram, once again casting Lugosi as a hypnotic murderer, lit from below as is expected. This time, however, he's the innocent victim, entranced by the sight of his 'dead' wife who appears beneath his window and seemingly 'commands' him to kill (rather surreptitiously and for a reason not fully explained). Indeed, most of the plot isn't really fully explained, but it's academic. Instead of the plot, concentrate on the director's unusual flair, and the writers' penchant for a decent gag or two. It's these that elevate this slightly above the rest of its kind. Some interesting panning between rooms, and behind furniture, and a memorable shot of Lugosi leering direct to camera from behind his black robe show that director Lewis had, at least, a modicum of creativity. There's also a wicked sense of humour that takes you by surprise, and is handled well enough to complement the thriller element. Sadly, the performances are mundane, especially Lugosi, who, once again mugs and grimaces his way through the part. The film is stolen by Clarence Muse, superb as the amenable butler, Evans - although he does get all the best lines.

Boy, this is one weird little movie! Bela Lugosi's first of nine films for Monogram Pictures, "Invisible Ghost" (1941) tells the story of Mr. Kessler (Lugosi), whose wife had run away some years before and been injured in a car wreck with another man. What Bela does not know is that his wife is still alive, in a semicomatose state, and being cared for by his gardener in a nearby barn. Unfortunately, whenever Mrs. K takes one of her nocturnal somnambulent strolls and Bela catches a glimpse of her, he becomes a mesmerized maniac and kills off another of his household... Anyway, this Bela outing, while perhaps not quite as much fun as another of his pictures that I saw recently, 1942's "The Corpse Vanishes," is still far, far superior to the surreally stinky "Scared to Death" (1947). It is interestingly shot and features some stylish direction by Joseph H. Lewis, who would go on to helm such cult classics as "Gun Crazy" (1949) and "The Big Combo" (1955). The film moves along quite briskly and manages to pack quite a bit into its brief 64-minute running time. And I like the fact that Bela's butler, as played by Clarence Muse, is devoid of the embarrassing black-stereotype behavior so often encountered in films of that era; indeed, he might be the most dignified character in the entire film. I also like the fact that, unlike so many other Bela films, this one is not presented on yet another awful-looking/sounding DVD from Alpha Video, but rather given a nice, clean treatment from the fine folks at the Roan Group. The bottom line, I suppose, is that "Invisible Ghost" is piffle, but still an engaging and entertaining time killer.

Dr. Kessler (Bela Lugosi)is a kind doctor whose wife ran away with another man and then died in a car crash. However, it seems she survived and Kessler's gardener is keeping her hidden in the gardener's cottage until she recovers. Periodically she walks around and stares at Kessler. He sees her, goes into a trance and kills people.

OK--the plot is stupid and makes no sense. Also the dialogue is bad (even by Monogram standards) and has plenty of laugh out loud lines and just beyond belief plot twists. Still it works. It plays quickly (it's only an hour long), has a very handsome actor (John McGuire) who can't act but is very easy on the eyes and two excellent performances. One is by Bela (even when he acted in low low LOW budget work like this he gave it his all) and Clarence Muse who plays the black butler but is very dignified and intelligent--a real rarity in those days. The other actors are terrible (especially the police lieutenant who ALWAYS has a huge cigar in his mouth--I'm not even going there!). It's also well-directed (considering). But, what's with that title? There's no ghost or anything invisible in this! So, it's worth seeing (sort of).

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.

The movie begins with a man being executed on circumstantial evidence for something he did not do. He was engaged to the daughter of the main character. Shortly after this, his twin brother shows up. Bela Lugosi, walking around with his hands in front of him (ala, a somnambulist), losing control because his mad wife is out in a hovel in the back yard. This movie makes absolutely no sense. In an old house lives a kindly man named Kessler, played by Lugosi. The problem is that people are being murdered routinely around him. The police, who are always without a clue (no pun intended) come and go and seem to think: Gee that's odd. Another murder. Lugosi is asked why he doesn't move, but he just waits for his wife to return from wherever she went. It's never clear what happened to his wife, but she seems to come and go from a little building in the back yard that is tended by the gardener (one of the early victims). For whatever reason, when she shows up, Kessler puts up his hands, walks into someone's room and murders them. There is comic relief from Clarence Muse. He is a black man and probably the only fun character in the movie. When he discovers a body, he has the great line: "Do I look pale? I feel pale." He is the most stable character in the movie which I thought was cool. When they try to pin the murders on him (a psychiatrist comes to see if he is crazy), he holds up very well. Eventually, of course, the true murderer will show what he is made of. The problem is that there is no wrap up other than possible mental illness. The wife figured into this somehow, but shouldn't we be told a little more. Oh, well, poor old Lugosi probably made about 50 dollars for this.

Charles Kessler lives with his daughter, Virginia, and servants in his large house, but Kessler still awaits the return of his wife, who ran away with another man and disappeared following a car crash with her lover. Mrs. Kessler, unknown to her husband, is living in the gardener's tool shed, afraid to return home. She occasionally sneaks out of the shed, and spies on her husband through the window. One night Kessler sees his wife through the window and falls into a mad hypnotic state where he strangles Cecile, the new maid at the house. The crime is framed on Ralph Dickson, Virginia's fiancé and former love of Cecile. Dickson dies at the hands of the law, and his identical twin brother Paul comes to the Kessler residence, hoping to posthumously clear his brother's name. Kessler, under another trance, kills the house's gardener and nearly strangles his daughter, and it becomes obvious to the police and everyone in the house that the murders are the work of a madman, but how will Kessler be uncovered in this strange case. This film is probably the best of the Lugosi Monogram series, primarily due to Joseph Lewis' superb direction where there is a lot of suspense and neat twists. Good performances by the cast make this and a very good ending make this a good one to watch, despite a few plot holes. Rating, based on B mysteries, 8.

Maybe this is a spoiler, but I don't think anyone should watch this movie without knowing the following: this movie makes no sense.

Bela Lugosi stars as a wealthy estate owner who misses his wife and thinks she is dead. But she's not dead -- the gardener keeps her in a shed in the backyard. And sometimes she escapes in a bathrobe to steal a piece of chicken from the kitchen, only to be spotted through the window by Lugosi who thinks it's a ghost. This causes him to enter a trance and kill some random person. Even after several murders (maybe dozens) in the same house, the police never suspect Lugosi.

On one occasion, they arrest the boyfriend of Lugosi's daughter and execute him. A minute later in the next scene his twin brother shows up.

If you like Lugosi, this film is decent and quite fun. But seriously, don't try to figure out why the wife is in a shed or what causes him to go into a trance or why the police are so stupid. Because you will never make sense of this preposterous film.

I must say, I was a bit surprised after viewing "Invisible Ghost." It

could have been because of Bela Lugosi's sympathetic portrayal

of Charles Kessler, a warm and kind-hearted man, deeply

troubled by his wife's absence. Or ... it could have been Clarence

Muse, playing the black butler sans the usual comic relief.

Whichever way you look at it, "Invisible Ghost" is certainly worthy of

note. Too bad one has to rummage through so many bad movies

to locate the few really good ones. Here we have the late, great

Bela Lugosi, looking better than ever. His portrayal of a sympatheic

man under the control of powers beyond his comprehension is

somewhat of a diversion from previous characters. He's not

sucking the blood of beautiful ingenues. Nope. He's on a murder

rampage, suffocating his victims with a ... bedroom robe?

Okay ... a little quirky. What did you expect? Shakespeare?

What's impressive here is Mr. Lugosi's enormous acting talent.

Lugosi could express more emotion through a simple facial

expression than most actors could through an entire monologue.

He's an excellent example of a talented man giving a performance

greater than the movie itself deserves. No make-up effect or

computer generated effect could ever reproduce this. To this, I hold

Mr. Lugosi up next to Vincent Price ... as a man whose talents

barely reached the public surface. If only he were alive today and

making movies. No doubt he would have been treated with a great

deal more respect and admiration.

And so ... "Invisible Ghost" is a very good movie to enjoy. I was

lucky enough to purchase this along with seven other Lugosi films

in AMC's Monsterfest DVD collection. Pick it up if you get a chance.

It includes movies like "The Human Monster" and the amazing

"White Zombie." While some of these films were hits and others

were misses ... all feature the extraordinary presence of Bela

Lugosi ... certainly one of our greatest actors.

Mildly entertaining 40's chiller that gives Bela Lugosi yet another chance to play a severely tormented character. He stars as Mr. Kessler, a sinister yet sophisticated and eminent gentleman who lives in a large villa with his daughter and a bunch of household staff. Whenever Mr. Kessler sees the appearance of his supposedly dead wife (long story....), he gets into some sort of trance and murders people. Other persons are wrongly sentenced to death for these crimes while Kessler himself doesn't really realize what he's doing. I'm not exactly sure what the film tries to accomplish by focusing on the "whodunit"-element so much while the story practically opens with Lugosi committing murder. It's like playing a game of 'Clue' when you already know it was Colonel Mustard! Oh well, I guess the mystery automatically vanishes when Lugosi stars in the film: he always did it! Don't expect logic neither as the whole dead-wife situation doesn't make the least bit of sense. Still, "Invisible Ghosts" has some atmospheric moments and occasionally offers a modest scare. The acting is above average with Lugosi in one of his best post-Dracula roles. The sequences in which he's 'tranced' reminded me a little of Dracula, as Bela's grimaces and gestures are very similar. This is an okay movie, good to waste an hour of your life with.

THE INVISIBLE GHOST (Monogram, 1941), a Banner production directed by Joseph H. Lewis, is basically a title that has no bearing to the plot. Though starring Bela Lugosi, with a photo-play that could have had something to do with a scientist who invents a serum of invisibility and uses it on a corpse, thus haunted by a spirit of that person in his laboratory, might have proved more favorable. For a change in this one hour production, Lugosi doesn't play a crazed scientist of backfired experiments, but a loving husband and father whose surrounding area of residence is pitted by a series of cleverly unsolved murders that keep the police baffled.

Following the opening of a portrait of a woman who happens to be the subject matter, the story revolves around Charles Kessler (Bela Lugosi) living in a mansion with his daughter, Virginia (Polly Ann Young), and servant, Evans (Clarence Muse). After watching Kessler at the dinner table talking to an empty chair where his wife used to sit (something he does once a year on his wedding anniversary), it is later explained that years ago, Kessler's wife had left him for his best friend, and is believed killed along with her lover in an automobile accident. Unknown to Charles, Mrs. Kessler (Betty Compson) is very much alive in an bewildered mental state, being cared for secretly nearby his residence by his gardener, Jules Mason (Ernie Adams) in the basement of his tool shed. However, by night, Mrs. Kessler leaves her security by heading to her home, where her presence immediately places Charles in an hypnotic state, committing murders, with no recollection of these occurrences once out of his trance. The latest murder turns out to be Cecile Mannix (Terry Walker), a new housekeeper who happens to be Ralph's former but possessive girlfriend who refuses to have him marry Virginia. Because of their argument leads the police to have their motive on Ralph. they place him under arrest. Found guilty by the jury, he is later executed for a crime for which he is innocent. Later, Ralph's identical twin brother, Paul (John McGuire) arrives from South America to help solve these ghastly murders, unaware that his life may be in danger as well. Also in the cast are Ottola Nesmith (Marie Mason); George Pembroke (Williams); and Fred Kelsey (Ryan).

Unlike the Bela Lugosi classic fright films he performed at Universal, his debut performance for Monogram Studios is very much a cheaply made production, borrowing the same type of underscoring in spots used for his previous poverty-row horror flick, THE DEVIL BAT (1940) for PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) Studio. With the viewers knowing he circumstances from the beginning of the story as opposed to guessing the identity of the killer near the end, it's a matter of time as to how the least likely suspect gets himself caught and what his wife has to do with it. Blonde Betty Compson, often dressed in white, comes close to resembling a ghost during the night-time sequences, but nothing else to provoke fright and movie title name. Often dull and dreary, only the then aging Lugosi somehow manages to make this one watchable, but don't expect to be frightened by the circumstances involved.

Formerly available on video cassette and later DVD, INVISIBLE GHOST (a public domain title) has played on various cable channels such as USA in the 1990s, as well as on Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: February 22, 1996) where the station has shown this from a latter 1940s reissue print distribution from Astor Pictures rather than the original Monogram Studios logo. (**)

To begin - so many previous comments for a Monogram cheapie! And I agree with all of 'em, especially concerning the merits of the wonderfully eerie atmosphere of this strange film. The print I watched (@ 65 mins) was surprisingly good and non creaky so it didn't lessen this aspect and make me concentrate more on the plot ... shortcomings and generally hokey acting.

In this film as the real world and the Ghost are Invisible we naturally don't see them.

Although thankfully Muse's part was not a Manton type role nevertheless he was still earning his crust in the usual Hollywood position of servitude and not as some kind of equal. Did he ever play a doctor etc?

With Lugosi's mad dead wife locked up by the gardeners wandering about freely at night and hypnotising her live husband into strangling people it kept reminding me of Plan 9's crazy story. If it had been made in the 50's with their even lower production values it could probably have been a contender for Worst Ever.

Does anyone know approximately how many times Monogram used that set of the hall and stairs in filming? I feel that I've been up and down those stairs more times than my own.

All in all one of my favourite Monograms, together with some of the Toler Chan films.

There are neither ghosts nor invisibility nor many other interesting things in this inaptly-titled cheapie. Only horror icon Bela Lugosi saves this slapdash effort from total turkeydom. Here he plays respected gentleman Charles Kessler, whose big spooky home is the site of a long-running series of mysterious stranglings. But who could be doing this and why? It just might have something to do with Mr. Kessler, who so longs for the wife who left him he has dinner with her empty chair.

To be fair, INVISIBLE GHOST has a certain watch-it-late-at-night charm. It has its moments, and the writing and acting is surprisingly up to snuff. But unless you're an aficionado of B&W B-movie genre, chances are you'll be utterly bored. Still, both the Hollywood of the 1940s and of the present day have done much, much worse than this. And what about that title? Like a whole slew of these movies, it can be assumed the producers slapped an eye-catching moniker on it without a second thought. The fact that it was completely misleading mattered little.

The acting is just about par for the course.

The plot is very silly going on near incomprehension.

It does feel a lot longer than it's 64 minute running time and the way everyone reacts after the poor guy gets executed gives off an air of, 'oh well, swings and roundabouts'.

Don't let any of this make you think this movie is a fun one in the so bad it's good category, it's not it's just plain dull, stupid and repetitive.

I'm just glad I only paid £1 for the DVD maybe I can get 50p credit if I take it into Blockbusters.

This is one for people who 'have' to see all of Bela Lugosi's films, trust me there are to many good movies out there and to little time in a life to bother with this 64 minutes. 2/10

There's no ghost in Invisible Ghost, invisible or otherwise. This creaky poverty row potboiler stars Bela Lugosi as Charles Kessler (not a ghost), who laments the loss of his wife (not a ghost), who deserted him for another man a couple of years earlier.

Unbeknownst to Mr. Kessler, his wife is actually living in the home of his gardener Jules (not a ghost), who has been looking after the woman, who hasn't been quite right in the head since the car wreck that claimed the life of her lover (dead, but not a ghost). Occasionally, Mrs. Kessler goes on night-time strolls, peering in through the windows of her old home, catching the gaze of her husband. And for some reason, seeing his wife sends Charles into a homicidal trance.

Ralph Dickson (not a ghost), fiancé of Charles' daughter Virginia (not a ghost), is wrongly found guilty of Charles' murders and sentenced to death. Following the execution, Ralph's identical brother Paul (not a ghost) arrives at the house searching for answers and is surprised when the killings continue.

Not much makes sense about this film, particularly why seeing his wife would cause the otherwise affable Charles to kill, but if you just go with the flow, the film is actually surprisingly watchable. Lugosi puts in an enjoyable turn, and is especially entertaining when he slips into murder mode. Also rather fun are Clarence Muse as butler Evans (not a ghost), who successfully manages to avoid the black stereotype of the era, and George Pembroke who does the opposite, his cigar chomping police detective (not a ghost) about as clichéd as it gets.

The Invisible Ghost mightn't be all that memorable, but for Lugosi fans, it's still worth a go (and certainly more enjoyable than the last film I saw of his, the highly over-rated White Zombie).

4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb.