La femme invisible

What a strong cast for such a silly and stupid (but still decent) movie! Classic movie fans know these names: John Barrymore, Virginia Bruce, John Howard, Charles Ruggles, Oscar Homolka, Shemp Howard, Edward Brophy and Margaret Hamilton.

They are all here in this female version of The Invisible Man. Actually, as stupid as it can get, it also provides a number of funny scenes so I guess it served its purpose.

It's only 73 minutes long, but it should have been shorter as the gags wear thin after 40 minutes. Ruggles almost steals the show as the butler. He provides most of the humor in a real slapstick manner. As in a lot of these old comedies, some of this stuff is really corny but I did laugh out loud at a couple things.

Bruce and John Howard are attractive leads and Barrymore is effective as the typically-portrayed-in-classic films eccentric scientist. It was also fun to see Shemp Howard, of Three Stooges fame, play a gangster, although a Stooge-like goofy one.

The special effects were good in their day but not now. In fact, the DVD is sharp enough that you can see the outline of Bruce's head when she's supposed to be invisible!

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (Universal, 1940), directed by A. Edward Sutherland, is an original story by Curt (billed Kurt) Siodmak and Joe May that has nothing to do with either the H.G. Wells story "The Invisible Man" nor the original 1933 motion picture from which it was based. In fact, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN is a comedy, a screwball comedy in the 1930s tradition, with an dose of science fiction and character types thrown in. The title role belongs to the attractive blonde, Virginia Bruce, while much of the praise for comedy goes to that "ham actor" himself, John Barrymore, in one of his several character performances, sporting glasses, white hair, mustache and a comical expression on his face, co-starring as a nutty professor who invents things, with one machine in particular he's been working on for ten years.

As for the plot, the screenplay goes through the process of character introduction, the first being Richard Russell (John Howard), a millionaire playboy with a handful of débutante girlfriends and a large selection of their photographs residing in a mansion with George (Charles Ruggles), his loyal servant. Following another one of his all night parties, Dick learns from his family lawyer, John Hudson (Thurston Hall), that because of his extravagances he is now flat broke. Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore), the second introduced character, has his laboratory near the Russell mansion with Mrs. Jackson (Margaret Hamilton), his housekeeper of 12 years, as his assistant. Unable to acquire the $3,000 needed for his latest experiment, Gibbs places an ad in the Daily Record newspaper asking for a subject willing to become invisible. Kitty Carroll (Virginia Bruce), the central character and the third to be introduced, is seen as a poor working girl in need of extra money. Working as a model for the Continental Dress Company at $16.50 a week, she and the other girls are at the mercy of the mean and demanding Mr. Growley (Charles Lane), whose greatest pleasure is bossing the girls and threatening to fire them whenever possible. Unhappy under those conditions, Kitty walks out after a customer tears her dress, hoping to some day carry out her threat by kicking Growley "right in the pants." She gets her chance after becoming a willing subject to Professor Gibbs by stepping into his machine that makes her invisible. With that done, it is up to Kitty to rescue Gibbs from the clutches of Foghorn (Donald MacBride) and his two stooges (Edward Brophy and Shemp Howard) wanting to use his machine to make their boss "Blackie" (Oscar Homolka) invisible so he could return to Russia unseen. Then the fun really begins.

In the tradition of creative special effects by John Fulton, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN comes off best with its quota of laughs during its first half with the invisible Kitty Carroll getting even with her employer (Lane) and scaring his snobbish clients responsible for nearly having her lose her job, while the second half revolving around the love-hate relationship between Kitty and Richard along with the comic henchmen stealing the invisible machine and kidnapping the professor where he is held hostage in Blackie Cole's hideout in Mexico, gets a little tiresome, though redeemed afterwards by some silly, though well-paced climax.

Aside from the amusing Charlie Ruggles making his scenes count, fainting on cue, with Margaret Hamilton unfortunately having little to do, there's Donald MacBride hilariously talking soprano (like "Jenny Lind") after walking through the invisible making machine that backfires on him. Others in the cast taking on lesser roles are Anne Nagel, Mary Gordon, Edward Conrad and Kathryn Adams. Look quickly for a young Maria Montez, not long before making her mark in a series of Technicolor South Seas adventure tales mostly opposite Jon Hall, as one of the models.

Unlike THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN spawned no sequels, nor is it relatively known in spite of it being part of "The Invisible Man" video and later DVD package over the years. Unseen (no pun intended) on cable television for quite some time, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN did have some revivals on the Sci-Fi Channel (late 1980s), American Movie Classics (1989-90) and Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: February 3, 2012). For anyone looking for a change of pace in regards to science fiction or comedy, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN is certainly one to consider. (**1/2)

This movie is a winner all the way. Mad Scientist Barrymore with Margaret Hamilton as his housekeeper invents an invisibility formula for his patron. When a model, Virginia Bruce, gets a hold of it, all havoc breaks loose, from revenge on her tyrannical boss, Charles Lane, to Oskar Homolka and Shemp Howard, two villains trying to steal the formula for themselves. Charles Ruggles also provides hilarity as the butler/chauffer.

Universal film billed as a part of its Invisible Man series has little except the title to do with that film and The Invisible Man Returns. This film is a comedy all the way with Virginia Bruce playing a woman who volunteers to be invisible for scientist John Barrymore so he can let his money man John Howard patent the product and become wealthy again after years of womanizing and eventual bankruptcy. Very light fare here, but in the typical Universal way very entertaining. John Barrymore gives a good performance as a very thick slice of ham. At one point, he is talking to a mouse like an overbearing Shakespearean stage trouper. Barrymore also has some wonderful verbal assaults with his house maid, played by Margaret Hamilton from The Wizard of Oz fame, and Charlie Ruggles, who does an outstanding job as a butler lacking courage. Much of the film is silly patter with Bruce exacting revenge on her mean boss played with the usual flair that only Charles Lane can create. Decidedly a notch below the first two installments of The Invisible Man series and The Invisible Agent, but the film was fun nonetheless. Where else can you see such a great cast with Barrymore, Lane, Ruggles, Hamilton, Bruce, and even Oskar Homolka(very interesting seeing him young!) and even Shemp Howard! The best part for me was watching Barrymore try to convince Bruce about the negative effects of drinking, even at one point saying, "dissipate and disappear!" What an actor!

Watching this film, the minute I saw the opening credits and saw who was in the cast, I knew I would enjoy this and I was not disappointed.

Bela Lugosi was quoted as saying that when Abbott&Costello met Frankenstein some years later, it killed the classic horror genre that Universal was known for. If that was the case, I'm not sure how the genre escaped the executioner here.

The original film of The Invisible Man saw Claude Rains give one of his great performances as the scientist who becomes invisible, but with the terrible side effect of losing his mind. It's classic acting at its best.

In The Invisible Woman John Barrymore is the scientist who plays it like a cross between his own Oscar Jaffe in Twentieth Century and Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein. Barrymore really looks like he's having all kinds of fun with the part. But he's smart enough not to experiment on himself.

Barrymore is a pet project of playboy John Howard who spends as much money on him as he does settling with women with whom he's had various amours, much to the distraction of Thurston Hall his family attorney. Hall breaks the news to Howard just as Barrymore seems on the verge of a breakthrough. All this is making butler Charlie Ruggles start looking for other employment. That and what follows.

So much so he's advertised for a human subject in an oblique newspaper ad. Two parties respond to the ad, the first is Virginia Bruce who likes the idea of invisibility. She wants to use it to even some accounts with her boss Charles Lane. Lane runs a department store and Bruce is one of several models he abuses with petty tyranny. Her scenes where she does even accounts are some of the funniest.

But a second party is also interested, but he doesn't just want to become invisible. Oscar Homolka wants to steal the secret and return to this country from Mexico where he's been living as a fugitive. So he sends henchmen, Edward Brophy, Donald MacBride, and Shemp Howard to steal Barrymore's machine.

I should point out that unlike Rains's film and other invisible man pictures, Barrymore invents some Young Frankenstein like contraption which you go into and are bombarded with rays to become invisible. In the hands of amateurs the machine does have some interesting side effects and not the ones Claude Rains suffered.

The Invisible Woman is used as an example of how low Barrymore's career had sunk. Yet even when Barrymore is slowly destroying himself with substance abuse in real life, the man's comic genius is apparent even in a film like this. In fact he led the entire cast in one big orgy of overacting where all these colorful people try to top themselves in scenery chewing.

The Invisible Woman did get an Academy Award nomination for Special Effects, but lost to Paramount's I Wanted Wings.

Note in the cast Maria Montez as one of Virginia Bruce's fellow models who shortly would be obtaining short lived stardom in her own genre for Universal Pictures.

The Invisible Woman is a very funny picture, a really good satire on the horror film genre. Made on a dime so to speak, don't miss it if it's ever broadcast.