Now You See Him: The Invisible Man Revealed!

As a monster kid from way back, I enjoy much of the attention and adulation that these movies have garnered over the years. But what has always been a pet peeve is that some of the "lesser" films like The Invisible Man, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, etc...never get the same kind of pomp as Dracula and Frankenstein. I can understand why, but films like these have had just as much a powerful if not indeed more subtle influence. Well, here David Skaal, making documentaries for the big Universal horror films for DVD release around 2000, does his tribute for James Whale's revolutionary science fiction film - a film that had breakthrough technology at the time, used the Whale style to perfection, and made Claude Rains into a star. It had four sequels - granted only the second one near the quality of this, but all were fun. It had countless imitations as recent as the horrible Hollow Man and its sequel. This documentary chronicles the production of the film fusing anecdotal history with facts. We get interviews with some second-hand observers like Jessica Rains(telling a wonderful story about how her father took her to see this film for the first time as a child, Curtis Harrington(who had met and knew James Whale), and some film historians. There are plentiful scenes too. The documentary runs 35 minutes and though I found their analysis of the first film quite good, the rest of the sequels are lucky enough to get a mention. I would have liked to have seen some more on them as they are the films least known. Skaal does a great job with these documentaries as evidenced by the wonderful ones completed for Dracula, Frankenstein, and even The Mummy, but this one falls a little short on their scale. It definitely left me wanting to see more.

Rudy Behlmer hosts this 35-minute documentary. It's about Universal Studio's foray into the monster movie genre in the early 1930s. The studio was the leader in this field. It had two early smash hits in "Frankenstein" of 1931 and "The Invisible Man" of 1933. This film has interviews with a number of film historians, actors and others.

This bonus featurette has interviews with a number of film historians, actors and others. It shows how the invisibility was achieved for the invisible man. The documentary is very interesting and well done. It makes a good addition for a film library. Universal made this documentary to go with the movie DVD that went on sale after 2000.

The technology was masterful in its day and appears more real than CGI could make things today. Of course, that's because it was real. It was just done with the use of different camera shots, backgrounds, etc. Watch this documentary to see and learn how it was done.

This was a pretty good documentary about Universal's Invisible Man series. It goes into the most detail about the first one, with looks at HG Well's novel, director James Whale, lead actor Claude Rains. It does cover the other Universal Invisible Man movies, but doesn't look at other adaptations of Wells' novel. It also goes into some of the tricks that were used to create the appearance of an invisible man.

There are interviews with film historians, some of the living people involved with the films, or at least their friends or family members. They all have something interesting or funny to say. Claude Rains' daughter tells a tale of how her father took her to see the movie, and he was bundled up much like his character.

Also interesting was how The Invisible Man followed Whale's Frankenstein with certain plot elements retried in similar ways, trying to get them better. It's also asserted that the film part draws from the novel The Murderer Invisible by Philip Wylie.

These video documentaries from David J. Skal may be decent introductions to the classic Universal monster movies, but having read quite a bit about such films, including Skal's own "Hollywood Gothic" about "Dracula," I don't find them very revealing. This one about James Whale's 1933 "The Invisible Man," one of the three best Universal horror and sci-fi films of, well, probably ever, along with the same director's two Frankenstein films, doesn't have a lot to say about the film, and the presenter Rudy Belmer isn't especially informative in the DVD commentary also available on home video collections, either. Both spend quite a bit of time on the biographies of the people involved in the production. This doc particularly gets derailed in discussing the life of Whale, which while of some interest, mentioning a cut scene from the director's "Show Boat" (1936), for instance, doesn't seem relevant in a program that's less than 40 minutes. As in Skal's other docs about Whale's films, there's a lot of advertising for and clips shown of the semi-fictional Whale biopic "Gods and Monsters" (1998), which the caption points out is also "Available From Universal Studios Home Video." Besides the brief biographies, the dark comedy of Whale's films is mentioned, the special effects for the Invisible Man are explained a bit, and there's an overview of the sequels and follow-up Invisible Man films--at least of the ones that Universal Studios is also trying to sell.

The story of how Claude Rains came to be cast in the film is a bit different than other stories I've read, which emphasize that Whale already knew him from the stage. And Belmer's presentation rubbed me the wrong way from the start with his faint praise for the silent cinema having originated visual effects, only to degrade the art by saying, "But it was the early talkies that truly gave special effects their soul." It would've been better had they examined how the traveling mattes of "The Invisible Man" are a refinement of the matte work of early cinema magicians Georges Méliès ("A Trip to the Moon" (1902)) and George Albert Smith ("Santa Claus" (1898)) and how they adopted this effect from photography and magic lantern slides. Additionally, they could've proposed that "The Invisible Man" seems to delight in its trick effects much in the same way that those early films did in the mode of the "cinema of attractions," but that probably would've required interviewing more-academic film scholars like Tom Gunning, who coined that term. A relief from the talking heads and film clips in the form of a visual demonstration of the matte work or the printing process involved would've been informative, too. Or, with all the focus on Whale, they could've expanded on Ian McKellen's connection of camp to the director being gay and the meaning that has on the film.

The best point made here is the narrative similarities of "The Invisible Man" and the 1931 "Frankenstein," which although this connection has been made by others, it's more effectively made here by the cuts back-and-forth between the love triangles of the two films.

Nice featurette from the first Invisible Man DVD, as well as subsequent DVD releases. It covers the history of the Invisible Man films from Universal buying the rights from H.G. Wells through the 1940s films and even a mention for the Amazon Women on the Moon skit spoofing the film. Oddly, not much time is spent on the original Wells novel. Instead, a lot of time is spent discussing the life and career of director James Whale. Included are clips from "Gods and Monsters," as well as interviews with that film's director and star. So it would be fair to say this is a documentary short about James Whale as much as about the Invisible Man. There is also some focus on the great Claude Rains, whose daughter Jessica appears and shares some pleasant anecdotes. That was probably the highlight for me.

It's a good featurette, as all of the original Universal horror DVD shorts were. It could have used more focus on the film than Whale but I understand why they chose to do that. The Frankenstein one just had too much stuff going on to fit it in. Also, "Gods and Monsters" was new at the time this was made. Ideally, there could have been a short devoted to Whale and one devoted to the film but, in the end, it doesn't matter much. All that matters is that this one is informative and entertaining.