Directed by: James Whale
Written by: H. G. Wells
Starring: Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan
1 Hour, 11 minutes
The film starts with a man in bandages walking through a snowstorm to an inn. The others at the inn are creeped out by the mysterious man, but he does rent a room. Almost immediately, the landlady barges in on him while he’s eating, and he covers his face with a napkin. They’ve gotten off to a bad start.
Flora confronts her scientist father and asks about his assistant, Jack Griffin. He’s been missing for nearly a month, ever since he went off to carry out his own experiments. She’s concerned because he was so excited before he left. His coworker, Kemp, doesn’t like Jack because he was too secretive. Flora, on the other hand, likes Jack… a lot.
Meanwhile, Jack is working on a project in his room at the inn. “There’s got to be a way back!” He states, and then screams at the landlady. He pushes the landlord down the steps, and the police are called. He undresses before the crowd, while cackling maniacally. He chokes the cop and tears up the whole inn, causing a panic and general mayhem all over the little town.
The scientists talk about Jack while going through his abandoned lab. They find a recipe that calls for monocane. Dr. Cranley explains to Kemp that it’s a drug that bleaches color from anything and everything, and it also causes insanity. “We must tell the police that Griffin’s disappeared,” he says. It’s not completely certain that he intended that to be a pun, but it is one nevertheless.
Griffin goes to talk to Kemp. Kemp gives him more bandages and clothes. Griffin wants to take over the world, starting with a reign of terror, and he wants Kemp to help him out; someone to take on the “little things.” First, he needs to go back to the inn and pick up his notebooks that he wasn’t able to carry. He retrieves the books and then makes a fool out of the Chief of Police by killing him in front of a crowded room.
He explains to Kemp that half-digested food, dirt on his feet, and even dirty fingernails can give him away. Meanwhile, the Chief Detective sets up a massive search effort, “He must leave tracks, even if he is invisible.” The call for searchers goes out on the radio, and before long, everyone is looking for someone they can’t see.
Kemp calls Dr. Cranley, and Flora overhears him. Flora insists on confronting Griffin right now; she wants a sort of intervention. They show up at Kemp’s house. Griffin explains that he wanted riches and power to win Flora’s heart, but she says she already loved him before all this.
The police show up with bloodhounds. Griffin sends Flora away as it’s time for him to get naked! He swears to kill Kemp at ten o’clock tomorrow night and runs off, having a little fun with the many police waiting outside.
The next day, Griffin causes mayhem with the search party, killing twenty men, and then derails an entire train just for the sake of chaos, killing over a hundred more. He robs a bank and throws money all over the street. The Chief of Detectives says they have one idea that just might work.
It doesn’t. Griffin kills Kemp right under the noses of the police.
Finally, the police catch a break; it starts snowing heavily. They track him to a nearby barn where Griffin is asleep. They set fire to the barn and shoot Griffin when he comes out. Flora goes to see him in the hospital, and Griffin admits he was wrong just before he dies. He takes his last breath and reappears, now completely visible in death.
The landlady is an over-the-top screamer, whose panic borders on the ridiculous. There are a lot of extras playing hundred of cops, this must have been an expensive film for the time. The special effects are obviously dated and very basic, but effective enough. How do you do a green-screen with a black-and-white film? With the exception of the first policeman, no one has any problem believing there’s such a thing as a man who is invisible.
Griffin does throw around a few good insults. Flora’s father: “Your father? He’s got the brain of a tapeworm! A maggot!”