- Director: Lambert Hillyer
- Writers: John Colton, Howard Higgin
- Stars: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Frances Drake
- Runtime: 1 Hour, 20 Minutes
- Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/2O3HJ4Z
The Invisible Ray (1936)
Synopsis
Dr. Rukh is expecting visitors from England, so he’s checking out the equipment in the laboratory. His mother comes in and says she fears her son won’t learn until it’s too late that there are some things men were not meant to know. Janos Rukh is looking through a huge telescope when we see that he looks like Boris Karloff with dark, curly hair. Sir Francis and his son, Drake, as well as Dr. Benet from Paris, who looks a lot like Bela Lugosi, are coming to inspect Rukh’s work.
He takes them all to the lab, where they look through the telescope at the Andromeda Nebula. A ray from there will be recorded in his machines. He turns on the sparking, grinding machine, and a projection of the universe appears in the room. We see several well-known astronomical places and objects as we proceed to Andromeda.
Rukh believes that millions of years ago, a huge chunk of a material like radium crashed from the sky and landed in the heart of Africa. He uses the machine to prove his theory. We see the Earth in the past as the asteroid approaches and hits the Earth. Light takes time to pass between here and Andromeda, and by looking at the light from Andromeda, they can see something that happened in the past.
Benet wants Rukh to join them on their forthcoming expedition to Africa to find the remnants of that asteroid. His mother warns him not to go; he gets along well with his experiments, but he should leave people alone.
Once we get to Africa, there are racist stereotypes galore as Drake and his mother brag about how many rhinos they’ve killed. Benet and the others are doing their work, and they wonder what happened to Rukh, since he seems to have abandoned all of them, including his wife. Young Mr. Drake is falling for Diana, Mrs. Rukh.
Rukh and his native guides find the radioactive meteor, and it’s still smoking after millions of years. Diana goes off to find Rukh. Rukh, meanwhile, has gathered samples, and he gloats, “More power than man has ever known.” He plugs his sample into a big telescope-looking gun that melts a giant rock formation. He threatens to kills the natives if they don’t obey him. That night, Rukh starts to glow radioactively; the samples have poisoned him. He pets his dog, who dies immediately; he has the touch of death.
Rukh goes to see Benet, and he hopes that Benet can find a cure for him. Benet gives him the cure for radium sickness, and that seems to work, but only for a short time. He’ll need to take the antidote every single day, or he’ll become a killing machine and eventually crumble to ash. Rukh gets the treatment, goes back to his own camp to complete the work, and swears Benet to secrecy.
Weeks pass. Drake and Diana grow closer, even though they know they shouldn’t. Rukh says he could use his discovery to power a city a thousand miles away, or he could use it to destroy that city. Benet’s companions, including Diana, have gone back to Europe. Everyone, including Rukh, now return home.
Rukh uses his ray to restore his blind mother’s vision. He decides to finally present his findings in Paris. His mother again warns him not to go, as he’ll find nothing but tragedy there. She’s a fun old woman. Rukh goes to Paris to find Benet has already cured thousands using the Radium-X beam, and is credited in all the newspapers. Rukh is not pleased, but at least Rukh won the Nobel prize, a fact that’s thrown out in a single line.
Rukh finds a man about his size and kills him, leaving his papers on the body to make it look like he died. Diana and Drake get married now that she’s free. Rukh is losing his mind, as he vows to kill the six people who stole his discovery.
Sir Francis is killed, and Benet uses an ultraviolet camera to see what Sir Francis saw in his final moments. It was Rukh. Not only that, but the six statues across the road from Rukh’s apartment have all been melted. Sir Francis’s wife dies next, with glowing hand prints on her throat. Benet tells the police everything.
Drake and Benet offer to use themselves as bait to draw out Rukh. Rukh, of course, crashes the party. Benet is killed quickly, and finally, only Drake and Diana are left. Rukh confronts Diana, but he can’t do it. Rukh decides that only Drake needs to be killed, but for some reason, Rukh’s mother intervenes, destroying his treatment. He starts smoking and burns up.
Commentary
Here we have some atomic-age sci-fi before there was an atomic age; all the effects of the material are compared to radium, something people of the time had heard of. Some of the special effects, like the melting rock, look pretty good. I kinda understand what they were doing in the beginning with the Andromeda galaxy, but the rest of the scientific details here were purely fantasy.
Karloff is playing a younger man this time around, and it’s different seeing him not playing an old man; he climbs rocks and runs around, and generally is more active than usual in this.
Lugosi and Karloff teamed up many times, but I think this is the best of the ones we’ve seen so far (The Black Cat and The Raven).