The Invisible Man

I think everyone, you know, remembers Jimmy Stewart and everyone remembers Claude Rains and

the Invisible Man.

Sorry.

And, you know, Thomas Mitchell and Eugene Pallett.

Bosley Crowther in The New York Times said, "The meticulous Warner Brothers, apparently careful not to miss any of the standard ingredients, have endowed the beast with five fingers with psychological, whodunit, romantic, and comedy twists.

But this Christmas film package hardly is a thing of joy, for taking its title literally, the producers, obviously respecting the tradition of The Invisible Man, herein have a ghoulish hand scaring the daylights out of the residents of a villa in Northern Italy.

And if audiences are reasonably tolerant, chances are this thriller will scare them, too.

Chances are also that audiences will notice that this thriller takes its time in beginning to thrill."

Mm-hmm

... and Alien and Frankenstein, The Thing, The Fly, Godzilla, especially the 1954 Godzilla, Invisible Man from 1933, Predator.

I've talked about all those movies.

In fact, most of those that I just listed there have been on lists I've done this year since Megan has joined the show.

... 1930s King Kong.

Mm-hmm.

You know, or the 1930s Invisible Man.

I've talked about those films a lot.

The mummy had his tomb.

The invisible man had, well, nothing technically because he's not there.

And somewhere beneath the full moon, Larry Talbot had a very serious hair problem.

Throughout the 1930s, Universal Pictures created some of the most recognizable characters in the history of horror.

Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, and eventually The Wolfman.

And they weren't merely successful horror characters, they became movie stars in their own right.

And once Universal realized audiences would pay to see these monsters again and again, somebody eventually stumbled onto an idea so obvious that Hollywood would spend the next century repeating it.

Then Universal keeps going.

There's no...

I mean, it's the same effects they were using in The Invisible Man back in the 30s, really.

It does have some nice, nifty animation effects, but that's Disney, so a bit better.

And the effects are good.

I think it's great.

I actually have the promo of The Invisible Man, which I know goes for crazy prices right now online.

It's very expensive.

However, [clears throat] it's very cool because it's just like a, you know, like a translucent, uh, type of like plastic mini, and it's supposed to be The Invisible Man, so that's...

So my friends, I don't know what happened in the recording, but apparently it got mixed up.

Anyway, I'm talking about 20 Strong right now, so enjoy it.

Because I had wrapped myself in achievements and programs.

You know, I think of that old movie, old, old movie, The Invisible Man, where on screen he was only visible if he wrapped himself in fabric.

You know, and he did that to make himself visible to people.

And I feel like so much of my life I was wrapping myself in the fabric to be seen as a leader, as a person.

You could walk amongst millions of people and never be noticed.

But what happens when you can no longer see yourself? In 1933, the Invisible Man terrified audiences with a monster unlike any they had ever encountered.

Not because of claws or fangs, but because the greatest danger was a man whose face had disappeared long before his humanity did.

This is the story of Dr. Jack Griffin.

This is the Invisible Man.

The storm arrived just after sunset.

It swept across the English countryside with a violence that seemed almost unnatural, swallowing the narrow roads beneath curtains of snow, driving every sensible traveler indoors.

Bottles of monocane stood alongside dozens of failed antidotes, each one ending the same way.

Yeah.

The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, which I believe was Britain, The Invisible Man, which I believe was Britain or maybe France or something, and olden times.

The Creature of the Black Lagoon is set now in the atomic age in 1954, and they're all about, you know, "In the future we'll be sending men to space." It's a different type of thing.

I recognize two elements to this.

I'm here for it.

This week, the Invisible Man, probably my least favorite of the Universal Monsters in all honesty.

This one's a stretch.

I understand what they're doing.

It's a translucent Invisible Man figure, so it's a bit of a repaint.

I get the most out of your molds.

Clear plastic.

So I don't know how you do this perfectly.