Original subtitles

One of the films on this collection

as the as the great title, Invisible Man appears.

I assume that that's not a joke

that's a reason in translation I assume that's a deliberate and

in talking about the Invisible Man

as a franchise character or invisibility as concept,

you keep coming up with these voluntary or involuntary pawns.

So when that happens, just go with it.

Yeah, we know you can't see the Invisible Man.

It is that I mean, I believe even films have used that.

Yeah, come and see the Invisible Man.

And the thing is this thing it's quite easy to overlook

the Invisible Man as

as the key

franchise fiend that he is.

The concept of invisibility has been with

within in mythology,

it's been around forever.

Yeah, the cloak of invisibility that you see in mythological movies

that's in Fritz Lang.

Nibelungen has an invisibility cloak and,

but also some of those Ray Harryhausen,

Sinbad movies do as well.

That's the sort of one time thing

rather than being invisible

being an invisible being

HG Wells, the Invisible Man,

one of his run of 1890s key science fiction, novels,

Time Machine war of the worlds

I'm Dr. Moreau.

First Man in the Moon.

It's the one that filmmakers would latched

on to it in a way that all actually

Wells is most famous novels.

It he wrote at the time, the movies were being invented,

he was really interested in making movies.

I mean, he ended up working on the shape of things to come.

But he actually shot a couple of silent comedies.

He wrote some scenarios.

He was very aware he even did this thing

of patenting a sort of theme park ride

based on the time machine.

And I, I suspect, the Invisible Man,

although it's a case of taking a legendary notion

and trying to come up with a scientific rationale for it.

And having a scientific background,

there are things that they're in the novel of the Invisible Man

like the Griffin, the character who becomes invisible isn't albino

already. Because that that means he's sort of

Yeah, the lack of pigment is something that

that the invisibility potion will only work on an albino.

But I wonder if wells also was aware of the trick films

that the male yeas type movies they're going right?

There's a sort of a feeling that the Invisible Man

which is actually like a lot of Wells's science fiction novels,

it's deceptively effortless as a book,

it's a ripping yarn.

And it's got a lot of ideas in it. It has a really fascinating narrative device

of being mostly a third person narrative,

which allows you to know what all the characters are thinking

except the Invisible Man,

who had some point as a long section

where he talks directly to another character,

and therefore to the reader. So the Invisible Man tells you things,

but you don't know how true they are.

You don't get his point of view.

He is invisible to the reader because of that.

Which is, yeah, it's a trick,

but it's a really interesting and it's kind of cool trick.

The first Invisible Man movie amusingly is a crossover picture.

It's Sherlock Holmes baffled,

which is it's Sherlock Holmes versus the Invisible Man.

I doubt if they paid the right stuff,

either of the characters, and it's a very, very brief film,

it's just a single joke.

And yet, this is the prehistory of Invisible Man cinema.

And there are a couple of other silent films

with invisible man characters who they're

they're all derived from the wells novel,

rather than from fairy tale versions of invisibility.

We have those as well.

But the the idea of an Invisible Man,

as opposed to a cloak of invisibility or

a spell limited visibility seems to originate with Wells

and then it becomes a a film property

at Universal in the early 1930s

were James Whale having made Frankenstein

and the old Dark House is looking around

for another property

to turn into

a we hadn't yet solidified the notion

of what a horror film was.

And so Frankenstein is a horror film.

But it's also a sort of science fiction film,

as is the contemporary Reuben mood

Boolean version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The Invisible Man.

It's not a horror novel. It's a science fiction novel,

but it has a sort of Gothic aspect to it.

There is a part of the plot,

which is now part of the plot of all Invisible Man films,

it's certainly a key point of the plot of Invisible Man

appears is that being invisible, drives you insane?

In the novel, there's a feeling

that is just the the existential nightmare of nobody

being able to see you is the downside to all the really cool things

you can do because you're invisible.

The and this is obviously the the sort of Porky style peeping

into the lady's shower room

invisibility aspect and the the shoplifting and

tweaking noses and teasing peasants kind of stuff,

which which is sort of the appealing Invisible Man behavior

which then spirals out of control into homicidal mania

and megalomaniac as a vision

yeah, there's a thing where he was

the Invisible Man calls himself invisible man

the first as if he's going to rule the world or

or and that idea in the films tends to be slightly simplified

into that there's a side effect of the drug

which drives people crazy.

And that's part of the the universal Invisible Man films

it's part of Invisible Man appears

it recurs in other

it probably reaches its absolute height

in the wonderful sleazy director, video movie,

the invisible maniac, which predates Paul the heavens

Hollow Man by some years and

the slogan for that was out of sight and out of his mind,

that that what happens with with the Invisible Man,

James whale's version of the Invisible Man

was a film that went through a bunch of development processes,

a whole series of scripts were written,

which apparently more and more flamboyant,

and who tray in and out there. And if you look at what Wale did with Frankenstein,

that's not entirely against his,

but he brought in RC Sheriff,

the man who wrote Journey's End,

the play that had been wells, big success in the theater

and then again, as a film,

to do a script, which basically goes back to Wales his book,

but it's from Wales, his book and

Wales film that we get is the notion of the Invisible Man

as a genre dates back to that.

These Japanese films,

they use all the things they

the stuff like the bandages and the dressing gown

and the unmasking the unwrapping scene,

which is a case where wells just wrote

a brilliant special effects sequence.

And then it with the Hollywood it was,

John Fulton was the the effects man who,

who came up with all the ways to show it on screen.

And then the Japanese films they actually adapt Fulton's techniques

almost, is a straight lift.

And gives you the notion of the Rampage,

the objects moving across the room by themselves,

either on wires or through super impositions

for all the the apparatus of the Invisible Man films.

Even the thing of casting somebody with a really great voice.

It's Claude Rains in the Invisible Man

who can project character.

Although sometimes you need really good mime

as well as a lot of ranting glove acting in in the Invisible Man films.

But anyway, the Invisible Man, a big hit movie,

an otter work by James Whale and

important adaptation of an important HG Wells novel,

but from the studio's point of view,

it's like they were creating franchises

they hadn't yet worked on it.

The original franchise was, I suppose,

Universal Monsters, universal horror, and so they did Dracula

followed by Frankenstein floated by the mummy

followed by the Invisible Man and a few others

that didn't take off to the invisible array and

maybe the Black Cat was a sort of Edgar Allan Paco

Karloff Lugosi was the it was the pitch for that.

But anyway, the studio created this genre which was was theirs.

But later on they made Bride of Frankenstein,

Dracula's daughter.

And then for various industrial reasons

they stopped doing it for a couple of years probably mainly because

Britain banned a bunch of these films and

said you this is nasty and evil and you shouldn't do it.

But in the late 30s, they got past that.

And they they revived the format with the son of Frankenstein

was the big super production that brought back Universal Monsters and

that it also combined Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi,

he was supposed to have clawed rave from us,

oh man, but they went with Basil Rathbone instead

or dreads was that in the Wolfman,

which was the sort of the next addition to the Universal Monsters cannon.

But son of Frankenstein taught them not just to expand their monsters

but to go back to the ones they had.

And they looked at the mummy and

sort of rejigged that into the mummies hand,

which starts its own franchise, and

they made the Invisible Man returns,

which was Vincent Price's first horror film,

although of course he didn't see much of him in it

but you've got in fact yet that great Vincent Price voice.

Vincent Price later refreeze the role of the Invisible Man in

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

he's the Joker at the end of it where

he appears smoking cigarettes

The Invisible Man that's another key

invisible thing to do smoke a cigarette

was you get the outline of the face or the lungs?

In Smoke?

Yeah, you can also do it with going out in the rain

or in in one invisible man fell me

smears his face with face cream.

Maybe with the Invisible Man returns

sort of sets the seal on what

Invisible Man seat calls we're going to be.

And Invisible Man appears and

Invisible Man versus the human fly.

Both take Invisible Man returns as a template.

Yes, there is a character who becomes invisible

through taking a scientific formula rather than magic.

But there's also a crime story going on in Israel

mountain returns it's to do with corruption

in the British mining industry.

There's Cedric Hardwick plays a a villain

who's out to do bad things that are mine.

And it's merely the fact that the Vincent Price character has become invisible,

incidentally, that the now allows him to go out and get get justice.

Yeah, he's the the Invisible Man is kind of a detective kind of a vigilante,

but also an incipient megalomaniac.

So he's a monster who's sort of a good guy.

Often you don't think of the individual man as a universal monster

in the way you think of Frankenstein Dracula on the Wolfman.

And yet, why is because he met Abbott and Costello, isn't he?

Yeah. There's an Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man as well

as that little bit in Meet Frankenstein.

And there's invisible agent which is the film

in which the Invisible Man becomes a patriotic good guy.

Lot of serious characters like Sherlock Holmes

and Tarzan turned patriotic in World War Two

other series characters like Mr. Moto who was Japanese

just didn't appear at all.

Charlie Chan, they had a couple of wartime cases.

Yeah, so yeah, and so invisible agent gives you invisible man versus Nazis.

So a case where the Invisible Man is,

although he's still sort of crazy,

is absolutely a good guy.

And then there was the Invisible Woman,

which is sex PFASs.

That's mixed in with the the series and Invisible Man's revenge,

which switches back into horror.

That's much more a crazy psychopath becomes invisible.

But again, there's a crime plot going on

that the reasonable man doesn't really have that much to do with

until he gets involved and get some kind.

I mean, he gets his revenge on people who've been bad to him.

Invisible Man appears

sort of just lifts what these American films are doing

and transfers it to to Japan.

It's odd as a film that looks back to the universal films of the 1940s

Possibly because they hadn't been available in Japan until after the war.

And so they were quite fresh and recent

when Invisible Man appears

was also I suspect that Wells was a constant seller in Japan

so they were they were looking to do

The Literary sorts.

But it looks a little like the sort of films

that were going to be made in America a couple of years later,

because it doesn't have much in the way of Gothic atmosphere

which of all the American Invisible Man films had.

They were old dark house type movies

set in a mostly sort of studio bound version of Britain,

which is very like the version of Britain you see in the Wolfman

or the Sherlock Holmes films at the time.

But Invisible Man appears

this looks like a 1950s American science fiction movie,

it's on locations.

There are, there's a lot of shots of

like the police roaring into action.

There's a sort of documentary on the streets footage.

And there's an insanely complicated plot about stolen jewels,

which somehow seems to be more interesting to the people

than the fact that there's an invisible man.

It's like, Yeah, okay. Yeah, there's an invisible man.

And it's unique, I think, in that,

that it's sort of a mystery as to who the Invisible Man is.

Although, if anybody is fooled, they'll be surprised.

But it still is quite clever that they take that route.

It is something that's different from earlier Invisible Man films,

but it is almost like, yeah, yeah, yeah,

forget that. It is well, man, what about getting

this getting our hands on the duels, but

obviously, it must have been a at least a minor hit in Japan

because they will follow ups,

Invisible Man versus human fly.

The the the other film in this set is 10 years later,

like the universal Invisible Man films.

It's sort of not quite a reboot, and

not quite as equal,

it doesn't seem to feature the same invisibility formula

or any of the same characters, even though

it would have been quite easy to put in

a couple of dialogue references to the earlier film.

And have you know what we now think of in sort of Marvel Comics terms,

there's a continuity between the Invisible Man and the human fly.

Marvel Comics quite an interesting reference in this case,

because the the, the human fly

kind of evokes the 1950s Fly movies

also with Vincent Price. Yeah, the teleportation mishap,

but actually the human fly is much more like Ant Man

as a character or even the ant man's girlfriend the wasp

is a shrunken down regular guy

I mean, you hear it here, the Invisible Man is framed

and has to go on the offensive.

Another sort of weird precedent for for Marvel comics is

that invisible man versus human fly features and

Invisible Woman a couple of years before

the invisible girl made her debut as one of the Fantastic Four.

I actually quite like the way Invisible Man versus human fly

sort of sets up as if it's the first we're going to be

a series of adventures about basically the invisible gang, isn't it?

You got a squad of, of invisible people by the end,

who could have gone on to fight more and more bizarre adventures.

But actually they had sort of got out of the business.

I think it's partly because they're great rival Toho started

I think they poached their effects team.

Super Raya, the great Godzilla guy had done some work for day

and moved over to the opposition, and

they will toe had this little run

in between they're big giant monster films or films,

which they have complicated title things but mostly in English.

They're known as the

ah man the human vapor and secret of the two Legion.

None of them are Invisible Man films,

except they have the same plot and structure of Invisible Man films.

They're researchers who do something to themselves

that resented that render them intangible or

able to get into bank vaults through teleportation or by turning into gas.

Or sometimes it's done accidentally by atomic mutation.

But anyway, they they are characters who have superpowers who become criminals,

super criminals in the way the Invisible Man does.

This was sort of revived as a theme by Alan Moore

and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen where he looks back at these Victorian characters like Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde,

the Invisible Man and sees them as proto Marvel comic superheroes

and then does a superhero or super villain team up book about them.

And when they made League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is not very good film.

They also had an invisible man on the on the squad in that.

So what we get in these two films is we see actually

it fills in a really crucial bill.

The block in the history of the invisible band as a franchise

is it takes the invisible man out of the the monster movie,

which is where he'd been before.

Usually monster movies with crime overtones,

and switches him into his kind of crime,

superpower superhero story also mingling a bit

with sort of detective stories or espionage stories.

Interestingly, all there have been a whole bunch of subsequent Invisible Man TV series,

there was one with David McCallum in the 70s and

Gemini man with Ben Murphy,

which followed on from the invisible monsters,

and there have been recent sort of attempts to reboot the Invisible Man as TV series,

and they have all been spy shows

they've all been invisible agent stories going back to that world war two thing,

the idea that the Invisible Man will be sort of patriotic

and do good things for the country

when he's not taking off bandages and

walking around naked and yeah,

moving laboratory equipment in order to prank people.

And you know this

this again feeds back into what we get

in Hollow Man the pull the hub of motion,

where it's just a scientist,

who goes crazy and does terrible things

is back to the Invisible Man as a slasher.

It seemed as if the Invisible Man was literally going to fade away.

Universal films who of course, had the Invisible Man as one of their key monsters,

and made various attempts to revive their franchise, all unsuccessful.

There was, you know, the remake of The Wolfman?

Several versions of the mummy Van Helsing.

None of these had invisible men in them,

but they were all Universal Monsters.

They all didn't really work.

You know, there was one version of the mummy that sort of was successful,

but the last one with Tom Cruise.

Yeah, there was a plan to make a whole interlocking Marvel style universe of Universal Monsters

that would I think I've had Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man.

But the Tom Cruise version of the mummy died so badly

that everybody just decided not to do that.

And universal then sublicense their monsters franchise to Blum house,

the independent company that specializes in horror.

Famously, they may get out, but they've done a lot of other really fascinating interesting low budget work

and a lot of middling rubbish that's just there.

And they gave the Invisible Man to leave one out,

who's one of the creators of the show franchise

and made a really solid film called upgrade.

And he turned in an Invisible Man film called The Invisible Man

with a character called Griffin, just like the traditional universal,

Invisible Man, that was a big hit,

and reestablished the franchise as a commercial entity,

but also finally came up with an idea for an Invisible Man film

that was not the same as all the others.

If you look at everything from the Invisible Man through the Hollow Man

to Memoirs of an invisible man, to the Invisible Woman,

to all kinds of other invisible movies,

the protagonist is the invisible character,

you become invisible with them.

Here the protagonist was the Invisible Man's ex girlfriend

played by Elisabeth Moss,

and it was the idea of the Invisible Man as stalker

as creepy characterize men

it's the new Invisible Man is a tech genius

wearing a suit that does something weird with optics

that renders him invisible.

Yeah, it's as nonstick nonsensical as any other Invisible Man story

or rationale for science of invisibility

but it kind of works for the movie,

but it allowed for new and different kinds of Invisible Man sequences,

Invisible Man scare stuff.

So after all these years the Invisible Man is back