The Invisible Man is a 1933 American pre-Code science fiction horror film directed by James Whale. Based on H. G. Wells' 1897 science fiction novel The Invisible Man and produced by Universal Pictures​, the film stars Claude Rains, in his first American screen appearance, and Gloria Stuart. The film was written by R.C. Sherriff, along with Philip Wylie and Preston Sturges, though the latter duo's work was considered unsatisfactory and they were taken off the project. As an adaptation of a book, the film has been described as a "nearly perfect translation of the spirit of the tale" upon which it is based. The first film in Universal's Invisible Man film series, it spawned a number of sequels and spin-offs which used ideas of an "invisible man" that were largely unrelated to Wells' original story.

Rains portrayed the Invisible Man (Dr. Jack Griffin) mostly only as a disembodied voice. Rains is only shown clearly for a brief time at the end of the film, spending most of his on-screen time covered by bandages. In 2008, The Invisible Man was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot

On a snowy night, a stranger, his face swathed in bandages and his eyes obscured by dark goggles, takes a room at The Lion's Head Inn in the English village of Iping in Sussex. The man demands that he be left alone. Later, the innkeeper, Mr. Hall, is sent by his wife to evict the stranger after he makes a huge mess in his room while doing research and falls behind on his rent. Angered, the stranger throws Mr. Hall down the stairs. Confronted by a policeman and some local villagers, he removes his bandages and goggles, revealing that he is invisible. Laughing maniacally, he takes off his clothes, making himself completely undetectable, and drives off his tormenters before fleeing into the countryside.

The stranger is Dr. Jack Griffin, a chemist who has discovered the secret of invisibility while conducting a series of tests involving an obscure drug called monocane. Flora Cranley, Griffin's fiancée and the daughter of Griffin's employer, Dr. Cranley, becomes distraught over Griffin's long absence. Cranley and his other assistant, Dr. Kemp, search Griffin's empty laboratory, finding only a single note in a cupboard. Cranley becomes concerned when he reads it. On the note is a list of chemicals including the drug monocane, which Cranley knows is extremely dangerous; an injection of it drove a dog mad in Germany. Griffin, it seems, is unaware of this. Cranley deduces that he may have learned about monocane in English books printed before the incident that describe only its bleaching power.

On the evening of his escape from the inn, Griffin turns up at Kemp's home. He forces Kemp to become his visible partner in a plot to dominate the world through a reign of terror, commencing with "a few murders here and there". They drive back to the inn to retrieve his notebooks on the invisibility process. Sneaking inside, Griffin finds a police inquiry under way, conducted by an official who believes that it is all a hoax. After securing his books, he attacks and kills the officer.

Back home, Kemp calls first Cranley, asking for help, and then the police. Flora persuades her father to let her come along. In her presence, Griffin becomes more placid and calls her "darling." When he realizes that Kemp has betrayed him, his first reaction is to get Flora away from danger. After promising Kemp that at 10 o'clock the next night he will murder him, Griffin escapes and goes on a killing spree. He causes the derailment of a train, resulting in a hundred deaths, and throws two volunteer searchers off a cliff. The police offer a reward for anyone who can think of a way to catch him.

The chief detective in charge of the search uses Kemp as bait, feeling that Griffin will try to fulfill his promise, and devises various clever traps. At Kemp's insistence, the police disguise him in a police uniform and let him drive his car away from his house. Griffin, however, is hiding in the back seat of the car. He overpowers Kemp and ties him up in the front seat. Griffin then sends the car down a steep hill and over a cliff, where it explodes on impact.

Griffin seeks shelter from a snowstorm in a barn. A farmer hears snoring and sees the hay, in which Griffin is sleeping, moving. The man notifies the police. The police surround the building and set fire to the barn. When Griffin comes out, the chief detective sees his footprints in the snow and opens fire, mortally wounding him. Griffin is taken to the hospital where, on his deathbed, he admits to Flora that "I meddled in things that man must leave alone." As he dies, his body gradually becomes visible again.

Cast

- Claude Rains as Dr. Jack Griffin / The Invisible Man

- William Harrigan as Dr. Arthur Kemp

- Gloria Stuart as Flora Cranley

- Henry Travers as Dr. Cranley

- Una O'Connor as Jenny Hall

- Forrester Harvey as Herbert Hall

- Dudley Digges as Chief Detective

- E. E. Clive as Constable Jaffers

Several notable character actors appear in minor roles, including Dwight Frye as a reporter, Walter Brennan as a man whose bicycle is stolen by Griffin, and John Carradine, acting at that time under the name Peter Richmond, as a Cockney informer.

Production

Claude Rains was not the studio's first choice to play the lead role in The Invisible Man. Boris Karloff was originally supposed to play the part but withdrew after producer Carl Laemmle Jr. tried too many times to cut Karloff's contractual salary. To replace Karloff, Chester Morris, Paul Lukas and Colin Clive were considered for the part. It was James Whale, who was assigned to direct the film to replace Cyril Gardner, who wanted Claude Rains to play Griffin – Rains was his first choice. Problems in developing the script held up the project for some time; in June 1932 the film was called off temporarily.

The Invisible Man was in production from June to August 1933 at Universal Studios. Filming was interrupted near the end by a fire, started by a smudge pot kicked into some hay, which damaged an exterior set.

The film was released on November 13, 1933 and was marketed with the taglines "Catch me if you can!" and "H.G. Wells' Fantastic Sensation".

Reaction, awards and honors

The movie was popular at the box office, and was Universal's most successful horror film since Frankenstein.

Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times wrote, "The story makes such superb cinematic material that one wonders that Hollywood did not film it sooner. Now that it has been done, it is a remarkable achievement". The film also appeared on The New York Times' year-end list as one of the Ten Best Films of 1933. Variety called the film "something new and refreshing in film frighteners" that "will more than satisfy audiences," but suggested that some of the laughs in the picture might not have been intentional.

Film Daily wrote, "It will satisfy all those who like the bizarre and the outlandish in their film entertainment". John Mosher of The New Yorker called the film a "bright little oddity" that "never was properly appreciated". 

Despite the critical acclaim, H. G. Wells, the author of the original source text, said at a dinner in its honor that "while he liked the picture he had one grave fault to find with it. It had taken his brilliant scientist and changed him into a lunatic, a liberty he could not condone." Whale replied that the film was addressed to the "rationally minded motion picture audience," because "in the minds of rational people only a lunatic would want to make himself invisible anyway". (In the original novel, the scientist was amoral from the start and did not hesitate to rob his own father [who consequently commits suicide] to get the money to buy certain drugs for the invisibility process. In the movie, an essential color-removing drug in the process had the unavoidable side-effect of unbalancing his mind.) Despite his misgivings, Wells did praise the performance of Una O'Connor as the shrieking Mrs. Hall.

Whale, who had previously directed Frankenstein as well as the first version of Waterloo Bridge, received a Special Recommendation from the 1934 Venice Film Festival in recognition of his work on The Invisible Man. Rains' film career took off after The Invisible Man, which was his first American film appearance. The film was nominated for the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills and AFI's 10 Top 10 (science fiction film), while the character was nominated as a villain for the AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains list.