The Invisible Man
1933, NR, 71 min.
Directed by James Whale, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, Una O’Connor, William Harrigan.

Claude Rains made his screen debut in the H.G. Wells mad-scientist classic. A pre-Titanic Gloria Stuart plays the love interest. The story is one of those great mad scientist tales in which the potion invented with the best intentions for its enhancement of human life becomes instead an evil force bent on its destruction. The visual effects here are pretty great – and at first comedic – as the Invisible Man smokes and brawls and rocks in a chair. Oh, but then the horror happens. The film is directed by the father of Frankenstein, director James Whale, whose semi-closeted life was also the subject of last year’s biographical drama Gods and Monsters.

This article appears in August 13 • 1999 (Cover).

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.