Celebrating its 85th anniversary this month, The Invisible Man Returns was the first time Vincent Price took center stage in the genre he’d go on to dominate. Not that you’d know it. As its title suggests, the horror icon spends all but one minute of the entire picture under a cloak of invisibility. And shot 14 years before a nose injury on the set of The Mad Magician changed his voice forever, even his mellifluous tones are unrecognizable.
Still, Price undoubtedly fulfilled the casting brief (unknown, good-looking, youthful) Universal Studios — then in the middle of their golden horror phase — pitched in The Hollywood Reporter. The actor had just three credits to his name, comedy Service de Luxe, romantic drama The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and historical scarefest Tower of London, with the latter starring fellow scream king Boris Karloff. His surprisingly fresh-faced (and sans his signature mustache) appearance in the closing big reveal, meanwhile, showed he hadn’t yet reached his thirties.
