Horror cinema has long been defined by its most famous characters. The output of the Universal monster era, wherein the legendary studio pioneered a new age of big-screen horror, became some of the most recognizable and copied creations in movie history. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, and the Invisible Man were reinterpreted and ripped off countless times, often by Universal itself. And with the Invisible Man, the studio chose to keep the franchise running with an ahead-of-its-time gender twist.
Directed by James Whale two years after he made Frankenstein, The Invisible Man is, like much of Universal’s output, an adaptation of a novel, this one by sci-fi legend H.G. Wells. It centers on an eccentric scientist (Claude Rains), whose bandage-concealed face arouses the suspicion of his small town home. It’s soon revealed that his experiments have rendered him invisible, and he has no idea how to make himself visible once more. The hook for audiences was the special effects, which made Rains disappear from view, an expensive and ground-breaking process that paid off and made the film a huge hit.
