Invisible Agent

 

 

I Spy No Spy

Invisible Agent
USA 1942 Directed by Edwin L. Marin
Universal Blu Ray Zone A

So next up from Universal’s 'Invisible franchise' was their attempt to aid the war effort in 1942 with the Invisible Agent. This one takes the grandson of the original Griffin character, who has changed his name to Frank Raymond (played by Jon Hall) in order to avoid association with the actions of the original character (which I guess dates the original movie back generations... although I’m really not sure how, time wise, The Invisible Man Returns (reviewed here) could place this relation as a grandson.

The film starts off with quite a dark tone in America, when some German and Japanese allies led by Sir Cedric Hardwicke as SS Man Conrad Stauffer (who you’ll remember from both The Invisible Man Returns and The Ghost Of Frankenstein reviewed here) and Peter Lorre as the Japanese Baron Ikito (I guess it takes an Austrian to play a credible Japanese man?), try to get the formula to invisibility at the start off the film but Frank manages to barely escape with his life, after they nearly cut his fingers off in one of the paper cutting machines he has in his stationer’s shop. After Frank’s ‘cover’ is blown, the US army asks Frank for the invisibility formula but he refuses. The next thing we know we have footage and newspaper reportage of the attack on Pearl Harbour and Frank changes his mind. agreeing to let the US army make one of their secret agents invisible, on the condition that it’s him instead of a member of the military, so nobody else gets hurt by he formula (which is an interesting point in terms of the dangers of the formula because, this is the only point in the film which these dangers are addressed... I’ll mention that again a little later).

So next thing you know he’s flown to London and then being parachute dropped into the heart of Nazi Germany to find a reliable informant, high ranking lady Maria Sorenson, who is played by Hungarian actress Ilona Massey... who looks wonderful in this and who actually receives top billing above Jon Hall in the cast list.

And it’s a fun romp of heroic wartime propaganda as Frank Raymond infiltrates the Germans to discover their plan to bomb New York, has a comedy routine as an invisible third for dinner when Maria dines with a high ranking member of the SS and ultimately flies with her back to the UK after bombing the nazi planes and generally succeeding in his mission behind enemy lines, on most counts. The film also has a scene with Peter Lorre where his special ‘surgeon’ is played by his once Mr. Moto co-star and number one son himself, Keye Luke. It’s unusual and interesting for me to see Luke playing what amounts to a ‘sinister by proxy’, villainous role in the story.

And, for the time and even, in some instances, for contemporary times, the special effects are quite well done. When Frank parachutes into enemy territory after his plane is shot at by the Germans, he strips off his clothing in mid air so it’s just the parachute and harness left at the end of the sequence, still securely fastened around his invisible body and... well... it certainly looks pretty convincing still, even on Blu Ray. Ditto for a scene where an informant hands him a glass of coffee and he takes it and drinks it down invisibly with no cuts to the shot. It looks amazing although, later, when the informant is pictured on his own, I noticed his hands went a bit transparent in one area of the shot so there’s a clue there to the photographic process used, I guess.

It’s also the first time, I think (I may be wrong), when the invisible hero uses cold cream and spreads it over his face in shot so you can slowly see his features materialise. I used to see David  McCallum do this more or less every week in the 1970s on his The Invisible Man TV show, I’m sure, but for 1942, the sequence is no less well done and must have been pretty effective to audiences seeing this on first release. It’s nice stuff.

Another interesting thing that strikes me about the film... and I’m sure that this is true of a lot of the films made at the time about a similar subject... is the mixed nature of the tone. It’s trying to be light and comical but the darkness inherent in the World War II situation is also felt and portrayed in a kind of, ‘matter of fact’ way which almost undercuts the atrocities that it’s not shirking at dealing with. For instance, one of Frank’s informants is ‘questioned’ by the Nazis and then asked to sign a declaration saying that when they released him they had treated him well. He can’t however, sign it like they ask because they’ve already broken all his fingers.

Similarly, the demise of two of the main villains is fairly bleak. When it’s clear that Stauffer and Ikito have failed in their mission (and have grown to show a lot less respect for each other than when they were first introduced into the plot), Ikito shows Stauffer what it’s like to ‘die with honour’ by stabbing him to death and then, in a poetic moment of the dark propaganda machine in action, tears Stauffer’s swastika from him arm and wipes his bloody knife on it before committing seppuku himself in another grim moment.

What is interesting in terms of the continuity with the rest of the series... or lack of it in this case... is that the process whereby the invisibility chemical slowly, over a number of days, causes madness in the subject, while hinted at tangentially in the early part of the film, is completely forgotten as it would be inconvenient to the plot. Frank never once looks like his thinking is compromised and he stays an ‘invisible hero’ throughout the course of the picture. I can’t remember if this plot point is brought back for the next movie but, yeah, it’s pretty much dumped here.

Other than that, though, I don’t have much more to say about Invisible Agent, other than Hans Salter is listed as musical director and some of the cues recognisable from The Wolfman (reviewed here) and Return Of The Invisible Man make their way into this, freshly recorded in different orchestrations (it seemed to me), as part of he score. But Invisible Agent is fun, the good guy gets the girl (who would also turn up in Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman) and a blow is struck against Nazi Germany... in Hollywoodland at least. It still holds up today in sequences where you wouldn’t expect it to (such as many of the special effects scenes) and it’s something I’d recommend to most cinephiles interested in this period and genre of American cinematic history.

The Ghost Of Frankenstein

Surgical Terror

The Ghost Of Frankenstein
USA 1942 Directed by Erle C. Kenton
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

It was never meant to be so but The Ghost Of Frankenstein, these days, acts more as a ‘link in continuity’ kind of movie (just like the atrocious Back To The Future II links two far superior films). It’s the last of the Frankenstein movies which had an A list budget (although it was still significantly slashed from the previous installments) and perhaps a sign that, with the B-movie status bestowed on pretty much all of the Universal monster movies that saw out the rest of the 1940s, the box office returns were perhaps less spectacular. Universal would attempt to do something about that in the very next Frankenstein movie but... I’ll get to that when I review Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman.

This one is an odd one... it’s the only one in which Lon Chaney Jr dons the Frankenstein’s monster make-up in the proper continuity of these films... officially that is. Unofficially he also doubled up a few shots in a couple of the upcoming movies but, this is the one where Chaney Jr (billed here at the end of the credits but without the Jr) started to become the man who had the honour of playing four different Universal signature monsters. This was filmed just over a month after his starring role in The Wolf Man (reviewed here) and he would later go on to play The Mummy and, arguably, Dracula (yeah, it’s a hard call on that one but I’ll get to it when I review that particular movie).

It’s starts being odd straight off, when several characters who were killed in the last one are all clearly fine again here. So two of the council men, murdered by the monster in Son Of Frankenstein (reviewed here), seem none the worse for wear. Alive too is Ygor, once again played by Bela Lugosi, even though Basil Rathbone’s character had shot him dead in the last film. The one excuse given for this spoken is, and I quote, “Ygor does not die that easily!”

Another odd thing is that the film kinda starts off in reverse, in that it plays out what seems like it should be the final scene of a typical Frankenstein movie first, with the villagers following the advice of a cameo appearance by Dwight Frye (who would appear twice in this film but only once with new footage as this uncredited character), by raising pitchforks and lighted torches and blowing up the now deserted Castle Frankenstein with TNT. Unknown to them is the fact that the TNT has helped dislodge some of the hardened sulphur encasing the Frankenstein monster (remember, he was knocked into the put of sulphur by Rathbone in a heroic moment at the end of Son Of Frankenstein) and Ygor rescues the now ‘alive again’ creature, the white of the sulphur covering his body and helping the trailers no end with the footage to sell the idea that the actual ghost of a Frankenstein monster is in this film to justify the title to the audience. It doesn’t but, they do have a proper justification later in the film, as ridiculous as that is (yeah, don’t worry, I’ll get there).

The creature loses his white covering fairly early on but of the things which always worries me about this film is the costume he’s wearing when he comes out of the sulphur. It’s just the typical suit the monster always wears but, if you remember, when the monster went into the sulphur as Boris Karloff, he was wearing a snazzy, furry waistcoat. Does sulphur discriminate and dissolve such cool fashion statements? Only the costume department at Universal knows for sure, I guess.

So, anyway, the basic plot of this is Ygor and the monster go to another village where the hitherto unknown ‘other son of Frankenstein’, “Ludwig Frankenstein MD - Diseases Of The Mind”, has his psychiatric practice. He is played by Cedric Hardwicke, is assisted by the nefarious Dr. Bohmer (Lionel Atwill returns to the franchise here as another character) and lives with his daughter Elsa Frankenstein (presumably named after Elsa Lanchester but played by Evelyn Ankers, straight off of The Wolf Man), who is in love with the local police chief played by Ralph Bellamy (fresh off the same movie). Ygor wants the Doctor to put his brain into the monster and, by a strange twist of fate and treachery, actually gets his wish... so really, in all the appearances of the Frankenstein monster in the rest of the franchise, Ygor’s brain is in it... although this is pretty much ignored after the end of the next movie.

I said Dwight Frye appears twice and he does, as Fritz alongside Colin Clive in flashback footage from the original Frankenstein (reviewed here), as Elsa reads the notes of the original creator. This must be a way of filling up screen time cheaply but it’s kind of a stupid way of doing it because, in order to really justify the title, there’s a scene which probably doesn’t last more than two minutes where Ludwig is visited by the blurry ghost of his father. And he’s blurry because he is also played by Cedric Hardwicke but, frankly, even though he’s blurry, he both looks and sounds nothing like Colin Clive... so why they took the time to remind the audience of Clive’s performance I’ll never know. Well... I guess the answer to that is... they just didnt care. After all, nobody was going to see the film ever again after 1942 right? Commercial television was not around, as yet.

And the film trundles along to its inevitable conclusion and it’s entertaining enough, although not as great as any of its predecessors. It was nice seeing Richard Alexander again as an uncredited villager... people will best remember him, perhaps, for playing the original version of Prince Barin in Flash Gordon (reviewed here) and Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here... he was replaced by another actor for the third serial)... but there’s not much more to recommend it. In a nice touch of symmetry (and perhaps I’m being kind here), the villagers burn down the institution with Frankenstein and the monster in it. The monster’s optic nerves have failed him because when Atwill’s character switched brains on the doctor, he hadn’t realised he was a different blood type. The creature does know how to talk now, though and, he does so in the voice of Bela Lugosi... something which would be a casualty of post-production on the next film, if memory serves.

And that’s about all I have to say about The Ghost Of Frankenstein, to be honest. A necessary and fairly entertaining watch in the series but this definitely doesn’t reach the heights of the films which came before. Great title... so so movie but, certainly enjoyable at worst. The next film in the Frankenstein series would, of course, see the humble beginnings of the Universal ‘monster rally’ film, being a sequel to both this and The Wolf Man.

The Invisible Man Returns

The Price In Sight

The Invisible Man Returns
USA 1940 Directed by  Joe May
Universal Blu Ray Zone A

After the success of Son Of Frankenstein in 1939 (which I reviewed here), Universal’s interest in revisiting their classic horror stable was renewed and the first out of the gate was The Invisible Man Returns which is, as the credit following this one at the start of the movie proudly emblazons, ‘The Sequel To The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells’. It’s also, more to the point, a direct sequel to James Whale’s successful ‘adaptation’ of The Invisible Man (which I reviewed here).

Indeed, Claude Rains photograph is even briefly referenced in a newspaper near the start of the film as we are informed that the main villain of the last film left behind a brother, Dr. Frank Griffin, played by John Sutton. He’s not the film’s lead protagonist though... that would be the title character whose name is Geoffrey Radcliffe. Radcliffe, played here by a young Vincent Price, long before horror movies became his thing (and this isn’t really a horror movie anyway, of course), is in prison awaiting public execution the next morning for the murder of his brother... even though Dr. Griffin and Radcliffe’s fiance Helen know he is innocent.  Helen is played by Nan Grey, the same young lady who fell victim to the early vampire lesbionics in Dracula’s Daughter (reviewed here).

But wait, what’s this? Following a visit by Dr. Griffin the night before his execution, Radcliffe mysteriously vanishes from his cell. Could it be his friend has given him a dose of the old invisibility formula so he can walk out undetected, find the real culprit for his brother’s death and clear his name. You betcha! That’s one of the two things which the story works towards resolving here...

One plot is the attempt by Radcliffe to clear his name, by terrorising a confession out of both men responsible -  the boss of Radcliffe’s coal mine operation, Richard Cobb, played by Cedric Hardwicke (who would turn up a few times in these Universal monster movies) and his nefarious henchman Willie Spears, played by Alan Napier who would, of course, grow up many years later to be the elderly Alfred the butler opposite Adam West’s Batman.

The other plot thread is Frank Griffin’s race against time to try and discover the antidote to invisibility which had eluded his brother before Radcliffe suffers the same fate and is driven to insanity by the dangerous chemical used in the formula. Meanwhile, of course, both he and Helen are also trying to thwart the intelligent but kindly Chief Inspector Sampson (played by Cecil Kellaway) and his police force.

So yeah, it’s a romp and... it’s okay. It is kind of an enjoyable piece of fluff and the special effects, for their time, are very good it has to be said. I mean, yeah we get the old rocking chair with nobody in it trick and various other episodes of moving scenery and props to denote the passage of the invisible Radcliffe but we also get some quite sophisticated tomfoolery with various camera tricks. There’s even a sequence where he pulls up Willie Spear’s legs to tie him up with a piece of rope and then they cut to a close up of the ends of his legs... which are dummy legs as they don’t flex at all... and what looks like stop motion animation of the rope tying around them. Presumably there was some flexible wire inside the rope to ensure it would stay in position for every frame that was filmed.

There’s also a nice bit where Radcliffe’s almost lifeless body reverts back to visibility near the end, allowing Griffin to save his life with an operation after all! First we see his skeleton appearing, then some of the veins, then the muscles and skin etc... revealing Vincent Price in the flesh, finally. I don’t know if this was the first time that this kind of anatomical precision was attempted in film but it’s astonishing for the period, I think.

There’s the occasional bit of cute dialogue too. When the two guards who let Radcliffe escape from his cell at the start of the film are being questioned, instead of saying... “That’s the way it was, so help me God!”, one of them says “... so help me Bob.” He then follows it up with “Wasn’t it Bob?” After which, the other copper, who is presumably named Bob, puts his oar in. So, yeah, some good humour carrying on in James Whale’s tradition which certainly makes the film agreeable and watchable.

What’s perhaps also as impressive as the special effects in this, though, is the fact that, while the various ‘bobbies’ are tumbling about in their usual ham fisted shenanigans as Radcliffe escapes them time and time again, Inspector Samson is actually quite an intelligent fellow who works out the truth of certain elements of the plot way before everyone else and is often two steps ahead of most people in the film. He even, in one nicely done special effects sequence, fills his general area with cigar smoke which reveals that the invisible fugitive is standing mere inches away from him. So, yeah, an intelligent police inspector in the film is a refreshing change of pace from the way the police are treated in most set ups.

The film is elevated by the scoring of Frank Skinner and Hans Salter with, as you might suspect given Universal’s musical modus operandi in this period, some lifts from Skinner’s score for Son Of Frankenstein. It’s not the most memorable score in the series though and there are lots of silent passages throughout too but it certainly works a charm and is good as a stand alone listen too.

Things buzz along to a double ending, first at the coal mine where the main villain of the piece comes to a sticky end and then, of course, in the race to try and save Ratcliffe’s life. I seem to remember this coal mine set though and I’m pretty sure that the same place was used in one of the many Mummy sequels a few years after this film was shot. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

So there we are. Not much to add here on The Invisible Man Returns other than Vincent Price would, of course, very briefly reprise his role as the voice of The Invisible Man at the end of Abbot And Costello Meet Frankenstein. He would continue on in much more romantic, matinee idol kinds of roles such as his turn in the famous film Laura until, at some point in the 1950s, he would become indelibly linked to the horror genre which he is still mostly remembered for. The Invisible Man films would continue on without him, of course, with the next two in the series being very unusual entries in the directions they take. In fact, the next movie doesn’t feature an invisible man at all... but I’ll get to that when I rewatch it again for this blog sometime soon.