The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: The Invisible Man (1933), directed by James Whale

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Invisible Man", by The Breeders

      This is something of a weird confession, but I don’t think I’ve ever read “The Invisible Man”. No, not the book by Ralph Ellison, although I should probably read that one too, but the work by British novelist and science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells. I was a pretty big fan of Wells’ work when I was a kid, readily absorbing works like “War of the Worlds” and “The Time Machine”, but I’m fairly certain I’ve only touched the first paragraph, first chapter at most, of his third most famous work. “The Stolen Bacillus” got in before “The Invisible Man”, to give some idea to those three people who get that reference, and to give some clarification to how weird one’s priorities can be at times. Does that work as an opening paragraph? I dunno.

      I say that partially to undercut my own credibility and also to lead into the remark that it seems like I’m not the only one who hasn’t read it. “The Invisible Man” is certainly known, but it seems like pop culture is more infatuated with the concept rather than the story. The Hollow Man franchise, Memoirs of an Invisible Man starring Chevy Chase, that one TV show in the 90s with the liquid metal effect, even Alan Moore uses an original character in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, as a serial rapist who is himself brutally raped to death (because how could you take him seriously as a writer if he didn’t sprinkle rape into every story he could). Not much at all in the way of proper adaptations compared to The Time Machine or Island of Dr. Moreau, although calling Marlon Brando’s interpretation of Moreau ‘proper’ might be doing a disservice to everyone’s favorite vivisectionist. So why not throw Herbert’s baby boy a bone and completely avoid the Invisible Man movie that’s supposed to be out this year to instead talk about a movie that’s almost 90 years old instead? If this blog is anything, it’s timely and relevant with its content.

      Released in 1933, with a screenplay by R.C. Sheriff and directed by blog patriarch James Whale, The Invisible Man was one of the earlier additions to Universal’s catalogue of genre-defining horror films. On a dark and snowy night in the sleepy town of Iping, a mysterious man enters the Lion-Head inn and tavern and rents a room, sparking a flurry of rumours from the townsfolk. This man, played/voiced by Claude Rains, is revealed in a roundabout way to be Jack Griffin, your average chemist’s assistant who disappeared under mysterious circumstances a few weeks prior. ‘Disappeared’ being the choice word here, as through the wonders of 1930s science Griffin has rendered himself completely invisible, and he’s having a hell of a time trying to figure out how to make himself un-invisible. It’s enough to drive someone absolutely insane, and as they always say, it’s the naked crazy guys that you can’t see that are the problem.

      The Invisible Man is a film of two minds. On one hand scenes like the ones in Iping, or where people are throwing around questions about how Griffin’s invisibility works, a lot of the more comedic moments feels in line with what you’d expect from the Wells story, but the rest feels like Universal trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole. Flora’s entire character feels like the most blatant example of a studio mandate I’ve seen lately, for example, that movies like this need some eye-candy to flaunt around so Invisible Man must have it too damn it. Except the women in those films were generally relevant to the plot, if only as cliche ‘damsels in distress’, and Flora isn’t even that. I have to assume that she was supposed to be this humanizing moment for Griffin, to show the man he once was and how far he’d fallen, but it never really feels legitimate because she has one conversation with the fucker in the whole movie. They even have the possibility of setting up a love triangle between her, Griffin and other assistant Kemp, but they completely sidestep that angle to make sure that you could completely excise those characters and that attempt at backstory and nothing would change. Considering that Dracula and Frankenstein weren’t 1:1 adaptations either, there’s really no excuse.

      There’s also some things on the technical side that are just weird. For example, there’s a scene early on in the film where a distraught Flora walks into another to moan about Griffin, and the Kemp comes in to be a creep. Rather than do something like have Flora rush offscreen, you hear a door slam, and then cut to the room with Kemp coming in, instead they do this one shot where they show Flora move into the room and Kemp follows her, but the camera is pulled back so far that you can see where the wall ends. I don’t know if that was supposed to be the architectural style of the time or if it’s something that came out in the transfer of the film to different aspect ratios, like how in the ‘remastered’ editions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer you can see the cameras and such, but for whatever reason it’s so distracting to me. Then later on in that same scene, we’re focused on Kemp and in your head your head you think it’s going to do a closeup on his face, maybe in frame with a flower for symbolic reasons, but instead the camera backs away until the scene ends with Kemp’s head peeking out of a large bush. It’s so weird looking! The rest of the movie is fine, so I don’t know if James Whale was sick that day or what, but man did they hit hard and heavy.

      Ultimately though, Universal movies live or die by their monster, and Claude Rains does not disappoint. He doesn’t have the iconic accent like Lugosi and Karloff, but he makes up for it with this overwhelming presence that makes you sit up and take notice. Doesn’t matter if he’s singing nursery rhymes or making megalomaniacal speeches, you believe in him completely. Honestly he’s almost too good for the part, like he should be running SPECTRE or fighting Superman, not berating middle-aged Irish women over unpaid rent. Not much else to say, it’s just a damn good voice.

      So Claude Rains, the small-town Brit silliness, and seeing the novel ways in which James Whale and crew tackle the ‘invisible man’ problem… I’d say that’s enough to warrant a recommendation. I wouldn’t say it’s a priority, if you’re only passing familiar with the Universal horror there are films you’ll want to check out first, but if you’re intrigued it’s barely over an hour long so no worries about a big time investment. Throw in Erle C. Kenton’s Island of Lost Souls and this year the H in H.G. Wells might just stand for Halloween.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: King Kong (1933), directed by Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack

       Last year, I decided to do a little thing in celebration of Halloween on my oft-neglected film blog (which you can find at thunderplanet.blogspot.com if you feel like torturing yourself). It was a list of 10 spooky movies that I thought were really damn good, so I thought I would put a good word in for those with my nonexistent readers, so that they might try the movies out themselves and perhaps a few new favorite movies. I didn’t really give myself enough time to really work on the thing though, I think I wrote and posted it the the week of Halloween, and several of the films were those that didn’t need that much help, like John Carpenter’s The Thing. Like most things in my life, it was ultimately disappointing.

        Cut to one year later and I decided to break out the movies and do another list for Halloween. Not a piddly 10 item list like the previous one, but a full-on 31 item list, one for each day of October (originally it was going to be 50, but I cooled down a bit). Compiling the list of movies, watching all the movies and doing the writeups took out a big chunk of my month, and sometimes I’m still tempted to make some alterations, but in the end I think I’m pleased with the results. As it turns out, seeing the culmination of all your efforts can actually be a pretty rewarding experience. Who knew?

       Before any of you continue on to the list, please keep this in mind: although this is indeed a list of movies to watch on Halloween, not a list of horror. There are indeed plenty of horror movies on this list (the top 10 is exclusively so), but to me Halloween has always been about more ‘scary’ things. It’s about fear, the macabre, all the strange and weird and dark things that don’t get much attention the rest of the year. So on the movies that aren’t of the horror genre, I tried to give a short explanation it fits the tone of the holiday. You’re free to accept my reasoning or not, it doesn’t matter either way. Also, even though this is a numbered list, the numbers don’t really indicate quality so much as they show the order in which I watched the films, with a couple of exceptions. Lastly, this list was largely an excuse for me to watch a lot of movies that I hadn’t seen up until this point, so there will be several entries that are on The Thing levels of public knowledge. I’ve included a lot of lesser known films to try and balance it out, and I worked to provide a diverse compilation as well, different monsters, different countries, etc.  I tended to return to the 1980s a lot, but that’s just how I am as a horror fan.

       Now, feel free to take a look over the list, peruse the entries, and see if there’s anything that catches your eye. Happy Halloween!

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "You Drive Me Ape (You Big Gorilla)", by The Dickies

     What better way to start off a marathon of Halloween movies than with one of the most important monster movies of all time: King Kong, released in 1933 by RKO Radio Pictures. Yes, before Godzilla was butting heads with space dragons and Cloverfield was being disappointing, King Kong was punching dinosaurs and eating people to the delight of audiences everywhere. No magic involved, no radiation, just an improbably large ape on the most badass skull island that time forgot. There’s other bits of plots too of course, like an awkward and unconvincing romance between Fay Wray and Jack the misogynistic sailor, a self-righteous film director willing to risk lives for his movies and themes with Nature and the Old World’s incompatibility with modern society, but the story isn’t of that much importance when you have a giant ape to ogle at. Which is probably true in any circumstance, given the choice between doing something or watching a gigantic ape do stuff, I imagine most people would rather go for the gorilla.


     There had been monster movies before this of course, Dracula and Frankenstein had come out under Universal a few years prior, but where King Kong surpasses those other movies is in its sense of scale. From the skyscrapers in New York City to the overgrowth of Skull Island, every location has this enormous sense of scale and power, where even crowds of people seem miniscule in comparison. Add to that the extensive use of stop-motion animation and animatronics it took to accurately depict Kong and the creatures of Skull Island and you can tell that King Kong was built with breaking the boundaries of film in mind. The characters may be somewhat dull and the plot is simplistic, but to me the film speaks to an era of history that none of us living today experienced but what endlessly fascinates; the turning-point years of the 20th century, when the explosive advancements in technology were still mingling the last vestiges of the 19th century, before World War II would place us firmly in the post-modern age. It was still a horrible time to be poor, female, a child or any type of ethnicity that wasn’t Caucasian, but in an idealized form it speaks of a world that still holds some mysteries, that there are some islands in the Pacific or some region in the Amazon that holds some wonders long forgotten by man just waiting to be rediscovered. Perhaps I’ve just read too much classical fiction in my youth, but that’s what I liked about King Kong, and maybe this Halloween that’s what you’ll like about it as well.