Tonight's movie was "The Invisible Man's Revenge" (1944). This was the last of the four sequels to the original, and I thought it was really good, even better than "The Invisible Man Returns" from a couple of nights ago. That one had a slight comedic element mixed in. "Revenge" was pure horror, with Grade A atmosphere. The star this time was an actor named Jon Hall, an Errol Flynn lookalike who was in a lot of action and adventure movies in the 1940s. The movie opens with a shot of a freighter ship docking at night. A crane lowers a refrigerator-sized storage box onto the deck, and a knife appears, cutting it's way through the material from the inside. It is actor Hall as fugitive Robert Griffin, who has shipped himself to England, ala Dracula, only he has done it all by himself, without a Renfield to help him.
His first stop is a haberdashery, where he buys a coat and hat, leaving his old clothes behind. In a pocket, the haberdasher finds a news clipping which explains the proceedings thus far : Robert Griffin is a homicidal maniac, escaped from an institution in South Africa where he had killed three people.
However (there's that word again) he feels he has been cheated out of a fortune in diamonds by a former partner and his wife. The three murders for which he was committed are never explained, but soon he is making his way to the estate of his former partner, a diamond mine speculator, or whatever you call men who search for and develop diamond mines. When Griffin shows up, the former partner and his wife are shocked. They had thought he was dead, having become ill in the jungle all those years ago. They had left him behind and had gone on to become very wealthy in diamonds.
But now he is back, and he wants his fair share. They respond by throwing him out, using the reinforcement of the local chief of constables.
It is a stormy night. The rain pounds down, and the Universal Horror Atmosphere is on full display. Seeking directions to an Inn for shelter, he knocks on the door of a nearby residence.
It is answered by John Carradine, which - if you are a Horror Fan - tells you all you need to know as far as What Kind Of Turn The Movie Is About To Take. This time Carradine is a Mad Scientist, and an excellent one at that. He readily invites Griffin inside and instead of giving him the directions he was looking for, begins to show him his collection of experimental animals. Except that.....Griffin can't see them. Now why do you think this is?
It's because they are Invisible!
Yes, indeed. The one door Griffin happens to knock on, on that stormy night, happens to house the only Mad Scientist in all the world who has developed a serum for Invisibility.
Griffin, seeking Revenge (capitalized due to the title), asks Carradine if the formula would work on a human being. And as you might suspect, there is only one way to find out.
I have often thought that, without the cooperation between the screenwriter and the audience, and his or her trust in their suspension of disbelief, you would either have no movies at all, or at best, much shorter movies. In this case, what if the formula doesn't work?
No "Invisible Man"!
Hence, end of movie after 28 minutes. You get the idea. You can now apply it to any movie you care to name. While you are at it, you can also try my patented "Leatherface" interjection, which also works in any movie, and shortens it by whatever point - meaning whatever scene - you choose to insert it into.
With the Leatherface Interjection, you can have a scene in literally any movie. It could be "Gone With The Wind", or "2001" or "Fantasia" or even "Mary Poppins", though I sincerely hope you wouldn't choose that one. You could choose "The Exorcist" instead, or better yet, any Schwarzanegger/Sandler/Devito film. What happens is, at the point you decide to insert the Interjection, Leatherface jumps out from the side of the movie screen and chainsaws the whole scene to bits. Actors, scenery, the whole shebang.
And what happens is End Of Movie. You can choose The Leatherface Interjection when a movie is getting boring, or when it is getting trite, or stupid, or whatever you think it is getting. It also has to do with the suspension of disbelief I am talking about, and I only thought it up a couple of years ago, after watching too many newer movies that lacked competent screenwriting. But then my imagination got the better of me, and I started to apply it freely, in whimsical thought just to make myself laugh, to movies that were of high quality, or serious drama. I got a bit carried away, I suppose.....
Please then, use The Leatherface Interjection with care, won't you?
Thanks.
But think of the possibilities, too. No more boring movies!
I can't recall where I was in my description/review of "The Invisible Man's Revenge", so you'll just have to see it for yourself, and if you do you'll be well rewarded just by the John Carradine sequence alone. You have got to start watching you some Universal Monsters and Their Sequels, and in this case you won't be needing The Leatherface Interjection, and you couldn't use it anyway, even if you wanted to.......
He's The Invisible Man and he can't be chainsawed.
See you in Church. In the morning. :):)
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