Review of “The Invisible Man’s Revenge” (1944)

Our latest Saturday pizza and bad movie offering has a put-upon dog for a hero. That journalist guy wasn’t half-bad, but the dog got the job done, even after humans hadn’t been all that good to him.

Plot:

Robert Griffin (Jon Hall) returns to London by cutting himself out of a cargo bale dropped off on a pier. Couldn’t have been a comfortable trip. He immediately buys himself some respectable clothes.

At the shop, the salesman (Cyril Delevanti) asks if he’d come in the ship now in port. Griffin seizes the man by the lapels and demands, “Who told you? Who’s been spying on me?”

The poor man says that he just thought with the ship in port—

Griffin lets the man go. He leaves his old clothes behind. In one of the pockets, the shopkeeper finds a newspaper clipping from South Africa about an escaped inmate from what was then referred to as a lunatic asylum who stabbed three men on his way out.

We next see Robert Griffin lurking outside a mansion, watching a young lady (Evelyn Ankers) drive off with her beau (Alan Curtis). “Julie,” he mutters.

Inside the house are his old friends and business partners, Sir Jasper Herrick (Lester Matthews) and Irene, Lady Herrick (Gale Sondergaard). Griffin remembers being ill and receiving a blow on the head about five years earlier. The Herricks thought he was done for.

Griffin has a copy of their agreement drawn up in Mozambique. He wants his half of all properties—a diamond field—discovered in Tanganyika (roughly present-day Tanzania). There must be a million from that diamond field!

Well, there was quite a bit, but Herrick lost it all in bad investments. He offers Griffin half of their own (inherited) money.

Griffin says that’s not enough. He’ll take even their inherited house. He has his proof.

Irene makes him a drink, slips him a Mickey Finn, and relieves him of the paper the agreement is written, over Jasper’s objections. Griffin wakes up in a ditch and ends up in the river, only to be rescued by cobbler Herbert Higgins (Leon Errol), “an honest man.”

Griffin is eventually asked to leave town. On his way out, he meets Doctor Peter Drury (John Carradine), who has been experimenting with an invisibility serum. Everyone needs a hobby. He has an invisible parrot. Brutus, his dog, is also invisible. He realizes Griffin is a fugitive. Say, don’t suppose Griffin would like to become invisible and make Drury famous, would he…?

Thoughts:

Unlike in the earlier “Invisible Man” movies, the serum doesn’t make its subject a psycho. This time around, he’s a psycho to begin with.

A couple of questions are never settled—did the Herricks knowingly leave him for dead for his stake in the diamond field? Did they merely high-tail it out of there when things got hot with the locals, and devil take the hindmost?

Griffin accuses them of murder. Jasper Herrick wishes to make some sort of amends. Irene, however, has no qualms about drugging their old friend and partner and talks her husband into abandoning his scruples after Griffin threatens to take their home as compensation for his share of the diamond field. Griffin also wants to marry their daughter Julie, who happens to be engaged to the reporter Mark Foster. Maybe he thinks that after he kills Mark and sends her parents packing, she’ll turn to him and say, “You know, you’re kinda cute”?

Despite the heaviness of many plot elements—murder, blackmail, and so on—there is also silliness. While trying to raise money for the honest man, the cobbler Herbert Higgins, who is behind on his rent, Griffin suggests he challenge the dart champions to a game at the pub. Since he’s invisible, he grabs the darts from Herbert’s hand and embeds them in the bull’s eye.

Griffin learns he can become visible again. It will take the death of a man. He’s okay with that. He figures his chances with Julie are better if he’s visible. (Uh, no, dude. They’re not.) He takes another name and coerces Jasper into letting him join the household. One morning at breakfast, he begins to fade.

Oh, yeah. Karma’s about to come to bite you where it hurts.

While I enjoyed a lot of this movie, I felt some things went unanswered. Any movie that has a dog as an unexpected hero—even if his humans don’t treat him especially well—is worth the watch in my book.

The Invisible Man’s Revenge was nominated for a 1945 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation—Short Form— for writer Bertram Millhauser and director Ford Beebe.

The movie can be watched here with iffy sound at the Internet Archine.





Title: The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944)

Directed by
Ford Beebe

Writing Credits
Bertram Millhauser…(original screenplay)
Jane MacDonald…(adaptation)
H.G. Wells…(suggested by “The Invisible Man”)

Cast (in credits order)
Jon Hall…Robert Griffin
Evelyn Ankers…Julie Herrick
Alan Curtis…Mark Foster
Leon Errol…Herbert Higgins
John Carradine…Doctor Peter Drury
Gale Sondergaard…Irene, Lady Herrick
Lester Matthews…Sir Jasper Herrick

Released: 1944
Length: 1 hour, 18 minutes