As l remembered from seeing this years ago, the plot could not make up it's mind whether it was a comedy or horror film. James Whale directed, so he certainly has a lot to answer for. It stars Claude Rains as Dr. Jack Griffin, (although you do not see him till the last couple of seconds), who has successfully turned himself invisible, but is also going mad, thanks to the monocane he has used as part of his experiments. He keeps getting interrupted at the inn, (a superb looking place, supposedly situated in Iping, Sussex), while trying to find an antidote, then goes on the rampage, after unsuccessfully trying to recruit his rival in love (for Flora Cranley, daughter of Doctor Cranley) as his partner. The effects are really excellent for the time, a few of them obvious, but some take a bit of working out. The end of the film is rubbish and over too quickly, and Gloria Stuart's over the top histrionics as Flora got on my nerves, but it was still good. Doctor Cranley was played by Henry Travers (from It's A Wonderful Life ), and l would normally say it would have been interesting to see Boris Karloff playing the invisible man, as he was the studios first choice, ( he wanted too much money), but of course, l would not have seen him until the end anyway. The book by H. G. Wells, (The Invisible Man 1897) does not have The Invisible Man going mad, but his exaggerated speeches in the movie about how he could rule the World were a bit of a laugh, but closely followed after the film's release by the real life threats of Adolf Hitler (which were not as funny).toodle pip
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