James Whale’s 1933 adaptation of H.G. Wells’s 1897 novel The Invisible Man is deservedly considered a classic; it also spawned a franchise and inspired numerous other movies and television series, including Leigh Whannell’s modern reworking of the premise, a surprise smash in 2020.
But even devoted fans will probably never have seen the two rarities included in this set—a double feature of post-war Japanese tokusatsu (special effects) movies inspired by the book and the Universal series that Whale’s film initiated; neither has been previously released in the U.S. Produced by the famous Daiei Studio, both are loopy crime dramas with convoluted plots.
In The Invisible Man Appears (1949), written and directed by Nobuo Adachi, the invention of an invisibility formula by an elderly scientist prompts a nefarious businessman to kidnap him and use his two students, both of whom want to marry his daughter, in a plot to steal a diamond necklace—a scheme that involves forcing someone to become invisible.
The plot is a jumble—incorporating lots of police work and even an elaborate nightclub act in a narrative focusing on who the invisible man actually is—but an amusing one, and among the film’s distinctions is that the effects were the work of Eiji Tsuburaya, who five years later was the craftsman behind the original Gojira. (This film’s lesson—that science is neither good nor evil, but can be used for good or bad purposes—seems linked to the latter one’s warnings about the atom bomb.)
The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly (1957), directed by Mitsuo Murayama from a script by Hajime Takaiwa, is not a direct sequel but a police procedural with sci-fi overtones, centering on the search for a serial killer who seems to be invisible but is actually a madman reduced to the size of an insect to exact revenge on his boss’ enemies.
A young policeman makes use of a recently invented invisibility ray to go undercover, as it were, to catch the culprits—an idea that would be employed in most of the TV series derived from the invisibility premise. (Perhaps it was intended to lead to a series of sequels, but if so they never materialized.)
Once again dance routines are incongruously sandwiched into the plot to even less purpose than in the earlier film, and by the close one wonders whether the story could easily have been reworked to eliminate the “invisible man” business entirely.
Neither of these pictures is an especially distinguished addition to the genre invented by Wells, and the quality of the transfers, made from exhibition prints, is mediocre, but this will be of interest to devotees of post-war Japanese cinema in general and tokusatsu in particular.
Extras include a trailer for The Invisible Man Appears, image galleries for both films, and Transparent Things (25 min.), an interview with British writer Kim Newman on the history of films inspired by Wells’s novel. Optional.