The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944)

I knew virtually nothing about this film when I first saw it other than its mere existence, thanks to the index in the back of that book, Monster Madness, and a few clips of it thanks to the documentary on the original film, Now You See Him: The Invisible Man Revealed, which accompanied that movie on the first disc of the Universal Legacy DVD set. The mention of it focused mainly on how advanced the special effects had gotten by that point but also how, even so, wires were painfully visible in certain shots. Other than that, it was a complete mystery to me, as I had also long since forgotten even what John Stanley had said about it in his Creature Features book. When I did watch it, I thought it was another pretty decent film, albeit still inferior to both the original and even The Invisible Man Returns, and after re-watching it again, I still feel that way. It's not a great movie but it's not bad either, and does have some stuff to recommend it, like the flawed but still amazing for their time special effects and the always welcome presence of John Carradine. However, it's ultimately not as entertaining as some of its predecessors, mainly because your main character is utterly unlikable, a complete psychopath with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, whom you watch attempt to ruin the lives of a family he erroneously thinks has screwed him over, not caring who he has to hurt or even kill in the process. Ironically, it puts him more in line with the characterization of Jack Griffin in the original H.G. Wells novel, who was a lunatic even before he became invisible, but it also shows why James Whale and R.C. Sheriff decided to give him some sympathetic qualities. As it stands, this Invisible Man is one of the most loathsome characters ever featured in a Universal horror film and is why this film isn't as fondly remembered as many of its peers.

A stowaway cuts his way out of some packaging unloaded at the London docks and later buys himself some new clothes, paranoid about being spied on all the while and hiding from any nearby policemen. When the clothes merchant inspects those he left behind, he finds a newspaper in the coat pocket with a front page story of how the man, Robert Griffin, escaped from a mental institution in Cape Town, South Africa, committing triple-homicide in the process. Griffin heads to the luxurious residence of the Herrick family, meeting up with Sir Jasper and Lady Irene, whom he was friends with five years before, the three of them having embarked on an African safari. The couple are stunned to see him, as they were told he'd died from injuries he sustained during the trip, but Griffin accuses them of leaving him behind after something hit him on the head and knocked him unconscious. He says that another hit on the head a couple of months before brought his memory back and now, he's returned to get his share of the diamond fields they discovered on the safari, as per an agreement they made at the time. Telling him that all of that money was lost in some bad investments, they instead offer Griffin half or more of their own money but he says he wants it all and doesn't care if it'll ruin them. He also wants their daughter, Julie, who's currently dating Mark Foster, a London journalist. Fortunately for them, Griffin passes out from the drink they served him and, realizing how their former friend has completely lost his mind, send him out of the house after taking away his written agreement, hoping he'll get help for his unhinged mental state. Griffin warns them that they can't get rid of him so easily and, after unsuccessfully attempting to sue them through the help of Herbert Higgins, a cobbler who saved him from drowning after he was thrown out, he later stumbles across the house of Dr. Peter Drury, a scientist whom he learns has come up with a serum for invisibility. Realizing the potential of it, Griffin allows the eager scientist to use him as his first human subject. The experiment works and Drury prepares to make his triumph known to the scientific world but Griffin has no intention of helping him become famous, as he leaves to settle the score with the Herricks. He forces Sir Jasper to sign their entire estate over to him, frightens Lady Irene into a delirious state, and it seems like now, nothing can stop him. Even worse, in order to have Julie, he has to become visible again through a total transfusion of someone else's blood and he doesn't care whom he has to kill in order to make it happen.

Like a lot of the directors behind the latter slate of Universal's classic horror films, Ford Beebe, director of The Invisible Man's Revenge, was a journeyman director who specialized in low budget B-movies and programmers and has a filmography a mile long, writing and directing over 200 films over a career that lasted 60 years. He started out as a writer on his preferred genre, westerns, in 1916, and directed his first film, the silent western, The White Horseman, in 1921. He directed a lot of theatrical shorts after that, his feature career not beginning in earnest until 1931, after which he directed a ridiculous number of low budget programmers, as well as some noteworthy serials like Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, Buck Rogers, The Phantom Creeps (with Bela Lugosi), and The Green Hornet. Despite his predilection for westerns and adventure films, The Invisible Man's Revenge was not his first foray into the horror genre, as he'd directed 1942's Night Monster, which also featured Lugosi and even impressed Alfred Hitchcock! Indeed, people had a lot of compliments for Beebe's proficiency at directing well-crafted films on small budgets and tight schedules, with one person saying that he was "an expert of making something out of nothing." His last theatrical film as director was 1955's Lord of the Jungle, although he continued writing screenplays to the end of the decade. Unlike a lot of his peers, Beebe never really went into television, with the only series he directed for being a short-lived series called The Adventures of Champion (it was about a horse). After that, all that's mentioned on his IMDB page are repackagings of his Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials into TV movies and a feature film in 1977 and only because he directed the footage featured there. Beebe died in 1978 at the age of 90.

Yet again, we have a film whose title makes you anticipate the resurrection of Jack Griffin and, indeed, Universal was hoping that Claude Rains would return for this one but that ended up not happening. Instead, they went with Jon Hall, who was no stranger to the invisibility gimmick, having starred two years earlier in the wartime spy thriller, Invisible Agent. The characters he plays in these two films couldn't be more different from each other, as one was a reluctant but ultimately heroic secret agent, while the title character here is nothing less than a complete madman. Jack Griffin may have been a homicidal maniac as well in the original film but, aside from Rains' wonderfully theatrical performance, the filmmakers at least got across the notion that he was really a decent guy whose naivety and overzealousness led to his horrific change. It's implied here too that Robert Griffin (who's not related to Jack or The Invisible Man Returns' Frank in any way) was a good guy when a couple of blows to the head caused him to go insane but we never get a single glimpse of that now los good person. Instead, all we see is a deranged, greedy psychotic who murdered his way out of a mental institution in South Africa and has arrived in London to ruin the lives of a family whom he feels has cheated him out of a fortune. He wants his half of the diamond fields they discovered on their African safari and when he's told that the money from it has been lost in some bad investments and is offered a big portion of their own money, he tells them he wants everything, including their estate snarling, "Who cares?" when he's told that such a demand would ruin them. He even threatens to take them to court over their "attempted murder" of him if they don't cooperate and also has his eye on their daughter, Julie, whose photograph he's kept since the safari. When he becomes drunk and hardly able to function, they throw him out of the house but that doesn't deter him one bit. He tries to use a scheming, poor cobbler named Higgins to sue the Herricks and when that doesn't work, he comes across Dr. Drury and his invisibility formula and, realizing the potential of it when Drury tells him of how his dog, Brutus, was able to use it against other dogs who'd ganged up on him before, agrees to become his first human test subject, feeling he has nothing to lose even if he does die from it. When it works, Griffin becomes more emboldened than ever, heading back to the Herrick estate, forcing Sir Jasper to sign over the entire estate, all the while reveling in the fear and sense of helplessness he's causing, frightening Irene into a near catatonic state, and bullying his way into Higgins' shack, forcing him to let him live there. The only halfway decent thing he does is help Higgins win at darts so he can get money to pay his rent with and even then, he's only doing it to ensure that he'd have a place to stay as well.

Obsessed with marrying Julie, Griffin tries to murder her boyfriend, Mark Foster, and attempts to blackmail Sir Jasper into getting rid of him for him, eventually coming to the compromise that he could marry Julie if he becomes visible again (a very one-sided compromise, mind you). Once again showing no conscience whatsoever, Griffin is fully willing to murder an innocent person for their entire blood supply in order to become visible again, his response to Drury's telling him that it would be nothing less than murder being, "Who cares?" again. He tries to lure Foster over so he can drain his blood but when that doesn't work and Drury calls the police behind his back, Griffin decides to use his blood, torching the house after becoming visible again. Arriving back at the mansion, Griffin barges his way in and holds Sir Jasper hostage in his own home, forcing him to tell everyone who isn't in the know that his name is Martin Field. All goes well, despite Griffin telling more than he should of his "opinions" of the rumored invisible man roaming the area, until he begins to fade again and traps Foster down in the cellar in order to drain his blood. Before he can succeed, though, Griffin is attacked and killed by Drury's dog, Brutus, who followed him to the house in order to get revenge on his master's murder. Aside from his being a completely unsympathetic character, I've never cared much for the way Robert Griffin looks in the bandages and goggles, which you don't see much of since he spends most of the movie either visible or completely or partially invisible (in fact, he's so reckless that before he put the bandages on, he was walking around in clothes without covering up his invisible parts, kicking off the rumor of an invisible man in the area). Jack Griffin and Sir Geoffrey Radcliffe looked very memorable and iconic in those guises but this guy's look is just bland, with the coat and hat he wears not adding anything to it.

Like I said in the introduction, this film benefits from the distinguished presence of John Carradine as Dr. Drury, despite being in only three scenes, although they are long and significant ones. As usual, Carradine gives his absolute best in his role of a scientist who's anxious and eager to make a name for himself in the scientific community, especially since he's been ridiculed by his peers before. He's nice enough to let Griffin, who's a complete stranger, into his house when he's alone and lost, although his eagerness to do so, especially upon learning that Griffin is being tailed by a constable, suggests that he sees the perfect human test subject for the invisibility serum. Either way, he's a hospitable host for Griffin and is also delightfully blasé about the fact that his pets and animal test subjects are all invisible, asking him if he thinks his transparent parrot has a lovely plumage and feeding the invisible Brutus right in front of the astonished Griffin, telling him, "In this house, you've got to believe what you can't see." He tries to explain that the method with which to make a creature is invisible is fairly simple if you know the science of it and allows Griffin to become his human test subject, although he knows there's a chance that it might not work and that it could kill him. When it does work, Drury is elated, knowing what this will mean for his career, but Griffin has no intention of being a guinea pig that'll make him famous, violently shoving Drury away when he tries to stop him from leaving. After this, Drury isn't seen again until late in the film when Griffin returns to become visible again. Drury, unwilling to intentionally murder someone, refuses to call Mark Foster, whose blood Griffin intends to drain to regain visibility, but appears to relent when threatened. Unbeknownst to Griffin, he calls the police and tells them that he has the Invisible Man in his house, the story he was meant to give Foster, and is told that they'll be right over. His plan almost works but the police call back and Griffin answers the phone, telling the officer that it was a false alarm and proceeds to attack Drury and kill him by draining his blood. Even though Griffin sets fire to the house to try to conceal the crime, Drury's dog, Brutus, whom he said would kill anyone who raised a hand against him, escapes and follows him to the Herrick house, eventually getting a chance to successfully avenge his master.

Griffin is not the only reprehensible character in the film, as Herbert Higgins (Leon Errol), the cobbler who saves him from drowning after he's thrown out of the Herrick house, is a pretty slimy character too. Even though he saves Griffin's life, he later alludes to the idea that he did it mainly to collect a reward money from him (he says, "Let's not talk about it... at least, not now)and decides to help him sue the Herricks in order to get some money out of it for himself. However, when the plan falls apart when the lawyer he hired learns that much of what Griffin said was embellished (he told Higgins that they deliberately tried to drown him), Higgins backpedals like nobody's business, saying that Griffin isn't an old friend of his like he originally stated and promptly kicks him out of his house. After he becomes invisible, Griffin returns and forces Higgins to let him stay in his house, frightening him with his condition. He also ropes Higgins into going to a nearby inn in order to help him win a game of darts to get the money so he can pay for his rent, constantly stopping him from telling people the truth and almost getting him beaten up in a fight, although he saves him from the latter. Later, when Griffin regains his visibility and begins staying at the Herrick house, Higgins turns the tables and shows up to blackmail him since he's figured out that he's the one who murdered Dr. Drury, saying, "Oh, Rob! I stuck by you when you were poor. You don't think I'm gonna desert you, now you're rich." Griffin talks him into trying to kill Drury's dog for some extra money but Brutus' strength and determination to kill Griffin proves to be too much for Higgins to handle, as he breaks away from him, tracks his master's killer down to the cellar, and massacres him. As he did before, Higgins denies any involvement with Griffin's plot, saying that he wasn't tempted by the money, which the chief constable doesn't buy at all.

Whoever wrote the plot synopsis for this film on Wikipedia was actually a little bit sympathetic towards Griffin, referring to Sir Jasper and Lady Irene Herrick (Lester Matthews and Gale Sondergaard) as callous in their taking Griffin's written agreement and throwing him out of the house. While I can kind of understand that viewpoint, the two of them are still having to deal with a man who they thought was dead for five years and who's now shown back up as a complete maniac, demanding they give him everything they have after they tell him that the money they'd made from the diamond fields was wasted on bad investments and they offer him a big portion of their money. He says outright that he doesn't care at all that it'll ruin them and is all the while under the delusion that they left him for dead in Africa, which is clearly nonsense, and threatens to use it to sue them. He's outright blackmailing them and while I do think simply throwing him out in his drunken state wasn't the best way to handle it (it's implied that Lady Irene may have drugged his drink), how else could they handle this lunatic? Plus, they know doing that and taking away the agreement isn't exactly moral but they have to think about themselves and they do say that once he's well, they'll give him back the agreement and come up with a deal that's fair for all of them. Griffin, however, lies about them further to Herbert Higgins and lawyer Jim Feeney, saying that they deliberately tried to drown him, and when he shows back up at the house invisible and forces Sir Jasper to sign everything over to him, he makes him write that they tried to murder him and this expiation for their "crime." Sir Jasper tries to deal with Griffin but is completely at the mercy of the crazed invisible man and Lady Irene, who thinks that he's imagining things when he's arguing with him and wrote up that agreement, is so frightened by him in his invisible state that she apparently ends up in a hysterical, near catatonic state (I say "apparently" because we never see her again after this scene). Sir Jasper is continuously pushed and bullied around by Griffin, refusing to let him have his daughter, Julie, but stupidly says that he could have her if he became visible again, as a way simply to back him off when he has him at knifepoint and not believing that he could do it. Much to his horror, Griffin appears completely visible again and Sir Jasper is forced to allow him to stay in his house under the alias of Martin Field as he prepares to move in on Julie but, fortunately for him and everyone else, Brutus the dog manages to kill the Invisible Man.

The blandest characters are Julie Herrick (Evelyn Ankers) and her boyfriend, journalist Mark Foster (Alan Curtis), but the good thing is that they're not a big part of the story. It's kind of a shame, too, because Ankers was an actor who was well-known for playing the likable role of Gwen Conliffe in The Wolf Man but, other than that film, most of the horror films she appeared in didn't over her much to do and The Invisible Man's Revenge is no exception by a long shot, as she does nothing of significance here except care for frightened mother offscreen and discuss the nature of the Invisible Man with her beau and Griffin himself at the lunch table. She was probably just glad to be in a horror film without Lon Chaney Jr., her most constant but least favorite leading man. Foster is a little more active in the story, as he's investigating the rumors of an invisible man in the area and is convinced that he exists, as he heard him speak to him at the inn he's staying at, but there's little else to him. He also finds the remains of Dr. Drury's burnt up house offscreen with a police officer who drove him there following Drury's botched call for help and tries to make a connection with the doctor's bloodless body and the Invisible Man. Little does he know that the Herricks' unexpected guest is the Invisible Man, trading theories about him with Griffin (which is where Griffin tells a little more than he should) before he's lured down into the cellar so he can use his blood to become visible again. Foster tries to fight back against Griffin but he's been locked in and, unable to see his attacker, is soon knocked unconscious. Griffin manages to drain enough of his blood to become partially visible but Brutus kills him before he can drain it all, much to Foster's relief.

There are a couple of other noteworthy characters, including Cleghorn (Halliwell Hobbes), the Herricks' faithful butler, whose having witnessed Robert Griffin leaving on his own two feet when they pushed him out the door, instead of being nearly drowned intentionally by the couple, tips Jim Feeney, (Ian Wolfe), the lawyer, that Griffin's claims were pure lies. He and Mark Foster are also unknowingly very nearly killed by the Invisible Man when he tells Foster of Griffin's visit to the Herricks, which creates a connection between him and Lady Irene's frightened ravings, and is forced to go along with Griffin's alias of Martin Field when he forces them to let him stay at the house. The other noteworthy role is that of Sir Frederick Travers (Leyland Hodgson), the chief constable and friend to the Herrick family. He doesn't have much screentime except near the beginning and at the end but I find him memorable for his rather theatrical way of speaking, such as when he says, "We've nothing more to fear from the Invisible Man. He's dead," and the film's final line where he has this to say about Griffin, "Warped by imaginary wrongs. A man fighting shadows. He's to be pitied, really. He probed too deeply in forbidden places. What a man earns, he gets. Nature has a strange way of paying him back in his own coin." Nice line, but it doesn't make me pity Griffin any. Also, Skelton Knaggs, a character actor of the times who had a very creepy-looking face, appears briefly as a man who tells Travers that he picked up a man near the scene of Drury's murder and dropped him off at the Herrick home, leading to the constables discovery of Griffin's being the Invisible Man.

Of the three actual Invisible Man films (that is, discounting The Invisible Woman, Invisible Agent, and Abbot and Costello Meet the Invisible Man), I'd say that this is the lesser of the bunch for a couple of reasons. One, it's the most dead serious, with little of the humor in its predecessors, since this Invisible Man is a true psychopath whose only use of his newfound ability is to threaten and kill rather than mess around with people, often laughing evilly at the terror he sees befall them. Other than the scene at the inn, where Griffin helps Herbert Higgins win a game of darts, there's very little funny about this film. In addition, this film has always felt less sophisticated and more like a B-movie than The Invisible Man and The Invisible Man Returns, probably because you don't have the sequences of people forced to rely on intelligence and ingenuity in order to find and catch someone that they can't see. Also, the science of invisibility isn't treated as well as it was before. Yeah, The Invisible Man Returns may not have added anything new to what we were told about the serum's nature in the original but it least still used the same serum, whereas here we don't get much of any information of how Dr. Drury came up with the formula except for vague explanations of how things are visible to begin with, which may or may not still hold up today. And it uses the gimmick of blood transfusions somehow being a cure for invisibility that was introduced in the second movie to a larger extent, to the point where Robert Griffin becomes something of a vampire in order to retain his invisibility. I'm not one who gets hung up on nitpicks and whether or not something is scientifically plausible so long as I'm entertained but I still find it a little bit sad to see how this initially intelligent series of films kind of degenerated. It's still better than some other films Universal made around this time, such as those latter "Kharis" Mummy movies (and yes, I know I keep harping on them, but those movies were so ungodly lazy).

At this point, John P. Fulton must've had his invisibility effects down to a science, as he continued to use the same techniques of black velvet bodysuits, matting and compositing work, and wires and they still look pretty good. Like before, you can still see the outlines of the actor's matted out head and limbs in certain shots, especially in the scene at Herbert Higgins' house where Robert Griffin puts some flour on his face in order to make it visible for him, and the effects have the same, odd filtering aspect that they always have but, again, for the time, it's still impressive stuff. One of the most startling images Fulton was able to pull off was when Griffin puts water on his face in order to frighten Lady Irene, which looks pretty eerie when you see it in close-up, and another is the transparent head behind the bandages when Griffin reveals his condition to Higgins. He was also able to gradually fade out Hall's head for the scene at the Herrick house where he realizes he's turning invisible again and runs off in a panic and while there are some oddities to the effect, namely how overly pale Hall's face looks when this starts, being able to do that while the actor was moving was quite an accomplishment for the time. Fulton built upon the effects of invisible animals that he'd done before in The Invisible Man Returns, this time by having a harness move around by itself and even turn over on its side as if a large, invisible dog were wearing it. The part where Dr. Drury feeds the invisible Brutus and you see the food disappear in mid-air looks particularly good and it's hard to tell exactly how they did it. As for the wirework, it's still a little bit tricky and plainly obvious in certain shots, particularly when Griffin lifts an unconscious Mark Foster up onto a table in order to drain his blood, an error that was pointed in the Now You See Him documentary, and the scene with the throwing darts do look more like they're traveling on wires rather than carried by invisible hands but it's not that big of a deal. One effect that I can't figure out is when Griffin is casually tossing a knife up into the air and then catching it by the handle as he tells Sir Jasper what to write while forcing him to sign over everything to him. I assumed it was just a matted out Hall tossing and catching it but I thought I saw strings on it at some point, not counting when it's floating around in a horizontal position. That kind of motion would be really hard to do with strings, so I'm not quite sure. Maybe it's really simple but it had me stumped when I was looking at it.

Like The Invisible Man Returns, there aren't many standout sequences in this film that I can point to, although there are several (you won't see many images of them, though; images for this movie are altogether very scarce). One of them is when Griffin returns to the Herrick house after first becoming invisible. As Sir Jasper mills around in his study, you see cutaways of Griffin removing his clothes outside the pane glass door before entering. He makes his presence known to Sir Jasper, who begins frantically searching around the room for him, while Griffin laughs at his confusion of not being able to see him. He looks outside and then figures he's hiding somewhere inside, while Griffin taunts him, "Cold, Jasper. Still cold." Sir Jasper searches around the room, walking by the side of the bed, when Griffin shows off his invisibility by holding up a book on the table and then putting it back down. Bewildered, Sir Jasper walks towards the desk to inspect the book, when Griffin raises a chair, threatening him, "Oh, I could brain you if I wanted to. Now you're at my mercy." He then adds, "I could strangle you," and then grabs Sir Jasper by the throat, laughing at his chokes and yells for help, adding, "See how easy it is?" When he asks Griffin what he wants, he lets him go and tells him that he wants everything he has, including Julie, and forces him at knifepoint to sit down at his desk. Standing by the desk, he tells Sir Jasper what to write, which is a lie about him trying to murder Griffin twice in order to rob him of the diamond mines and that he's handing over everything in expiation for his "crime." Sir Jasper protests at one point but goes on writing when Griffin threatens to cut his throat. After he signs it, Griffin takes the paper to look it over, sitting in a nearby chair, and as he does, Sir Jasper stands up and tries to him with the same chair he threatened him with but Griffin quickly gets up and dodges it. Dropping the paper to throw him off, Griffin takes the chair away from Sir Jasper, when Lady Irene walks in. Thinking her husband is just upset and imagining things, she tries to calm him down, and almost rips up the agreement, which Sir Jasper stops her from doing, knowing Griffin would kill her for it. He tells her that he's invisible but she still refuses to believe it, until Griffin sticks his hand in a fish tank and splashes the water on his face to make it temporarily visible. The sight of this horrifies Lady Irene and she screams and faints, while Griffin takes the agreement.

Another memorable, and more humorous, scene takes place shortly afterward at the Running Nag Inn. There's a bit of humor early on when Herbert Higgins walks through the door, not knowing that the completely invisible Griffin is behind him and closes the door on him, prompting him to fling it open again into his back. After a couple of moments where Higgins is tempted by rumors floating around the bar about an invisible man to tell the truth and Griffin makes his contempt for Mark Foster known by knocking over his drink and telling him Julie isn't for him, he ropes Higgins into a game of darts with a much more skilled man, Neddy, challenging him out loud so everyone thinks Higgins was the one who said it. After some stalling, Higgins is pressed by Griffin into taking up the challenge, with the Invisible Man making a large bet as well. Once the bets are placed, Griffin tells Higgins to just go through the motions of throwing and he'll take care of everything else. The game starts and Higgins holds up one dart and just barely motions his hands when the dart suddenly glides out of it, straight into the bulls-eye on the dartboard. Neddy writes it off as just bull luck and Higgins then makes like he's going to throw it behind him, between his legs... when nothing happens. After a few seconds, Griffin tells him to give him time to get back to where he stands after running with the dart and sticking it in the board. Higgins then boasts that the next move is his special "delayed dart" and goes back into the motion of throwing it through his legs, the dart this time gliding through the air and hitting another bulls-eye. Higgins' "skills" start attracting quite a crowd as he boasts he doesn't even have to look and motions his arm around the back of his head and motions, with the dart again traveling perfectly towards the bulls-eye. Neddy accuses him of cheating and takes a closer look at the darts but once it's clear that there's nothing special about them, Higgins tries to talk him into betting another five quid but Neddy, obviously nervous, says he's satisfied with the five he knows he's going to win.  Higgins, after adding, "You hope," takes one man's accordion and has another place a dart on top of it. He then presses the instrument and the dart flies through the air gracefully and hits the bulls-eye. After playing the accordion in celebration, Higgins tosses the rest of the darts to Neddy, as it's his throw, when Griffin sticks them all in the bulls-eye, much to everyone's astonishment. Neddy refuses to compete against that, making it Higgins' win, but when he tries to leave, Neddy, being a sore loser, runs up to him, swings him around, and demands his money back. Neddy yanks it out of his hand but when Griffin growls, "Ya thievin' braggart!", he prepares to knock Higgins' head in for the insult. However, a punch from Griffin sends him sailing across the room and he tells Higgins to take his money back from him, which he does. Being cocky, he asks if anyone else wants to tangle with him and they all, naturally, recoil in fear.

Following the short scene where he drains Dr. Drury of his blood to regain his visibility and burns down the house in the process, the climax begins when, while having lunch with Julie and Mark Foster at the Herrick dining table under the alias of Martin Field, Griffin realizes that he's fading away again and feigns having cut his hand as an excuse to get out of the room. Rushing upstairs, he sees that the maid, Norma, is in his room and quickly improvises by covering his now almost invisible head with his shirt as he rushes into the bathroom in the back (he doesn't close the door, which he should have). He tells Norma to tell Foster to come up to his room when she can talk to him alone. When Foster receives the message and walks up to the room, he finds it empty but sees a note on a lamp table that says that the Invisible Man is in the house and that the clue has led Field down into the wine cellar. Walking down there, Foster turns the light on but sees no sign of Field. When he walks further in, the now completely invisible Griffin locks the door behind him and takes away the key. Foster walks around for a bit, continuing to look for Field, when he finds his clothes on the floor and a small, blood transfusion apparatus on the table. Griffin makes his presence know by taking it out of his hands and says, "I told you you'd find the Invisible Man down here," laughing as Foster attempts to run out the door, only to find it locked. Foster tries to give himself an advantage by turning the lights out but gets shoved to the other side of the room as Griffin turns them back on. He throws a wine bottle at the door but misses Griffin, and misses him again when he tosses a milk creamer, taking out the light. Griffins grabs Foster by the throat and tells him that he needs his blood before shoving him against a wine barrel behind him, knocking him to the floor. As he gets up, he's grabbed by the throat again and punched in the jaw, Griffin telling him his intention to marry Julie, but he manages to gain some leverage and kicks him into the table behind him. Foster grabs a stool and tries to use it to break down the door but Griffin takes it away from him and knocks him over the railing along the steps. Foster throws another wine bottle, missing again, and runs to another spot of the room after grabbing another, all while Griffin laughs at his helplessness. He gets knocked backwards over a wine barrel on the floor and Griffin then takes the bottle away and smashes it over his head, knocking him cold.

Griffin props the table back up and places the unconscious Foster on it, preparing for the blood transfer while putting his clothes back on for modesty (modesty, that is, for the censors). Outside, Higgins is trying to take Drury's vengeful dog, Brutus, somewhere where he can kill him, when chief constable Sir Frederick Travers drives up with a man who claims that he picked up someone near the scene of Drury's murder and dropped him off at the Herrick house. Travers tells Sir Jasper that they'll have to see this "old friend" of his who dropped by but when they go inside to do so, Brutus barges his way in, pulling Higgins behind him. Down in the wine cellar, Griffin is slowly regaining his visibility, while Brutus makes his way down the stairs to the locked door, Higgins unable to stop him. Brutus barks at the door, knowing Griffin is in the room, as he continues to become solid, while Travers questions Higgins as to why he happens to have the murdered man's dog. Higgins blurts out Griffin's real name while trying to explain and when Travers overhears Cleghorn tell Sir Jasper that Field isn't in his room, they all proceed to break the door down with a bench. Griffin sits up, still partially transparent, when Brutus rushes into the room once they've made a big enough hole in the door. Griffins grab a bottle and the two rush at each other, and after a cut that shows the others continuing to break the door down, Griffin is shown being overpowered and forced down to the floor by Brutus. Once they completely break the door down, they see Brutus mauling Griffin and manage to pull the dog away, although Travers sees that it's too late: the Invisible Man is dead.

I can't say much of anything about the movie's score, because I barely remember it. I think it's a completely original score again, although the fact that H.J. Salter is credited when William Lava and Eric Zeisl also had a hand in it makes me wonder if parts of it were taken from other sources that I'm currently unaware of (some parts of it were a tiny bit familiar but I could be wrong, since a lot of the music used in this films sounds very similar). Regardless, aside from silly-sounding music during the scene at the bar, I don't remember the details of any parts of the score, including the opening theme, which I remember thinking sounded pretty good but I'll be damned if I could tell you exactly what it sounded like. Yeah, I've drawn a complete blank here.

One would be hard pressed to call The Invisible Man's Revenge an overlooked classic of its time because it's certainly not but it isn't a horrible film either, as it has some good acting, another round of special effects that were very impressive for the time and still look cool, aside from some flaws, and a few memorable sequences. However, it doesn't feel as sophisticated or intelligent as its predecessors, the music score is forgettable, and the film is ultimately not as entertaining as some of its peers due to less comedy than before and the fact that the protagonist is a cruel and despicable psychopath with no redeeming qualities whatsoever and who's not as fun to watch as Jack Griffin was in the original film. At the end of the day, I would say that if you're a fan of this era of horror and particularly those of Universal, it's watching at least once but don't expect to have as much fun with it as you've probably had with The Invisible Man, The Invisible Man Returns, or any of the other "invisible" films Universal produced at the time.