Laikals
The greatest movie ever made..!
Softwing
Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??
Tedfoldol
everything you have heard about this movie is true.
preppy-3
Fran k Griffin (Jon Hall) is the grandson of the original invisible man and still has the formula under lock and key. He has no intention of it being used but decides to help the US in the war effort. He parachutes into Germany and uses his powers of invisibility to help the US. He also gets involved with German and Japanese spies (Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Peter Lorre) and a beautiful British spy (Ilona Massey).This is an OK war melodrama with touches of invisibility as a gimmick. For what it is it's OK. It moves quickly, the cast is good and the special effects are adequate. This was made solely as a morale booster for WWII audiences and it works on that level. As a horror movie though it's a dud.
mgconlan-1
"Invisible Agent" was one of the few Universal "series" horror films I hadn't seen until now. It's basically a good concept for a film — turning the Invisible Man loose on the Axis and a formidable set of German and Japanese villains including Sir Cedric Hardwicke (just as despicable here as he was in "The Invisible Man Returns"), Peter Lorre (who just about steals the entire show) and Keye Luke. Lorre doesn't wear any "slant-eye" makeup to turn himself Asian, but he hadn't as Mr. Moto either and he's just as believable here. Still, there are a number of missed opportunities in this movie. Why is Jon Hall's character depicted as the grandson, not the son or nephew, of the original Invisible Man? (That would have made sense if the 1933 film had been set in the 1890's, when H. G. Wells wrote the source novel, but it wasn't.) More importantly, why did Curt Siodmak omit the key plot device that the invisibility formula turned its user into a raving megalomaniac as a side effect? One could readily imagine the Nazis trying to recruit the Invisible Agent to their side as the drug took hold of him and he started sounding like them! Still, it's a fun movie and Ilona Massey's character is appropriately morally ambiguous -- though she must have wondered about the direction of her career: she'd been brought over to the U.S. by MGM in 1939 to replace Jeanette MacDonald as Nelson Eddy's co-star in the elaborate operetta film "Balalaika," but just three years later here she was at Universal making movies like this and "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man."
j-cf
This is not the James Whale's Invisible man, far from that, but it's still quite interesting on an historical point of view: America can involve ANY of "her" heroes in wars, even the psychotic one created by Wells. And besides that… it's funny! The hero is dumb (what a pitiful spy!), but this can be related to the original movie (the first Invisible man became insane because of the drug, this one becomes stupid and suspicious - kind of a "war symptom" for America… or France!). Some scenes reminded me of the Whale's movie (which had also a lot of humorous parts), like the barn scene. The directing is correct, not great (Marin is not Whale), and the editing is poor. Characters are sympathetic (the villains, anyway: Lorre and co can manage that). What gives the movie his "power" (on a low level: it's not Lubitsch's To be or not to be) is the distance taken with the story told, which is plain silly (how come a dumb like Griffin Jr Jr can make the drug by himself? And if he can't, this drug has an impressive power of conservation, having been made half a century ago!). But before all that, what keeps this kind of movie alive are the wonderful special effects created by John Fulton. The parachute scene is quite impressive, and so is the cream scene. An enjoyable movie, representative of the Universal's evolution at that time, when the studio capitalized on the "addition principle" (pardon me for my poor English): since we are in war and since Frankenstein can meet the werewolf, why couldn't the Invisible man fight the Gestapo? After all, Nazis were way much scary than any Universal monster… because they were real (nevertheless, America ignored the horrors of concentration-camps at that time, that's why Nazis could still be funny in the movies). A regret anyway: where the hell are Claude Rains and his incredible voice?
MARIO GAUCI
Of the "Invisible Man" series made by Universal, I was only familiar with the first two (both of which I'll rewatch again presently) - the James Whale original being one of my all-time favorites.Ever since it was released as part of the "Legacy" set, I had mostly read negative opinions about this film - and even Leonard Maltin gives it a pretty low rating. However, I was very surprised by how much I enjoyed it! True, the leads are rather bland (why on earth is Ilona Massey credited before Jon Hall?!) but, then, INVISIBLE AGENT has a formidable trio of villains - Peter Lorre, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and J. Edward Bromberg - going for it (who even make Curt Siodmak's script sound better than it is). Besides, I must say that I'm a sucker for both WWII and espionage movies, so that's a big plus as well...which, I guess, means that it isn't really a horror film and that The Invisible Man is the hero! Oh well, you can't have everything!John P. Fulton's still-impressive special effects (exposed a bit here by the extra clarity of the DVD transfer) deliver the goods and, all in all, the film made me keen to get to the remaining titles in the series.
