The Worst Film Ever

Excellent but underrated film

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The Invisible Woman, the third installment of the Invisible Man series, was a let down. When the movie began, it seemed to have a good idea. However, the writers, director, and producer had no idea how to turn it into a good movie. It seemed like after the release of The Invisible Man Returns (1940), Hollywood tried to rush and get another sequel out. Therefore, this movie was not quality. Do not waste your time. After seeing 27 minutes of this film, I have concluded that I am done with the Invisible Man, only finding the first 2 movies a success.

The original Invisible Man film definitely had some humor, and though the film was mainly science fiction/horror, these humorous moments worked well as a garnish. This second "sequel" goes totally over the edge (even Shemp Howard of The Three Stooges fame is in it), nearing Abbott and Costello territory, though unlike their films with Universal, this isn't really funny. As there were in the previous films, there are still some impressive optical effects.At only one hour and thirteen minutes, I wouldn't quite say it's difficult to sit through, but if it was much longer it would be. There is one golden line amongst the vast majority of jokes that just fall flat, "Any girl that'd become invisible can't be very easy on the eyes."

Played strictly for laughs, I'm hard-pressed to label "The Invisible Woman" a horror film, but the movie does feature within the "The Invisible Man" Universal Studios franchise even if it stands alone from the first two films. A professor and friend to a rich family who have been providing funding to his experiments for years, Gibbs (John Barrymore), has finally hit pay dirt, having developed an "invisible machine". Miss Kitty Caroll (Virginia Bruce; receiving top billing, although she's barely visible during most of the running time, her voice depended on to earn giggles) answers an ad to be the human guinea pig to be turned invisible, her reason to frighten a grumpy, horrible boss for a modeling company (she is a model and one of his many victims; we see in the sequence where she uses her invisibility to scare him that he fires a girl because she has a cold!). Gibbs promises millions to broke playboy Richard Russell (John Howard) when the results of lots of money poured into his experiments proves successful. Sufficed to say, complications ensue. George (Charlie Ruggles), the butler, is the main source of comedy, his slapstick, physical comedy, and dialogue always on the silly side... He often faints, and gets nervous very easily, stuttering and quivering like a ninny. With goofy mobsters (including Shemp Howard of Three Stooges fame) after the invisibility (boss Oscar Homolka(William Castle's "Mr. Sardonicas") wants to become invisible so he can return to America, remaining a fugitive in Mexico), "The Invisible Woman" never remotely approaches horrifying, so you might as well place this as an invisibility comedy alongside "Now You See Him, Now You Don't" or "Memoirs of the Invisible Man". There are plenty of special effects featuring shenanigans involving Kitty (she gets drunk on Russell's well stocked booze when Gibbs and her go to Richard's hideaway hunting lodge, and we see the bottle pouring scotch into a glass while Kitty is invisible), such as a missing head while she is in dresses, a club bopping mobsters on the head (knocking them unconscious), and often foiling Homolka and his goons. Definitely inferior to the previous films which had a level of intensity in the storyline due to the progressing madness caused by remaining invisible (with an antidote hard to come by), "The Invisible Woman", nevertheless, has its fun moments thanks to a game cast playfully giving over to the kooky screenplay and dialogue.

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (Universal, 1940), directed by A. Edward Sutherland, is an original story by Curt (billed Kurt) Siodmak and Joe May that has nothing to do with either the H.G. Wells story "The Invisible Man" nor the original 1933 motion picture from which it was based. In fact, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN is a comedy, a screwball comedy in the 1930s tradition, with an dose of science fiction and character types thrown in. The title role belongs to the attractive blonde, Virginia Bruce, while much of the praise for comedy goes to that "ham actor" himself, John Barrymore, in one of his several character performances, sporting glasses, white hair, mustache and a comical expression on his face, co-starring as a nutty professor who invents things, with one machine in particular he's been working on for ten years.As for the plot, the screenplay goes through the process of character introduction, the first being Richard Russell (John Howard), a millionaire playboy with a handful of débutante girlfriends and a large selection of their photographs residing in a mansion with George (Charles Ruggles), his loyal servant. Following another one of his all night parties, Dick learns from his family lawyer, John Hudson (Thurston Hall), that because of his extravagances he is now flat broke. Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore), the second introduced character, has his laboratory near the Russell mansion with Mrs. Jackson (Margaret Hamilton), his housekeeper of 12 years, as his assistant. Unable to acquire the $3,000 needed for his latest experiment, Gibbs places an ad in the Daily Record newspaper asking for a subject willing to become invisible. Kitty Carroll (Virginia Bruce), the central character and the third to be introduced, is seen as a poor working girl in need of extra money. Working as a model for the Continental Dress Company at $16.50 a week, she and the other girls are at the mercy of the mean and demanding Mr. Growley (Charles Lane), whose greatest pleasure is bossing the girls and threatening to fire them whenever possible. Unhappy under those conditions, Kitty walks out after a customer tears her dress, hoping to some day carry out her threat by kicking Growley "right in the pants." She gets her chance after becoming a willing subject to Professor Gibbs by stepping into his machine that makes her invisible. With that done, it is up to Kitty to rescue Gibbs from the clutches of Foghorn (Donald MacBride) and his two stooges (Edward Brophy and Shemp Howard) wanting to use his machine to make their boss "Blackie" (Oscar Homolka) invisible so he could return to Russia unseen. Then the fun really begins.In the tradition of creative special effects by John Fulton, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN comes off best with its quota of laughs during its first half with the invisible Kitty Carroll getting even with her employer (Lane) and scaring his snobbish clients responsible for nearly having her lose her job, while the second half revolving around the love-hate relationship between Kitty and Richard along with the comic henchmen stealing the invisible machine and kidnapping the professor where he is held hostage in Blackie Cole's hideout in Mexico, gets a little tiresome, though redeemed afterwards by some silly, though well-paced climax. Aside from the amusing Charlie Ruggles making his scenes count, fainting on cue, with Margaret Hamilton unfortunately having little to do, there's Donald MacBride hilariously talking soprano (like "Jenny Lind") after walking through the invisible making machine that backfires on him. Others in the cast taking on lesser roles are Anne Nagel, Mary Gordon, Edward Conrad and Kathryn Adams. Look quickly for a young Maria Montez, not long before making her mark in a series of Technicolor South Seas adventure tales mostly opposite Jon Hall, as one of the models.Unlike THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN spawned no sequels, nor is it relatively known in spite of it being part of "The Invisible Man" video and later DVD package over the years. Unseen (no pun intended) on cable television for quite some time, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN did have some revivals on the Sci-Fi Channel (late 1980s), American Movie Classics (1989-90) and Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: February 3, 2012). For anyone looking for a change of pace in regards to science fiction or comedy, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN is certainly one to consider. (**1/2)