The Invisible Man: James Whale

By 1933, James Whale had already established himself as an visionary director, having helped kick off the Universal Studios Monsters film series with the smash hit Frankenstein.  He would further explore the realm of science gone mad with The Invisible Man, an adaption of the novel by H. G. Wells.  The key difference between the two films was the feelings of the audience towards their titular monster.  While the audience was encouraged to feel sympathy and sorrow for Frankenstein's Monster, the Invisible Man was a character to be reviled and feared.  Driven mad by the same sciences that made him invisible, we witness him commit vile acts of premeditated violence.  In the book, the Invisible Man was not driven insane by his experiments.  But by adding the insanity measure, Whale was able to create a new breed of monster: the genius sociopath.  In his insanity I can see flickers of Hannibal Lector and his calculations, driven home in a sequence where he makes good on a promise to murder a colleague at 10:00.  On a side note, I was amazed by how violent the film was by 1930s standards.  The film explicitly states that his body count was well over 120 victims, many of whom we see dispatched on screen.  Maybe there is a dose of Jason Voorhees in him as well...

8/10