The Invisible Man (1958–1960) User Reviews

It was "my" invisible man.

[claudg1950 · 7/10 · 28 January 2007]

Early in my infancy, Richard Greene's Robin Hood was, for me, the real, the only portrait of Robin Hood. At that time, I could not notice the budgetary constraints, especially noticeable today in the minute sets where action took place. In the same way, this 1958 Invisible Man was, for me, the true depiction of the Invisible Man: a type of superhero, always fighting for justice. I was eight years of age at the time, so I was very surprised when I learned, later, that Wells original character was not a hero, but a very troubled man.

I enjoyed the I.M. effects very much and I never spotted a wire; however, quite often, things like telephones, pens and cigarettes behaved strangely when lifted by the invisible man: they tended to somehow oscillate, a movement not to be expected from an object supposedly held by a hand (invisible or otherwise).

Nevertheless, it was good and fun. ALL 26 EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE FOR WATCHING OR DOWNLOADING at Internet Archives dot org (Classic TV Section) or at Uncle Earl's Classic TV web site. Don't miss them.

I also agree with the previous commentator that ITC, very markedly at that time, usually offered products of a superior quality. I'm an admirer of Ralph Smart (the producer of this series), who would be later responsible for the excellent and unsurpassed Danger Man (Secret Agent Man) starring Patrick McGoohan.

invisible man

[stuart-wadsworth · 8/10 · 4 March 2008]

lucky enough to have bought both seasons on DVD from a market stall. 26 episodes on 4 discs ($30 aud). the picture & sound quality are excellent. the series pre-dated 'the saint'& 'the baron' etc, but its interesting to see( no pun intended) Brady tackle similar hazards to the TV heroes that followed.

i think the show was very well written,special effects are as good as one could expect from that period, & best of all is the inclusion of some top class British character actors. i was very young when this series originally came out & it brings back fond memories of my childhood in england!

This Is Not The David McCallum Series

[aimless-46 · 7/10 · 22 March 2008]

The 26 half-hour episodes of the science fiction series "The Invisible Man" were originally broadcast on British ATV during the 1958-1959 season. It should not to be confused with the recent Sci-Fi Channel series of the same name, which featured Vincent Ventresca. Nor is it to be mistaken for the David McCallum series, which played on NBC in 1975.

This one is the granddaddy of "The Invisible Man" TV franchise and is about as obscure a television series as you are likely find. I'm sure there is an interesting reason why they saw fit to release something this unknown on DVD, but for now your guess is as good as mine.

It was a pretty decent program for 1958 but is more a curiosity than anything else 50 years later. It was actually a precursor to the James Bond craze a of the mid-1960's. Ralph Smart was the producer and he and his writing team would follow up "The Invisible Man" with "Danger Man"; which Patrick McGoohan would later follow up with "The Prisoner".

Jim Turner plays Dr. Peter Brady, a young British scientist who is accidentally turned permanently invisible. While hoping for the discovery of a process that will reverse his condition, Brady kills time helping MI-5 or some other British intelligence service with their espionage operations in Europe.

The series is actually pretty faithful to the spirit of the H.G. Wells story as Brady walks around on camera dressed in an overcoat and gloves, with bandages covering his face. The gimmick was that during the show's original run, it was never revealed that Turner was the actor playing the title role. In fact this stayed secret until the 1980's. Apparently the identity mystery was not enough to hook viewers and the series was not renewed for a second season. But it left quite a legacy as the spy genre (both parody and serious) soon replaced the western as the primary action adventure focus of television.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

A very credible series for its time

[grunsel · 24 February 2005]

This must have been a wondrous new addition to 1950s Television? Made by ITC who had acquired 'Official Films' and who always managed to produce something a little different.. Its very easy to criticize this series in the 21st century, but if you look at it in the context of the time it was made, It was pretty darn clever. The special effects still look effective and It must have been difficult trying to make a show like this in television time and budget? Certainly this show's effects stand up well against the 1975 'Invisible Man' remake series which used a lot of chroma key overlay for effects and consequently the large amount of blue fuzz, made that one unconvincing.

pretty good for it's time

[Monke337 · 7/10 · 2 September 2021]

Although I normally don't watch shows this old, I found this one to be good for the time period. The special effects were pretty good (until that episode where the invisible man was just wearing glasses) and I enjoyed the plots of each episode. The plots are pretty unique and some of them even feel like they could be their own movie. The actors were also good, even the characters who only appear once. I felt like the women were not treated any differently from the men, which was something I was kind of worried about when I started this show, given the time period it was created. Overall, I find this show to be exceptional, with memorable characters and interesting plots.

Give it a chance

[samarcor · 9/10 · 30 October 2023]

I stumbled across this a few weeks ago and did not think I would watch it. I had never heard of it. I thought this was going to be another bad old TV series but I was greatly surprised. It funny, cute and has great lines. My favorite line so far is "Hey, quit shooting at me or one of us is going to get hurt, and it won't be me" 30 minutes is the perfect time for this show and I am liking the humor and semi serious subject. I love the normal things that get done by the man, liking dialing a phone. The only bad thing is that he gets knocked out almost every episode. How does that happen? He is invisible!!!!!!!! Even my wife likes it.

Charming British series without the sophistication of The Avengers

[brechtbug · 5/10 · 13 May 2006]

Warning.....Contains Mild Spoilers!

This version of "Invsible Man" has the distinct advantage of not having the scientist , Peter Brady, go slowly insane. Brady turns transparent due to a "radiation" leak while exposing a guinea pig to an unspecified element. He spends the rest of the series constantly looking for a formula to make himself reappear, has a tantrum or two, but otherwise maintains a rather sunny disposition. After an initial misunderstanding with the British Government he moves in with his widowed sister and freckle faced niece and unofficially puts up a shingle to help any passer-by who needs invisible espionage assistance.

The show is a little like "The Saint" in that everyone always recognizes the famous Simon Templar yet he is still able to work undercover assignments. The first few "Invisible Man" episodes has the British Government hoping to keep Brady under wraps but after a relatively harmless auto accident "the cat is out of the bag". The press starts flocking to Brady's sister's house and goes nuts trying to figure out how to photograph our unseen hero.

I was impressed by the amount of exterior location shoots around London making this series refreshingly not studio enclosed.

I loved the fact that Brady's sister seems totally comfortable driving him to each assignment and exposing her daughter to dangerous individuals while always having dinner served on time.

The special effects are minimal - a few floating chairs, reusable head bandage unwrapping shots and dangling cigarettes, but hey, you either go with the concept or you don't.

It's also good to know that Brady's cotton lab coat and shoes became invisible with him so he can avoid the chill of creeping around in the buff and stepping on broken glass.

OK series despite primitive special effects

[CommandoCody · 5 January 2003]

The British television series, "H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man," may have been based on the character created by Wells but had very little to do with the novel or classic James Whale film from Universal. In direct contradiction to the source material, the hero Dr. Peter Brady, was doing remarkably well as a workaholic scientist employed by the British government. He accidentally becomes invisible (fortunately for him, clothes and all) after a radiation leak interferes with his experiments on optical density and refraction. Naturally, the British authorities are suspicious of Brady, wondering what he'll do with his new-found "powers."

Brady becomes a one man Impossible Missions Force. In subsequent episodes, he's dispatched to one mythical Middle Eastern, Eastern European, or African country after another, to foil the forces of evil threatening the British Empire. Despite supposedly being a secret agent, as the series progressed, Brady's invisibility became public knowledge leading to trouble in some episodes.

The special effects were cheap and downright awful by today's standards. For the most part, the "invisibility" special effects were handled by wires holding various objects such as car keys, test tubes, guns, and the like. Scenes were frequently shot from Brady's point-of-view to limit the use of special effects. Despite these shortcomings the series eventually attracted the interests of US television networks. H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man ran for 39 half hours on the CBS network from November 4, 1958 to September 22, 1960.

Scary for a 5 year old kid

[sullymangolf · 22 June 2007]

This is one of those flashbacks that you remember as a kid. We lived in Brooklyn, N.Y. back in the day and I remember as a child watching previews for a show that I thought was The Invisible Man. All I remember about the previews was a man with the bandages sitting in a chair (possibly in a theater)smoking a cigarett while someone opened a curtain above him looking to see where the cigarette smoke was coming from. Then in another scene I think the Invisible Man was lying on a bed while a fireman came in a door to the room and the fireman passed out from fright. This is all I remember except that I had nightmares from thinking about these scenes. To this day I don't know if this was the scenes from this show or not. I love this site because you can find pretty much all the old shows.

DVD Review "H. G. Wells' Invisible Man" By Theo DeRoth

[marcuspan-00524 · 17 November 2023]

DVD Review "H. G. Wells' Invisible Man" By Theo DeRoth

Old TV, the stuff clichés are made of. From Lucy in her creepy frilly apron to Andy whistling on his way back from the fishin' hole, this stuff is embedded in the popular consciousness. But what about the ones that aren't re-run constantly? The ones you aren't familiar with, that aren't instant cultural references?

Well, that's "The Invisible Man". When I mentioned it to my dad, he had some vague memories of it, but other than that, it seems to have disappeared. And then MPI re-released it. So here we are.

Surprisingly, portions of it are quite good. The special effects - things like cars without drivers and chairs being picked up and thrown by an invisible man - are pretty smooth for the time. And there is a certain style to it, without doubt, though of the type that involves ascots and plaid button-down shirts. But the series suffers in several ways, mostly because of dated writing, out-and-out lousy acting and no series continuity.

Take the third episode, "Behind the Mask", as an example. In it, our hero the Invisible Man - known in the series as Doctor Peter Brady and voiced by Tim Turner - is forced to aid a mysterious, heavily scarred man in a half mask to become invisible. This man, also known as Dennis Price and introduced as "the fabulous Raphael Constantine" is revealed to have an ulterior motive: He wants to kill the South American president Dobecq (since, as we all know, South America is one big country) in an attempt to right some largely unspecified wrong. In his attempt to become invisible, Constantine is killed, his daughter (played by Barbara Chilcott) tries and fails to kill Dobecq and the day is somehow saved by Dr. Brady.

In between, there's much crying of things like "How I hate that smirking, unmarked face," and an awesomely bad fight scene between Dr. Brady and one of Constantine's toughs. The acting in this episode, as in all the others, is uniformly bad and many things are, unfortunately, left to the imagination. It's one thing to not show the full extent of the damage to Constantine's face; it's quite another to never say exactly how it got there or what Constantine's beef with Dobecq is (there's vague talk of a bomb and the loss of many factories, but beyond that the viewer is left in the dark). And, as far as I could tell, none of the characters ever reappear in the series for closure. This episode is, sadly, a perfect representative of the flaws of the entire series - lack of continuity from one episode to the next, poor scripting, bad acting, strangely incoherent storylines and bizarrely uninteresting female leads.

To be sure, "The Invisible Man" is the kind of series that's ripe for network resuscitation - all the elements of a good modern series are there, from a potentially angst-y main character to opportunities for disfigurement and good looking women. But as it is, the series hasn't held up for modern viewers. It's very much "of a time," to put it delicately. It's the kind of thing that's great to put on at a party with friends so everyone can make snarky comments and laugh at the driverless cars. It's worth a watch, if you're into fifties TV, or if you're an Invisible Man fanatic, but for most of us, it wouldn't matter if the series disappeared as easily as the main character.

--- Originally published in Legends #162.

Edited & de-offensified by Marcus Pan.