"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."
Review of Invisible Agent
