This is one of the really great Bela Lugosi-movies. However, this did not prevent a majority to underrate it shamefully with less than 5 points (5 of August 2009).
"Invisible Ghost" takes a very special place amongst the horror movies. Mr. Kessler's wife had left him 16 years ago. Every year, to their anniversary of marriage, Kessler celebrates a feast as if she were still there, comparable only to the wonderful "Dinner for one" where the lady has invited all her meanwhile dead friends to the occasion of her 90st birthday. However, Kessler does not know that his wife, mentally disturbed, is kept by one of his employees in a cellar nearby his house. Due to the long and disappointing waiting for his wife, Kessler's mind, too, got darkened. So, when his wife keeps appearing in front of her windows in the long lonely night which he spends reading before the chimney-fire, he thinks it is his mind that plays him a trick. Well understood: this is one of the seldom cases where reality is taken for imagination, not vice versa! And the sight of his real wife whom Kessler must have thought to be dead, although he tells everyone that one day she will return, turns him into a kind of sleep-walking during which he commits fully senseless murders. The killing of his daughter is just prevented by a sudden lightening by which Kessler, fully unaware of his mental state and his deeds, awakes for a few seconds.
One can learn from this movie that there are no convincing proves of what is real and what is imaginary. The philosophers knew that for a long time, but it is astonishing that in the "Invisible Ghost", the relation between reality and imagination is handled in both ways. Lugosi's performance is, as usual, unsurpassable.
"Invisible Ghost" takes a very special place amongst the horror movies. Mr. Kessler's wife had left him 16 years ago. Every year, to their anniversary of marriage, Kessler celebrates a feast as if she were still there, comparable only to the wonderful "Dinner for one" where the lady has invited all her meanwhile dead friends to the occasion of her 90st birthday. However, Kessler does not know that his wife, mentally disturbed, is kept by one of his employees in a cellar nearby his house. Due to the long and disappointing waiting for his wife, Kessler's mind, too, got darkened. So, when his wife keeps appearing in front of her windows in the long lonely night which he spends reading before the chimney-fire, he thinks it is his mind that plays him a trick. Well understood: this is one of the seldom cases where reality is taken for imagination, not vice versa! And the sight of his real wife whom Kessler must have thought to be dead, although he tells everyone that one day she will return, turns him into a kind of sleep-walking during which he commits fully senseless murders. The killing of his daughter is just prevented by a sudden lightening by which Kessler, fully unaware of his mental state and his deeds, awakes for a few seconds.
One can learn from this movie that there are no convincing proves of what is real and what is imaginary. The philosophers knew that for a long time, but it is astonishing that in the "Invisible Ghost", the relation between reality and imagination is handled in both ways. Lugosi's performance is, as usual, unsurpassable.