The Invisible Man. (1933)

It is an unwritten pre-condition of all the old monster movies that their antihero should be redeemed in some way by some basic but universal and empathetic human stirring, and that in this respect it is his very humanity which should cause his eventual undoing. Love, of course, is the main culprit, but innocence or ignorance or loneliness or ambition or even simple self-preservation will serve equally well in a pinch. And yet the Invisible Man is unrelentingly cruel and vicious from the moment we set eyes on his bandaged visage until his final breath, and never with any further justification than sheer malice. Oh, he is in love, of course, but that is an aside of which nothing really comes and nothing much matters; and there is some shadow-play of some sort about how the drug he has taken to induce his invisibility has caused him to lose his mind, but as we never see him before his insanity we have no frame of reference from which to judge him but the unbridled evil which he executes with such chortling joy. So what, then? When do we sympathise with this monstrous being, and how? Well, it is a simple enough trick. To induce empathy with the individual, there is no neater stratagem than to introduce the masses; and by the time we have blunted the keenness of our antipathy on the rag-tag collection of villains and shrill scoundrels who seem to permanently inhabit the inn at which the Invisible Man abides, well, we have already allied ourselves with him, accomplices in thought if not deed. And we are entitled to a start of recognition when the Invisible Man bitterly reflects that all might have been well, that all he wanted from the fools was that they should have left him alone. Because what sort of a man should invest his life in such a peculiar scientific study but one who, in his infinite contempt for humanity, simply wanted to be left alone, to walk unseen amongst his fellow man? Yes, fellowship with the brutes around him is what the Invisible Man can never elude. Their filth, their fog, their dirt and dust still cling to him, making of him nothing but a pair of hands as black as soot and footprints in the mud, shivering in the night and naked cold against the fearful slamming of even the outhouse doors.

Thomas Clark