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A bit of elixir unchains the brilliant-monstrous mind (cf. Ray's Bigger Than Life), "that's all, and flesh and blood and bone just fade away." The jolly inn is suddenly stilled when the stranger comes in from the cold, a pile of trench coat and bandages and tinted goggles to give form to the scientist's vanished self, quite the irritable guest. (Claude Rains' sinister plumminess dominates in a splendid radio performance.) The unwrapping is a gleeful performance before a stupefied audience, suspended between the rich shriek of Una O'Connor's barmaid and the deadpan "Here, what's all this?" of E.E. Clive's constable. The rampage spreads from mischief to sadism, knocking over baby carriages, scattering bank bills, derailing trains for the thrill of it. "We will begin with a reign of terror. A few murders here and there..." A particularly inspired James Whale composition on the H.G. Wells parable, erected on the thin divide between screwball giddiness and horror giddiness. Momentarily pacified by his beloved bride (Gloria Stuart), feared by the fellow doctor he's enslaved (William Harrigan), the megalomaniac gazes up at the moon and scoffs in disdain. (A low angle on his bloodthirsty gesticulations creates an unsettling effect in the year of Hitler's accession to power.) "Panic, death, things worse than death" are promised, still Whale never forgets the comedy of a naked man running around in the British winter. Striped pajamas snoring on a pillow, half-buttoned pants skipping to "Nuts in May," footprints and bullets on the snow. Visibility returns to the protagonist on his deathbed, with the skull amid dissolves remembered at the close of Psycho. "I meddled in things that man must leave alone." Verhoeven in Hollow Man recognizes the tale's sexual viciousness. With Henry Travers, Forrester Harvey, Holmes Herbert, Dudley Digges, Harry Stubbs, Donald Stuart, and Merle Tottenham. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |