Invisible Ghost (1941)
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis

Film Review

Reduced to working for poverty row film companies after his attempts to find work with the major Hollywood studios came to nothing in the late 1930s, Bela Lugosi could have been forgiven for feeling bitter and disheartened.  It was, after all, his Count Dracula that had initiated Universal's most successful run of films.  Bitter he may have been but Lugosi remained the committed actor and seldom disappointed his audience in the films he continued to make right up until his death - even if the films got progressively worse along the way.

Lugosi's skill as an actor is evident in Invisible Ghost, one of a series of films he made for the poverty row outfit Monogram Pictures.  In a Jekyll and Hyde role, Lugosi is called upon to change from a genial family man to a somnambulistic killer, and does so with chilling realism.  In a horrifying transformation (achieved without makeup) the actor's naturally affable demeanour melts away before our eyes as a cold death mask expression settles on his features.  Some imaginative lighting heightens the effect and allows Lugosi to do what he does best, which is to frighten the life out of his audience.

Despite its obvious cheapness, Invisible Ghost is one of Lugosi's more respectable excursions into low budget cinema.  Director Joseph H. Lewis extracts as much as he can from the limited resources available to him, with some expressionistic touches borrowed from early German cinema (Murnau's Nosferatu being an obvious reference point).  And, for once, Lugosi is helped along by a supporting cast who look as if they can act.  Special mention should go to Clarence Muse, who plays Lugosi's black butler here and would find fame in the mid-1950s as Sam the pianist in a television version of Casablanca.  As the film's most likeable character, Muse introduces a subtle hint of humour that helps to lift the film and distract us from its multiple failings on the script front.

And it is surely the script that is the worst thing about this film.  There is absolutely no logic to anything that takes place in Invisible Ghost.  Even the title doesn't make any kind of sense.  It's the sort of plot that seems to have been randomly cobbled together by a computer with absolutely no regard for the principle of cause and effect and even less regard for the audience's intelligence.  For example...  If, as is claimed, there have been several murders in the Kessler household, how is it the police have failed to identify the culprit?  It's not as if the list of suspects is particularly daunting.  And what on Earth would induce the gardener to hold Kessler's clearly deranged wife a prisoner in his cellar?  And how can the sight of his wife convert Kessler into a homicidal maniac?   And how come he hasn't already murdered his daughter, given that she is the spitting image of his wife?  And so on...

You could spend forever picking holes in the narrative, or at least have enough material for a doctoral thesis.  Invisible Ghost requires an awful lot of suspension of disbelief but if you can rise to this challenge it isn't so bad as you might think.  Lugosi's full-bloodied performance alone sells the film and after a while, the stark staring lunacy of the plot begins to take on a charm of its own.  After all, why should a film ever make any sense?  It could be just a dream, a weird flight of fancy...  For entertainment value, this is almost on a par with Lugosi's more prestigious films for Universal, only much, much sillier.

Film Synopsis

Since his wife was taken from him in tragic circumstances, Charles Kessler has kept the memory of her alive in his mind and even continues to celebrate their wedding anniversary.  Unbeknown to Kessler, his wife still lives, a deranged wreck of a woman who is being kept in his basement by his gardener.  From time to time, Mrs Kessler evades her captor and is glimpsed by her husband.  The latter, sent into a deep trance, becomes a killer and immediately sets about murdering someone in his house.  After Kessler kills his maid, his daughter's fiancé, Ralph Dickson, is arrested and executed for the crime.   A short while later, Dickson's twin brother Paul turns up at the Kessler household, and with Kessler's help sets out to unmask the murderer...