The Invisible Ray (1936)
Directed by Lambert Hillyer

Film Review

With its series of horror films no longer proving as popular as they had once been, Universal Pictures upped the ante for their third Karloff-Lugosi pairing, offering up a substantially higher budget than had been available on the duo's previous two films The Black Cat (1934) and The Raven (1935).  In spite of its noticeably improved production values and some stunning visual effects, The Invisible Ray is less well-known than these earlier Karloff-Lugosi vehicles, although it performed well at the box office on its first release.  The film's main point of interest is that it anticipates the widespread use of radiation in medical treatment (including eye surgery) and also its exploitation as a weapon of mass destruction.

Lambert Hillyer was a strange choice to direct the film - at the time he was known for directing westerns and was drafted in as a last minute replacement for Stuart Walker after the latter had walked away from the production.  Hillyer had few forays into the sci-fi and horror genres, although he made a respectable job of a later horror film for Universal, Dracula's Daughter (1936).  The film's visual impact owes more to special effects guru John P. Fulton, who not only contributed the remarkable planetarium sequence at the start of the film but also the eerie effect where Karloff's radiation-contaminated skin glows brightly, which was achieved by painstakingly treating the film negative.

Reversing the roles of their previous film, The Raven, Lugosi gets to play the more sympathetic character whilst Karloff is stuck with the archetypal mad scientist part - an arrangement that serves Lugosi far better than it does Karloff.  This is probably the one occasion in which Lugosi portrays a genuinely decent and likeable individual, and it is striking how the actor tones down his performance accordingly (he positively radiates benevolence), leaving all the carpet chewing villainy to his co-star, which is just as well as there isn't much carpet left to be chewed after Karloff has done his job.  Unlike on his earlier Frankenstein films, Karloff has next to no scope for playing the sympathy card and right from the outset his Dr Rukh impresses as the villain of the piece, resentful of the success of others and unwilling to share his discoveries.  Even his wife seems to hate him.  Do we care when he becomes contaminated by radiation?  No, we expect that this will make him even more of an anti-social fiend, and this is what he becomes - a murdering psychopath with a worrying penchant for destroying Parisian monuments.

It is our inability to sympathise with Karloff's character which makes the film's final act so dull and predictable.  Having started out with such promise, The Invisible Ray ends as your run-of-the-mill monster movie, a glib steal of the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story which is content to serve up cheap thrills for its audience.  It's more polished than Universal's earlier horror offerings but there is a sense that the studio is starting to dumb down, recycling formulae that work instead of pushing the boundaries and creating a new form of cinematic expression, as it had done so magnificently between 1930 and 1935.  The era of experimentation was over; now begins the era of exploitation.

Film Synopsis

Dr Janos Rukh invites several distinguished scientists, including Dr Benet, to his house in the Carpathian mountains to witness a demonstration of his latest invention - a telescope that tracks light back to the furthest reaches of the galaxy and shows images of Earth's distant past.  A gigantic meteor is seen crashing into the Earth thousands of years ago, and Rukh's guests are so impressed by what they see that they invite him to accompany them on their expedition to Africa, to examine the site where the meteor landed.  Here, Rukh discovers a new form of radiation, Radium X, which has powerful destructive properties.  To his horror Rukh notices that his skin has started to glow in the dark - he has been infected by the radiation and kills everything he touches!  Benet provides him with a serum that holds the symptoms at bay and allows him to continue his research.  Not long after, both men are separately exploiting Radium X for medical purposes, but Rukh bitterly resents the fact that Benet has stolen his glory after his wife has left him for another man.  His mind affected by the harmful radiation, Rukh decides that, after faking his own death, he will murder each member of the expedition...