The Invisible Woman (1940)

 

Bruce gets even with her incorrigible ex-boss

I think the Invisible Man series is perhaps the most underrated of the Universal Monster franchises. Both Hamilton ("13 Ghosts") and Homolka ("Mr. Sardonicas") starred later in William Castle films while the great John Barrymore (The Great Profile of "Dinner at Eight" and "Grand Hotel" fame, not to mention some classic horror roles in the likes of "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" and "Svengali") pops up in a Universal B-movie two years before his tragic premature death of life-long deteriorating alcoholism. Barrymore is sadly one of many tragic examples of Hollywood icons dying way too soon, with Colin Clive coming to mind. 

Barrymore, Ruggles, Howard, and Bruce

The comedy, sufficed to say, is broad and played without restraint. Not dark comedy or violent, with Ruggles totally physically rattled and nervy, and John Barrymore very much in real Lionel form, even looking as old as him... John's health in clear decline had me melancholic because his immense talent might be lost on those who don't watch him at his very best in the early 30s or his silent film work. He's very animated and active, though, not at all sleepwalking through the film...and that made me happy. The included hapless gangsters as bumbling fools unable to use the invisible machine despite its availability to them are presented as silly as the likes of Ruggles. Bruce as the titular woman plays off Howard, who four years later would be a WWII hero, with his matinee idol looks, as the playboy love interest, especially well. Plenty of special effects but this go-around Bruce doesn't suffer the effects of what made her invisible, as the previous films were of a potion using a chemical causing madness, because it was Barrymore's machine behind it.

This was one of surprising gems of 2011, with user comments below from October of that year.

Played strictly for laughs, I'm hard-pressed to label "The Invisible Woman" a horror film, but the movie does feature within the "The Invisible Man" Universal Studios franchise even if it stands alone from the first two films. A professor and friend to a rich family who have been providing funding to his experiments for years, Gibbs (John Barrymore), has finally hit pay dirt, having developed an "invisible machine". Miss Kitty Caroll (Virginia Bruce; receiving top billing, although she's barely visible during most of the running time, her voice depended on to earn giggles) answers an ad to be the human guinea pig to be turned invisible, her reason to frighten a grumpy, horrible boss for a modeling company (she is a model and one of his many victims; we see in the sequence where she uses her invisibility to scare him that he fires a girl because she has a cold!). Gibbs promises millions to broke playboy Richard Russell (John Howard) when the results of lots of money poured into his experiments proves successful. Sufficed to say, complications ensue. George (Charlie Ruggles), the butler, is the main source of comedy, his slapstick, physical comedy, and dialogue always on the silly side... He often faints, and gets nervous very easily, stuttering and quivering like a ninny. With goofy mobsters (including Shemp Howard of Three Stooges fame) after the invisibility (boss Oscar Homolka(William Castle's "Mr. Sardonicas") wants to become invisible so he can return to America, remaining a fugitive in Mexico), "The Invisible Woman" never remotely approaches horrifying, so you might as well place this as an invisibility comedy alongside "Now You See Him, Now You Don't" or "Memoirs of the Invisible Man". There are plenty of special effects featuring shenanigans involving Kitty (she gets drunk on Russell's well stocked booze when Gibbs and her go to Richard's hideaway hunting lodge, and we see the bottle pouring scotch into a glass while Kitty is invisible), such as a missing head while she is in dresses, a club bopping mobsters on the head (knocking them unconscious), and often foiling Homolka and his goons. Definitely inferior to the previous films which had a level of intensity in the storyline due to the progressing madness caused by remaining invisible (with an antidote hard to come by), "The Invisible Woman", nevertheless, has its fun moments thanks to a game cast playfully giving over to the kooky screenplay and dialogue.