THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933)
Horror melodrama telling of a scientist who turns himself invisible, but with use of drugs that drive him insane.
First of all, this movie has some of my favorite special effects in movie history. I wish special effects still had this elegant, beautiful fakeness. Second, Claude Rains’s performance (mostly with his voice considering he’s invisible the whole movie) is chilling. He’s horrifying but sympathetic, mostly from the richness and sorrow and desperation in his voice. The writing of his character is so beautiful too; he’ll be pure evil one moment and then suddenly moving. He’ll seem genuinely powerful at one moment and then crack into total insecurity. I love stories of desperately insecure psychopaths. They’re so much scarier than the laughing maniac or the confident, not-sweating-it Hannibal Lector type.
