Runtime: 79 minutes
Directed by: Lambert Hillyer
Starring: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Frank Lawton, Frances Drake, Violent Kemble Cooper
From: Universal
I’ll have to thank my television (!) for recommending to me the Pluto TV channel Universal Monsters. As I’m like most others in being stricken w/ sadness over the Ozzy Osbourne news-I’ll pay tribute in about 24 hours-I decided to continue a mini-run of horror movies via trying out a channel that will be used during Spooky Season, which I’ll start in a little more than a month.
My opinion on the channel will be given at the end of the review; as for The Invisible Ray, a sci-fi horror movie starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi was enough to entice me. The premise… please don’t ask me for a detailed explanation. Karloff is Hungarian astronomer Janos, who created a telescope that shows “light rays that show the Earth’s past” & via this telescope, he, scientists, and the viewer see a radium asteroid strike Africa approximately a billion years ago, so they visit Nigeria to find those remnants… nevermind that we see the asteroid strike what looks to be the region of either Botswana or Namibia!
To reiterate, I can’t explain that premise; an unfortunate term or two that is said when the white people interact w/ the Black characters is more understandable to me, albeit lamentable. Definitely not a surprise: once Janos discovers “Radium X” that element does bad things to him, both physically and mentally. I could ramble on for paragraphs about radium IRL but I’ll attempt to be brief. In the early 20th century radium was popular in the application of watches and other devices that glow in the dark. Radium girls that would wet brushes w/ their mouths before applying radium paint—body horror would happen. Plenty has been written about the “Radium Girls.” Even worse is quack medicine where people would drink water w/ radium salts. If you want to see Cronenbergian horrors, look up Eben Byers, who literally lost the bottom half of his face for that reason.
Of course there’s no body horrors in a 1936 film. However, Karloff glows in the dark if he doesn’t consume a special antidote that Lugosi created for him. It was at least a little fantastical that Radium X is something that can cure blindness yet can also crumple giant rocks via a death ray a la what Nikoa Tesla was purported to have. Another “of course” is that Ol’ Boris has an attractive wife (Frances Drake) who he ignores due to his obsessions; when she falls for someone else… yes, the jealous scientist who loves working alone becomes the villain.
I could carp about some plot elements or other scientific moments that are ludicrous at best. However, I was still entertained by this handsome production, by the nice Universal sets, by the music, and by the two legendary leads. I don’t want to downplay the contributions of the women in the cast, such as Drake, Beulah Bondi, and Violet Kemble Cooper. I was OK w/ The Invisible Ray being merely “good” instead of a top-tier classic. At least Karloff… outshined everyone else; my apologies for the pun that was stolen from a Letterboxd mutual anyhow. The production wasn’t the easiest (Lambert Hillyer wasn’t the first director contracted to do the film) and perhaps that’s why a dead character obviously blinks at one moment; at least that didn’t ruin the experience for me.
As for the Universal Monsters channel—viewing commercials during movies is something I’ve come to increasingly dislike through the years (it’s a reason why it’s been more than a year since viewing anything on Tubi) yet I can’t complain otherwise about the channel or the picture quality. Looking through their schedule, it’s not just films from the Golden Era of Universal Horror; there’s also movies made during my lifetime, although I can’t say if they’re the theatrical cuts or ones edited for television. In any case, the channel is one I’ll at least keep an eye on for future viewing, whether or not they’re reviewed on Letterboxd.
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