Film review – Tômei ningen arawaru (Invisible Man Appears) (1949)

My notes on Tômei ningen arawaru (Invisible Man Appears) (1949)

‘Kurokawa, regrettably you’ve committed quite heinous crimes!’

James Whale’s The Invisible Man (1933) – based, of course, on H.G. Wells’ novel – set off a Universal Pictures mini-franchise of loosely-linked films. The Invisible Man counts as an official Universal monster, to the extent of meeting Abbott and Costello (twice, actually) and having a Blumhouse remake. The novel and Whale’s film both came out in periods when genres were fluid and exerted significant influence on both science fiction and horror. In follow-ups, it’s odd that the invisible man premise should so often be yoked to crime dramas, with even a venture into wartime espionage in Invisible Agent. As it happens, one of the first invisible man films was a crossover – Sherlock Holmes Baffled! – so the character has form in this department. The Invisible Man is a mad scientist who mutates himself, like Dr Jekyll before him and the Fly after him – and the inevitable result is a rampage, and being gunned down by the authorities.

In 1949, Japan’s Daiei Studios made Tômei ningen arawaru – the apparently paradoxical title Invisible Man Appears is presumably a deliberate joke – which has the sort of scenario Universal used in their invisible sequels and a genre mix that prefigures Toho’s run of transformed criminal movies (The H-Man, The Human Vapor, Secret of the Telegian) but also American pictures like The Fly, The Hideous Sun Demon, The H-Man or The Most Dangerous Man in the World. Eiji Tsuburaya, later the Godzilla go-to, handles the John Fulton-style effects, and we even get a reprise of the unbandaging sequence from Whale’s film, which tended to be gone through again in all subsequent invisible man pictures. Like The Invisible Man Returns and The Invisible Man’s Revenge, the transparency business is almost secondary to a complicated – if, ironically, equally transparent set of mysteries.

Elderly Professor Nakazato (Ryûnosuke Tsukigata) has worked for years developing his invisibility formula, but not quite perfected it – and unwisely says that he’ll let whichever of his two assistants who gets it right marry his daughter Machiko (Chizuru Kitagawa). Kyôsuke Segi (Daijirô Natsukawa) thinks the solution is a paint so black it disappears while Shunji Kurokawa (Kanji Koshiba) feels the trick is in something that lets light pass through. Nakazato and Kurokawa both disappear from the film, with the suggestion being that the Professor is the bandaged invisible man who then gets involved in stealing a valuable necklace called the Tears of Amour … though it’s plain that the younger man is the actual semi-monster, which is only confirmed after his death as he returns to visibility after staggering wounded into the surf. With very Japanese reflection, the scientist admits ‘Although it wasn’t intended to be used in the service of evil, I invented something without due consideration and it was used to the detriment of society. There’s nothing I can say to apologize. I accept full responsibility for this calamity.’

As in the Universal films, the effects people work hard on some evidence of an invisible presence – a depressed cushion, wafts of smoke, objects floating across the room, footprints in the sand – but not others, so this invisible man consistently forgets to displace water (an effect which had to wait for Hollow Man). Wells’ Griffin becomes a megalomaniac because of the existential plight of being unseeable, but the Universal films change this to a side-effect of the drug. Screenwriters Nobuo Adachi and Akimitsu Takagi lift this completely, and the initially well-intentioned if foolish see-through man becomes progressively more violent and cracked, which eventually leads to a mobilisation of all the cops in Kobe to track him down in a scene that prefigures many authorities-roll-into-action science fiction finales of the 1950s. It’s still bizarre that in a film which features a massive scientific breakthrough, characters all seem more excited by this one clunky necklace than the fact that there’s an invisible maniac on the loose.

Also from the Universal playbook is the need for a non-monster villain to keep the plot going – and Nakazato compounds his erratic research and idiotic compete-for-the-girl pep talk by trusting shifty businessman Ichirô Kawabe (Shôsaku Sugiyama), who is after the diamonds and coerces the invisible man into helping him get them. Things are complicated by Ryûko Mizuki (Takiko Mizunoe), Dr Kurokawa’s sister, a nightclub star who appears in a bizarre fusion act that includes sexy western stuff and Japanese traditional costume – shown in what seems like a precis of a whole evening’s entertainment (and is evidently lifted from an early Mizunoe vehicle, Hana kurabe tanuki-goten). The odd, sexually ambiguous semi-heroine expresses grief with lines like ‘Shunji, you died never having seen my show! I can’t forgive you.’ Given that all men in the film are useless, cross-dressing Ryûko has to become an action lead and even impersonate the invisible man several times. Directed by Shinsei Adachi and Shigehiro Fukusima. Ten years later, the studio made a semi-sequel Tômei ningen to hae otoko (The Invisible Man vs the Human Fly).