THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN (1960)
Tagline: Warning! Joey Faust, escaped convict, The Amazing Transparent Man, has vowed to "appear" invisibly in Person at every performance of this picture!
(Sci-Fi, Crime, Psychotronic) [G]
Note: The MPAA did not give this movie a rating. I think it would have landed a [G]. This movie was also known as SEARCH FOR A SHADOW. It was shot back to back with BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER.
Imagine what our counterintelligence could accomplish if they were able to become invisible whenever necessary.
This story follows a scientist named Peter Ulof who has been threatened into developing a machine that turns you invisible using radiation. Because remember, in the ’50s and ’60s radiation can do anything it wants. The end goal is to create an invisible army to take over the world, but they decide to test it on Joey Faust first. The reason they involve him involved that he’s a master thief and they believe he can steal more of the materials they need for their radiation machine. Faust ends up deciding to not go along with any of the plans that madman Paul Krenner has in mind.
One thing I liked about this movie is that it’s just a bit less than an hour long. That isn’t really a compliment. They don’t spend a ton of time dragging this out and that’s good because the script is pretty rough. In fact, there is almost no dialog that I liked in this movie outside of what was essential to the outlandish plot. The pacing is actually pretty slow in the majority of this and it’s not on par with films like THE INVISIBLE MAN, and actually feels like they patterned it after INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN. Even the lead actor Douglas Kennedy who plays Joey Faust is very Lon Chaney Jr.-like in the role. Late career Lon Chaney Jr., not 40s Lon Chaney Jr. when he was killing it.
Acting wise as I mentioned Douglas Kennedy takes the lead role and at the very least he is a convincing gangster. Kennedy was probably most famous for THE LAND UNKNOWN. Marguerite Chapman is decent but not great as Laura Matson. Chapman was best known for THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH. James Griffith plays Major Paul Krenner he was best known for THE KILLING, but showed up in over 229 movie and TV projects. We also get Ivan Triesault who plays Dr. Peter Ulof and does okay in the role I guess, but no one knocks this out of the park.
The score in this thing is bad, the cinematography is bad, everything is bad. I think if you are going to do a film like this you have to at least go with something original. Yes, the story is a bit different from most of what we get, but it’s not out of the box for the era. The concept though is a huge problem because it had already been done a few times and much better.
You would think with a cool title like THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN we would have gotten something actually “amazing”. Or at least I would think that. Maybe you were able to withstand the cool-sounding title and just skip this thing anyway. Unfortunately, none of that happens and overall this one just ends up being a disappointing waste of an hour.
This one gets at 2 out of 7. I wish I had something better to say, but this isn’t worth your time.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF MILLER CONSOLIDATED PICTURES (MCP) AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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