Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet the Invisible Man

Bud and Lou have just graduated from detective school. Their first client comes through the door: Tommy Nelson is a boxer accused of killing his manager. He is in fact innocent. He has taken refuge in a scientist's house and found a serum there; a substance that makes whoever drinks it invisible. When the police arrive he drinks it. Now he is invisible and with two novice detectives. The plan is this: Lou will enter the ring as a boxer, Tommy will fight in his place while invisible, and that way they will reach the real culprit. Charles Lamont directs. Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Nancy Guild and Arthur Franz are in the cast. The film is one link in the series of meetings Universal arranged for the pair; in the same years they also met characters such as Frankenstein and the Mummy. The invisibility effects were prepared by John Fulton, continuing a technique developed in the thirties. The boxing match is at the centre and is where the effects are used most heavily. The narrative keeps the madness of the classic invisible man story; the serum unsettles the mind of whoever takes it. It runs short and the narrative lingers nowhere. Its limit is structure; the plot is weak and the jokes rest on the pair's stage routines. Another limit is register; there is almost no horror and the mixture of genres is not balanced. Who it is for: viewers who like classic American comedy and Universal monster films. Who it is not for: the humour belongs to its period, the story is thin, and an expectation of horror is not met.