Director Edgar Ulmer is responsible for one of my favorite movies of
all time –THE BLACK CAT (1934) – and scattered around his list of credits you
will find several other excellent pictures well worth your attention. His film
noir DETOUR (1945) is a classic; the
1944 BLUEBEARD is fascinating; THE MAN FROM PLANET X (1951) is wonderful; and MURDER
IS MY BEAT (1955) is quite entertaining. Sadly, for me, THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN (1960)
is not one of Ulmer's works I can recommend. Spurred on by a commenter to this
blog and the fact that TCM recently ran the film I decided to revisit the movie
the other night. My memories were that it wasn’t very good and I have to
report that I still feel the same way.
The movie is barely feature length clocking in at 58 minutes
but DAMN- you feel each and every one of those increments of sixty seconds
crawl by. The film is best described as a combination of film noir crime
elements and mad scientist tropes but that makes it sound much more interesting
that it is. Hell - just saying that a scientist creates an invisibility ray
that is used to make a professional safe-cracker's job easier makes the film sound
like a surefire blast but the resulting movie is just dull. Deadly dull! Tedious.
Monotonous. Lifeless even. THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN is the filmic equivalent
of watching paint dry or insects slowly die as the weather gets cold. I need
never see this sleep inducing cinematic bog again. Ugh!
2 comments:
Sorry you didn't enjoy it. I thought it was alright. I guess I've been desensitized from sitting through other movies that it didn't bother me.
No, no! It's great that there are people out there that enjoy this one- I'm just not one of them. Trust me- the list of movies i love that others loathe is far too long to enumerate. The saddest thing is I have a vintage lobby card rom this movie and I can't remember how or why I picked it up!!
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