This is the first installment of Unconventionally Hot Monsters: a collection of essays about the monsters we love to tie in with our latest Zine.
Dr. Jack Griffin, covered in apparel from head to toe and face swathed in bandages, walks out of a snowstorm and into The Lion’s Head, a local inn. The drunkards at the bar, drinking, gossiping, and mimicking Chopin at a player piano, all fall silent. Everyone’s eye is drawn to this mystery person, an odd-man-out in an environment not used to strangers. The innkeepers aren’t even prepared for guests, not at this time of year. Griffin demands a room anyway. He comes to The Lion’s Head wanting a warm room, a place to sleep and work, and most importantly, his privacy.
As Griffin and one of the innkeepers, Mrs. Hall, head upstairs, the bar begins discussing the stranger in hushed whispers. Why is he bandaged up? Is he dangerous? Should the safe be locked up? Not long after Griffin has moved in and been brought dinner, Mrs. Hall catches sight of something strange. “Bandages!” she proclaims to the bar, “right up to the top of his head… looks like some kind of ‘orrible accident.” Mrs. Hall can’t wait even five seconds to put down Griffin’s wet clothing before spreading stories about the odd man upstairs.
Two scenes later, when a police officer and small mob have shown up following a fracas between the other innkeeper and Griffin, they are even more surprised. Laughing maniacally, Griffin throws his plastic nose at the crowd. Off come the glasses and gloves, the bandages and shirt. Below all of that… is nothing. Yet the laughter continues.
And reader, I felt as though I’d fallen in love.
So begins James Whale’s 1933 film The Invisible Man, the story of a man driven power-mad by a chemical that causes invisibility. Based on the 1897 H.G. Wells novel of the same name, the story of Jack Griffin is a classic horror conceit. If you were imperceptible to the world at large, power is almost too achievable. The longer Griffin is invisible, the more insane he becomes. Directed by James Whale in between Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man is one of the more influential Universal Horror films.
What sets The Invisible Man apart from contemporary films is the care it takes in depicting the monster. Providing a clear, downward trajectory for Dr. Griffin, we meet the character before we know what’s going wrong with him. By the end of the movie, his death feels both earned and tragic. Dr. Griffin is a good person who becomes insane due to a drug he didn’t know the side effects of. The only things that keep him even relatively stable during the film are his hope to become visible again, and his relationships with people from his life before his predicament, including his co-worker Dr. Kemp and fiancee Flora Cranley.
But what really makes The Invisible Man so effective is that Dr. Jack Griffin, the Invisible Man himself, is a true hunk. Unlike many of the other Universal Horror films (particularly those that James Whale did not direct), we are sad to see our title character taken down at the film’s end. Not least of all because we are left in love with a man we see on screen for less than 20 seconds total. So, let’s start with the man who made this whole film possible, with the rise of one Mr. Claude Rains.
“Everyone deserves the fate that’s coming to them…”
Nominated four times for an Academy Award by the end of his long and illustrious career, the 43-year-old Rains was plucked from a career on stage to play Dr. Griffin. In only his second movie ever and first lead or speaking role, Claude Rains was cast based only on the power of his voice. The apocryphal story is that James Whale overheard a failed screen test of Rains’ and decided to cast the unknown actor based solely on the sound of his speech. More likely is that Whale had seen Rains in a play ten years prior and knew the actor from that.
Regardless, Claude Rains agreed to play the role, not knowing until production began that his top-billed performance would only include less than a minute of actual screen time, during which he would be playing a corpse.
Fans of the actor from such films as Notorious and Casablanca know that Rains was the Golden Age of Hollywood equivalent of a DILF. Rains stole scenes from actors including Bogart, Davis, Stewart, Grant, Bergman, O’Toole, de Havilland, and many more. Sure he was a magnificent performer, but this short king charmed the pants off of everyone. Hollywood found the man irresistible for nearly forty years, who can blame me for finding Rains one handsome guy… even when invisible.
When in his bandages, Rains plays Griffin with true awareness of how to carry himself. In that opening scene, he slouches and hunches down to hide from others, keeping invisible even when trying to remain tangible. But as the film goes on and the effects of the invisibility formula take their toll, Griffin’s posture becomes more and more like a fascist general or a dictator, complete with wagging fingers and arms akimbo.
This is one factor in the sexiness of Dr. Jack Griffin. Rarely are you so focused on the body of an actor, unless it is to treat them as a sort of sexual object. More often, the camera draws attention to the face of an actor and the emotion therein. Yet, with an unseen face, we can only see how Claude Rains performs the physical characterization of our protagonist. We watch movement in space not to ogle six-pack abs, but because it’s all we can see of the man we are following.
Despite the ubiquity of the wrapped-in-bandages disguise of that opening act, Rains only spends roughly half of his screen time in that costume. Otherwise, he is just a disembodied voice. Once again, we should all be so lucky to have the voice of Claude Rains whispering in our ears. Before he first speaks, all we know about the figure in that opening scene is that he is bandaged. With his first line asking for a room and a fire, we hear what Rains is doing. The voice is powerful throughout but ranges from tender to furious to conniving based on Griffin’s feelings.
Six years before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ushered in animated film as a genre, we have an authentic voice-over performance coming from Claude Rains. Whether he is trying to sound seductive or scary, we know the intention. Rains has an amazing command over the tone of his voice, and without this Griffin would be useless as a character. One would argue that this movie couldn’t work with a less adept voice in the lead role, since we can’t rely on a pretty face for the dramatics.
Claude Rains’s voice isn’t why he became one of the most acclaimed supporting actors of his generation, but it certainly is one fact that made this character actor a star. With rugged good looks and a talent to match, Rains was destined for stardom. But with a voice alone that sounded like a perfectly tuned instrument, Dr. Jack Griffin becomes a hunk even without needing a face. By the time you see Rains’ actual visage at the movie’s end, you’re forgiven for fainting in shock. Much like Flora, we fall entirely under the spell. Can you blame her?
Rains can enchant the audience with only a few words, and we are under his spell entirely. And so, therefore, is Flora.
“Let’s fight this thing together”
Gloria Stuart, best known today for Titanic, is given one hell of a task in depicting Flora in The Invisible Man. How can you sell romantic chemistry with a character you share only a single scene with… and absolutely zero face-time? Oh, and what if that love interest is also a mass murderer and budding megalomaniac?
When Leigh Whannell and Elisabeth Moss told their spin on The Invisible Man in 2020, they made the film about a woman trying to fight against the gaslighting and obsessive nature of an abusive ex-husband. Similarly, Hollow Man in 2000 has Elisabeth Shue switch from the unrequited love interest of Kevin Bacon’s invisible man to become the secret protagonist of the film, running away from a man who is threatening to kill her.
James Whale and screenwriter R.C. Sherriff take this story in a far different direction, one that adds melancholy to a horror film. The bond between Flora and Griffin is not one where the main character terrifies his love interest into abandoning him. Instead, that relationship is the only thing that can actually calm Griffin down.
All due respect to Shue and Moss, but their invisible men started out their movies as abusive and angry misogynists. For Gloria Stuart, her invisible man was a good-hearted fiance before the events of the film took motion. In fact, the invisibility formula was only created to provide a nest egg for Griffin and Flora to marry with. Everything Griffin had done up until the events of the film was for the love of Flora, and even his momentary lapses into sanity are because of his feelings for her. Had this movie ended differently, I could totally imagine a sequel titled The Invisible Wife Guy.
Flora is a far more dynamic character than would often be found in horror movie love interests of the 1920s and ‘30s. Here, we have a woman made invisible by societal standards, trying to get a word in edgewise with her father to allow her to talk to Griffin. Her logic is that if Griffin is still at least somewhat sane, he will recognize her and try to return to the real world, sanity, and visibility. In a clever twist on the monster movie, Flora is correct.
The only scene where Flora and Griffin talk to each other marks the turning point in the film. Rains croons to Stuart that he knows he can reverse engineer the formula if given enough time, and Stuart looks at (the clothing wrapped around) Rains with reverence. Flora correctly realizes that she can help her fiance but, of course, her father has already doubted her. When the police arrive, Griffin officially gives up on morality and on Flora, believing her to have played a part in his potential arrest.
After this, Griffin isn’t a rescuable good man, but the true villain. The final scene of the film brings Flora to the bedside of a dying Griffin in his last moments of life and invisibility. His last wish was to see Flora, and he begs her forgiveness before passing away. For one final tender moment, we see Griffin as a man, brought back by love and a desire to atone. And with a parting word, Griffin dies and Claude Rains appears. Without the scenes with Flora, Griffin is a murderous psychopath. By giving a heart to the man beneath the bandages, we can see him as more than just a villain. He’s a man, leaving behind a woman he loves and a future he never gets to have.
After this, what sane person wouldn’t want to kiss Claude Rains, even with the blood on his hands? Sure, he killed a train full of people. But he did it for LOVE!!! And we really ought to give Gloria Stuart characters a break, considering she carried around a chunky necklace for 84 years after another movie’s love interest died. She needs a good man to stick around! A very hot, very good man.
“It’s cold outside when you have to go about naked…”
If Claude Rains is the heart and Gloria Stuart is the soul of The Invisible Man, then James Whale has to be the incredibly horny brains of the operation. The acclaimed and openly gay director has long been a source of fascination for queer horror film enthusiasts, and that is made ever more present in The Invisible Man. I mean, this is a film where your protagonist runs around naked for 50% of the film after all.
The subtext can best be found in the relationship between Griffin and his primary screen partner, his coworker Dr. Kemp. While there are no overt hints of romanticism between the two, their dynamic plays out like a long-suffering couple. Much like Igor to Frankenstein or Renfield to Dracula, Dr. Kemp becomes the voluntary (at first) ally of the Invisible Man. Yet, the language used isn’t one of a servant and a master but of equals. Griffin notably says: “I must have a partner, Kemp. A visible partner to help me in the little things. You’re my partner, Kemp.”
The romance with Flora is as important to The Invisible Man as the bromance with Kemp. However, only one of these relationships relies on constant sadomasochistic foreplay, wearing another man’s clothing, and generally treating a guy like your submissive servant boy. Griffin breaks into Kemp’s house while naked, wears Kemp’s clothing, and plans to have Kemp eventually join him in invisibility. Kemp has suspicions of Griffin, but still helps his friend. We know why Griffin needs Kemp, but we have no rationale for why Kemp needs Griffin. My argument is that if that’s not love, what is? If we can accept Mina being a love interest of Dracula, we’d better recognize my Universal Horror OTP (One True Parasitic-relationship).
After Kemp has called the Cranleys and the Cranleys bring the police, Griffin loses all trust in his friend. A scornful Griffin notes, “I put my trust in Kemp,” calling Kemp and he “bosom friends.” It’s the end of a relationship, and one of the last times we ever even see Griffin attempting to restore his human form. Little does Griffin realize that the next day will bring about both Kemp’s death as well as his own. It’s tragic, sure. But it’s also predictable. Besides, don’t we all love it when a murderous man and his opponent/sidekick/lover die on a cliff together? Isn’t that what made Hannibal such a smash?
What makes Dr. Jack Griffin sexy isn’t about appearance, it’s about attraction and relating to the man beneath the monster. We fall in love with Claude Rains, but we feel for Griffin as he is persecuted by a community for looking different; we feel for Kemp as he gives up his BFF/FWB to the police in fear of what Griffin has become; we feel for Clara as she watches the man she loves die in her arms. The Invisible Man isn’t a horror movie; it’s a tragedy.
Claude Rains is sexy and has a very attractive voice, so Dr. Griffin is sexy with an attractive voice as well. But James Whale provided the queer subtext that made my eyes open as a younger man, and the textual romance of the film gives this monster a heart of gold. My cold heart was always going to be melted by this nudist murderer.
