Posts from the ‘1936’ Category

The Invisible Ray

From my experience, not a lot of people have seen or are aware of The Invisible Ray. This film was one of Universal’s last horror films from its “golden age” and is said to be an all-around very unusual film for the company. The premise, about backfiring research and a mad scientist, seems ridiculously out-of-place at times. Most of the performers for the film were on loan from either RKO or MGM. And, perhaps most “shocking” of all, Bela Lugosi plays the heroic character. My stars! Regardless of all of this supposed strangeness behind the existence of The Invisible Ray, it’s a highly entertaining lark but not a very good film.

The star here is the legendary Boris Karloff. He plays Hungarian scientist Dr. Janos Rukh. Rukh is one of these mad scientist archetypes that float around, heavily involved into his work and shoving other people away in the process. Rukh is married, somehow, to a beautiful woman (Frances Drake). She’s ridiculously young and we wonder how in the sweet blue she would up with a guy like Rukh. Still, there she is. Anywho, Rukh lives in a big stormy castle up in the Carpathian Mountains, where he works tirelessly on projects and research at the behest of his blind mother (Violet Kemble Cooper). Rukh’s reputation as a scientist is a little off and to the left, as he seems rather full of it and is widely regarded to be a little bit…..well, mad. To this equation, we add a sudden dinner party at which Rukh is dying to display his latest find to his dinner guests. Among the dinner guests are two of Rukh’s sharpest critics, Sir Francis Stevens (Walter Kingsford) and Dr. Benet (Bela Lugosi). Also, a young dashing cartographer named Ronald Drake (Frank Lawton) tags along for the ride.

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