Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie''s plot.
1941’s THE INVISIBLE GHOST is a movie that turned out to be its own worst enemy. While the performances are adequate and the script is passable (very good in some places), it’s the plot that drags the movie down.
Charles Kessler (Bela Lugosi) is a man in mourning. Several years ago, his wife ran off with another man. Now he seems to live a normal life, but every year on their anniversary, he has dinner, conversation, and long walks with a wife that isn’t there.
His daughter Virginia (Polly Ann Young who bares such an uncanny resemblance to Joan Cusack it’s downright distracting) has learned to live with it while her fiancee Ralph (John McGuire), who is just learning about Kessler’s method of dealing with his loss, tries not to pass judgment. The butler, Evans (Clarence Muse), keeps his mouth shut and does his job.
Kessler, however, seems to have some kind of link with his departed wife, who isn’t really dead, but is being kept in what looks like a room under the garage by Kessler’s gardener Jules. Mrs. Kessler and her lover were in a car accident. The man was killed, but Mrs. Kessler survived, albeit somewhat damaged. She has amnesia, and is a little soft in the head now. Jules feeds her and assures her that once she’s better he’ll take her home to her family. But every so often, she sneaks out of the underground room and stands outside the windows of the Kessler house. At these times, Charles, seeing her outside and believing it to be her ghost, goes into a trance and kills someone. First it’s the maid, Cecile. Events transpire that reveal Cecile and Ralph shared a past (and that while she wasn’t done with him, he wasn’t interested in her, going so far as to tell her nothing would stand in the way of his happiness with Virginia--not even her) and Ralph is convicted and executed for her murder.
When Ralph’s twin brother Paul shows up, the investigation for the murderer gets even more heated. Jules is killed, and Evans and Virginia narrowly escape the same fate before the truth is revealed and a shocked and confused Kessler is taken away.
THE INVISIBLE GHOST isn’t a great movie by any means, but it does have a certain “classic horror” charm. Bela Lugosi gives it his all, but still he doesn’t seem to be acting so much as reciting his lines and looking confused. Evans injects some comic relief while Polly Ann Young and John McGuire play the straight characters to balance Kessler and Evans. The performances here are decent enough for the most part, but they’re not the problem. The thing that most plagues THE INVISIBLE GHOST is, as I said, a plot that makes no sense at all.
In two or three scenes, we see Kessler sitting in his room, reading a book and minding his own business when all of the sudden he gets up, looks out the window, and sees his wife standing outside on the lawn, looking up at him. How did he know she was there at that moment? I don’t know, it’s never explained nor questioned how it is he always knows just when she’s outside. Do they share a psychic bond, or is it just convenient storytelling? And Jules, the man taking care of Mrs. Kessler, doesn’t live under the garage with her, he lives off-site with his wife. So how is it no one, in the years since she’s vanished, has stumbled across this room and the missing Mrs. Kessler? Again, convenient storytelling.
Then there’s the murders. When Kessler goes into Cecile’s room to kill her, we see it from Cecile’s POV and, as far as we can tell, he does nothing more than toss his robe over her face. This is after taking about two minutes to get in the door, smile menacingly at her, slowly take off his robe, and stumble to the bed. I think if she’d tried, she could have made it out of the room with time to spare. When Kessler kills Jules, we see it in shadow against the wall and the method is made a little more clear; Kessler is tossing his robe over their heads and strangling them. It’s still silly.
Lugosi’s “trances” are also laughable. The movie is only 66 minutes long and I’d say a good 10 of those are Kessler’s awkward stumbling about the house in search of a victim. Audiences must have been suckers for the Lugosi stare in 1941.
I can forgive the absent character development and mundane performances, as long as a movie makes sense and tells an interesting story. THE INVISIBLE GHOST does neither and leads me to believe that in the 40s moviemakers were just cranking these things out one after another and didn’t worry much about making sure the audience knew what was going on, or that their plots were put together in a coherent way. Just a bunch of stuff and nonsense thrown together, starring BELA LUGOSI!!! Unfortunately, big name stars don’t always automatically equal cinematic gold. Sometimes you have to make sure there’s really a movie behind that big name. THE INVISIBLE GHOST = horror classic? I’ll allow that it’s horror, tenuous as that string may be (I‘d vote more for drama than horror), but I don’t think anyone could honestly classify this thing a classic.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.