There was no kidding around with the Fiend Without A Face (MLC Producers Associates Ltd., 1958), a British effort set around a U-S/Canadian Air Force facility where people’s brains and spinal cords are being sucked out by an unseen enemy. These "mental vampires," the result of psychic and atomic energy, resemble brains and spinal cords themselves when visible.

Around that time, the British imported a series of "Invisible Man" episodes (see last month’s issue) to CBS Television in the United States. Un-credited actors Johnny Scripps and Tim Turner (as the voice) played the title role. A scientist working with the principles that govern the refraction of light accidentally renders himself invisible. What else could he do in the Fifties but go to work for our friends, the government? Luckily the secret was kept from the folks in Congress.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows! And in the 1958 Republic feature Invisible Avenger, the popular radio character enjoyed one of several screen incarnations. In this one, Lamont Cranston (Richard Derr) uses his power to cloud men’s minds and seem invisible to thwart a plot to assassinate a Latin American dignitary. Some flavorful New Orleans atmosphere and photography by co-director James Wong Howe help this otherwise routine outing.

Further down into the bargain basement would appear (or disappear) The Amazing Transparent Man (American International/Miller Consolidated, 1960), courtesy of low-budget miracle director Edgar G. Ulmer years after such gems as The Black Cat (1934), Bluebeard (1944) and The Man From Planet X (1951).

A safecracker (Douglas Kennedy) is sprung from prison by a renegade Major (James Griffith) whose captive scientist (Ivan Triesault) uses radiation to render the escapee invisible. They steal more special nuclear material as part of the Major’s plan to build his own invisible army (hardly original by this time).

The Amazing Transparent Man has taken a few hits, but it’s not all that bad. Ulmer does what he can with the miniscule money allotment and gives us some noir-type characters (a tough guy/cowardly, sadistic bad guy/tough gal triangle) and themes of loyalty and betrayal along with the required visual tricks. A ludicrous atomic explosion ending that blows up half the county, followed by a dash of sermonizing directed at the audience, were topical and typical for the time.

By then, we were about to enter the secret agent craze initiated by Bond… James Bond. While 007 may not have tangled with invisible opponents, others would utilize the process to advance the cause of super-villainy and heroics. From Germany, The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (1962) would pit the mad criminal genius (Wolfgang Preiss) against lawmen (including former Tarzan Lex Barker) in a plot to rule the world with invisible soldiers (again?). Good pacing and stylish moments make this another fun entry in the Mabuse series of films. The following year Germany gave us The Invisible Terror, another blend of mad science, gangsters and murder.

The Invisible Agent formula kicked in again with the 1966 spy spoof Matchless, starring Patrick O’Neal as a good guy spy in possession of a ring with a drug that enables him to dematerialize once every ten hours.

From Argentina with love, The Invisible Man Attacks (1967), and back in the States, love was in full bloom with Henry’s Night In, a 1969 bit of sexploitation about a henpecked husband who tumbles onto invisibility and then proceeds to tumble with area hotties.

Just one episode before TV’s Batman evaporated, the series offered "The Entrancing Dr. Cassandra." The villainess (Ida Lupino) and her mate (real-life husband Howard Duff) sprung Gotham City’s top criminals out of the pen and supplied them with alchemical pills that would allow them to blend in with any background to assist in their nefarious schemes.

They were all rounded up in short order when Batman doused the lights and punched out the villains. How he, Robin and Batgirl avoided bashing each other in the dark is anybody’s guess.

Back on the big screen, the 1970’s saw the awful Dr. Orloff (Howard Vernon) back in business with Dr. Orloff’s Invisible Horror (1971), a French/Spanish co-production with the doc’s invisible ape-man-monster wreaking havoc and putting the pinch on Orloff’s daughter.

In a lighter vein was Now You See Him, Now You Don’t, Disney’s 1972 sequel to The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969). Young Kurt Russell was back as the college genius whose latest concoction makes things and people disappear, to the consternation of the dean (McHale’s Navy’s Joe Flynn) and the mob chief (Cesar Romero).

In the 1975 NBC-TV series The Invisible Man David McCallum (formerly one of TV’s men from U.N.C.L.E.) played an out of sight, crime-fighting scientist who destroyed his formula when he found out the government (by this time, and since Watergate, the bad guys in just about everything) planned to use it for (surprise!) military purposes. A realistic facemask and hands (actually McCallum’s real face and hands) allowed him to appear visible.

The series remained visible for just over four months, at which time the network went ahead with another TV movie and subsequent series, The Gemini Man starring Ben Murphy as a man who survives an accident that makes him invisible. A special watch lets him fade in at will, and he can only fade out for short periods of time or he’ll die. Up against Welcome Back, Kotter, Barney Miller, and The Waltons, this series died after about one month. An edited version of two episodes entitled Riding With Death later became lampoon fodder for the folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000.

What happens when a mental patient concentrates hard enough to disappear from his cell? He becomes The Invisible Strangler in this 1976 misfire originally titled The Astral Factor that spent several years on the shelf. The screenplay was by Arthur C. Pierce whose credits include Women Of The Prehistoric Planet and The Navy Versus The Night Monsters.

Television played the formula for laughs again with The Invisible Woman (1983) co-produced by Gilligan’s Island creator Sherwood Schwartz and starring Gilligan himself, Bob Denver along with comedy veterans Harvey Korman, George Gobel, and Garrett Morris.

The laughs are invisible, as in non-existent, with Steve Guttenberg as The Man Who Wasn’t There (Paramount, 1983) a 3-D washout that’s dull in any dimension, while the Soviets got serious with The Invisible Man the following year, as did the British with a six-part TV series.

One of several pleasures in the movies-on-TV parody Amazon Women On The Moon (Universal, 1987) was the segment called "Son of the Invisible Man." Shot in black and white, the mini-feature stars Ed Begley Jr. as a man who only thinks he’s invisible. When he decides to mystify the patrons at a local pub, he doffs his clothes, then buck-naked and in full view of the customers he begins the routine of moving objects around. The onlookers humor him until the white jackets arrive to take him away.

Nudity and peek-a-boo sex scenes were practically essential to Eighties movie comedies, and naturally most any guy who could turn invisible wouldn’t miss a chance to check out cheerleaders in the showers. The Invisible Kid (Elysian Pictures, 1987) kept the ball rolling in a PG sort of way with a teenage scientist (Jay Underwood) inventing a gooey substance which, when combined with pigeon droppings made him invisible. How good was the movie? Ask the pigeons...if you dare.

The Invisible Maniac (1990) earned its R rating with more nudity and a dozen or so killings thrown in, with most of the women having their blouses torn off first. Little seems to have been spent on script, effects or actors who play the kind of characters you actually want to see killed by the unseen madman with the annoying laugh. In spite of a funny, though sexist closing gag, the less time spent on the movie by viewers, the better.

Horror specialist John Carpenter cast comedy star Chevy Chase in Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (Warners, 1992), a half-serious/half-funny movie that touches on some issues alluded to by Claude Rains nearly 60 years earlier. What happens to food and smoke that goes into the body? Here you get your answers as stock analyst Nick Halloway (Chevy), in the wrong place at the wrong time, becomes you-know-what and is chased by you-know-who…the C.I.A., represented by corrupt operative Sam Neill.

Though unfavorably compared to H. F. Saint’s novel, the movie stands okay on its own. Several inventive touches include a partially invisible building and Chase later having to find his invisible jacket and shoes. What’s more, we see Chase, while he himself and the other characters don’t.

Making someone think you’re invisible really amounts to being invisible, and that skill was again a major weapon of The Shadow (Universal, 1994), the most elaborate, exciting and stylish film exploits of the classic radio hero, played here by Alec Baldwin.

In the British TV movie The Vanishing Man (1996) an innocent man (Neil Morrissey) is imprisoned and participates in experiments that transform him into the title character. A couple years later The Vanishing Man became a brief TV series.

Most recently, big budget director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers) helmed a no-holds-barred attempt to re-invent the Wells formula with Hollow Man (Columbia, 2000). The problem is, the scientist (Kevin Bacon) is played as a jerk to begin with. As he becomes more demented and deadly, there’s no body to root for.

The other characters are basically unsympathetic disposable idiots, and for the most part, disposed of as the mad Bacon runs the gamut of murder, rape and other brutalities. As the special effects are piled on, he ultimately becomes the now-standard and nearly unstoppable killing machine in the Terminator/ Freddy Krueger mold. Hopefully, we’ll not see his like again.

Comparatively viewer-friendly around that time was the Sci-Fi Channel’s The Invisible Man series which ended its run recently. The streetwise Darien Fawkes (Vincent Vintresca) is bailed out of jail, only to have a quicksilver gland implanted in his head, which gives him the power of concealment, but at the possible cost of his sanity. The madness is curtailed by a counteragent supplied by a covert government agency in return for Darien’s assistance. While the show juggled elements of many previous screen treatments, its creators kept the series hip and fresh. Not an easy thing to do in an age where you’d swear everything’s been done.

Earth folks aren’t the only ones who’ve mastered the science of invisibility. Evil minded aliens have pulled this trick more than a few times in movies ranging from Edward L. Cahn’s Invisible Invaders (Premium Pictures, 1959) to John McTiernan’s Predator (Twentieth Century Fox, 1987). In the former, the title creatures inhabit the bodies of the resurrected dead, including blown-up scientist John Carradine. In the 50’s, who better to battle these unseen antagonists than the late great John Agar?

In the latter film, the chore of taking on a cleverly camouflaged intergalactic big game hunter would fall to a certain Mr. Schwarzenegger. Guess which picture had the bigger budget. Predator had a sequel three years later, moving from the jungle to the big city, and minus Arnold.