Film

The Invisible Man Returns

Name: The Invisible Man Returns
Genre: Horror, Science Fiction
Released: 1940
Cast: Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, Nan Grey, John Sutton, Cecil Kellaway

A 1940 sequel that actually improves on its predecessor. An innocent man uses an invisibility serum to escape prison and clear his name, but the drug slowly unravels his mind. It's a taut thriller with genuine atmosphere, Vincent Price at his theatrical best, and surprisingly thoughtful about power and paranoia. For fans of classic horror who want something leaner than the Universal monsters usually are.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy old-fashioned Universal horror where the fun lies in clever trickery, a wrongly accused man's scheming, and the witty chill of Vincent Price's voice drifting through empty rooms.

Skip it if you need the slick effects and brisk pacing of modern thrillers, since this 1940 sequel is stagey, talky and built on static dialogue scenes more than visual spectacle.

What it asks of you: Around eighty minutes and patient with its setup, it moves at a leisurely pace through courtroom and drawing-room talk before the mischief properly begins, then turns playful rather than grim.

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If you liked this

The Invisible Man2020

The original that started it all, and it holds up remarkably. James Whale's direction is inventive, the special effects are stunning for 1936, and the invisible man's megalomania is genuinely chilling and tragic.

But It's a talkie from the 1930s with pacing that feels deliberate rather than urgent, and some of the dialogue delivery will feel theatrical to modern ears.

The Wolf Man1941

Lon Chaney Jr. as a man cursed with lycanthropy, made with the same Universal care and atmosphere. It's genuinely melancholy—a horror film about being trapped by something you can't control, with real pathos under the monster suit.

But The plot is fairly straightforward monster-movie stuff, and the pacing creaks in the middle. Some of the makeup doesn't look as good as the film seems to think it does.

The Picture of Dorian Gray1945

A man's portrait ages while he stays forever young, but the corruption shows on canvas instead of his face. It's about vanity, power, and the cost of immortality—serious and visually stunning, with George Sanders as a wonderfully poisonous tempter.

But It's dialogue-heavy and philosophical rather than thrilling. If you want movement and shocks rather than ideas and atmosphere, it'll feel slow.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Invisible Man Returns

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Hollow Man2000

Both films explore invisibility as a corruption of character—the power to act without consequence slowly reveals and then warps who a man really is underneath.

A modern take on the invisible man premise, but it's about what invisibility does to a man's conscience when no one can see what he's doing. It's genuinely disturbing in ways the 1940 film only hints at, with spectacular and unsettling body-horror effects.

But It's a 2000 action-thriller with CGI that's occasionally dated, and it commits fully to exploitation rather than psychological depth. The sexual violence is intense and gratuitous.

Creature from the Black Lagoon1954

A genuinely eerie monster movie about an expedition into the Amazon that awakens something ancient. The creature design is iconic, the underwater sequences are hypnotic, and it captures something primordial that most monster films miss.

But The human characters are pretty thin, and the plot is exactly what you'd expect. The 3D gimmick it was shot for doesn't add much when you're watching flat.

Night of the Living Dead1968

A portmanteau horror film—five different ghost stories nested inside each other. British, sophisticated, and genuinely unsettling. The ventriloquist dummy sequence alone is worth the price of admission, and the ending is properly disturbing.

But Anthology films are uneven by design, and the middle stories drag. Some of the horror is more genteel than scary.

The Thing from Another World1951

A shape-shifting alien terrorizes a research station in the Arctic. It's tense, well-acted, and moves like a thriller rather than a typical monster film. The paranoia and claustrophobia still work brilliantly.

But The alien suit is more man-in-costume than convincing creature. The science-fiction logic is flimsy, and the gender politics are very 1951.

The Mummy1932

Boris Karloff as an Egyptian priest resurrected in the modern world, driven by forbidden love and ancient curses. It's slower and more eerie than action-horror, with real atmosphere and a strange kind of pathos.

But There's barely any plot—it's mostly atmosphere and mood, which means long stretches where not much happens. The makeup effects are iconic but clearly theatrical.

The Old Dark House1932

James Whale again, this time with a group trapped in a creepy mansion during a storm. It's genuinely weird and funny without undermining the tension, and Boris Karloff is unforgettable as the hulking family servant.

But It's more of a dark comedy than outright horror, so if you're looking for scares you'll be disappointed. The tone jumps around and some jokes will seem dated.

The Black Cat1934

Karloff and Bela Lugosi in a twisted game of cat-and-mouse in a modern architectural nightmare. It's actually a loose, strange reimagining of Poe, less interested in plot than in pure unease and visual dread.

But The plot doesn't really make sense and the ending is abrupt. If you need a coherent story, you'll be frustrated. Some viewers find it too avant-garde for its own good.

Carnival of Souls1962

Like The Invisible Man Returns, it's about a protagonist slowly realizing something is catastrophically wrong with their own mind and reality, with paranoia mounting as the boundaries dissolve.

A woman escapes a car crash and finds herself haunted by a phantom carnival and the corpses that seem to follow her. It's a low-budget miracle: hypnotic, eerie, dreamlike, and genuinely strange. Made for almost nothing, it's worth far more.

But The acting is amateurish and the pacing is glacial by modern standards. If you need plot momentum and professional performances, this will feel like an endurance test.

The Seventh Seal1957

Both films are about men confronted with forces beyond their control that force them to reckon with who they actually are; Price's invisible man and Bergman's knight are both trapped by their circumstances and their own nature.

Bergman's masterpiece about a knight playing chess with Death itself during the Black Plague. It's philosophical and haunting, wrestles with faith and meaning in the face of mortality, and is visually perfect. Yes, it's a serious film—it's also completely gripping.

But It's subtitled, it's slow, it's deeply serious, and it's fundamentally about ideas rather than plot. If you want entertainment rather than art, this will feel like homework.