With the US release of Blumhouse’s THE INVISIBLE MAN this week, we’re going to take a look at films with characters that are hard to see. For this is…
Every self-respecting film fan (or at least those that tell themselves they’re self-respecting but DEEP DOWN THEY KNOW THE TRUTH) has a few movies that they fondly remember from childhood, but haven’t gotten a chance to see since. Sometimes it’s because they can only remember snippets—a guy with a big mustache is in it, and he rides a horse through a fence that lets loose all the chickens or something—but even if you can decipher what the film was, you still may have a tough time finding it. It was basically invisible to the cultural lexicon of the modern age.
One of my “holy grails” of childhood wasn’t just invisible culturally, it was outright about invisibility. I had the fondest of memories of a 1983 made-for-television movie called THE INVISIBLE WOMAN starring Bob Denver (not, sadly, as the title character), released, no doubt, to cash in on the upcoming invisibility-based mega-hit THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE.
But after its February 1983 airing, I couldn’t track it down at all, even on the greyest of grey market TV-movie bootleggers. (The things I did in those sordid alleys just to get a copy of THE SPELL just to have it show up on Blu-ray. It was like an O. Henry story.) Unlike a lot of telemovies of the era, it was never released to VHS, and it never seemed to get rerun on the late night channels that would air such random entertainment.
On April 5, 2019, 36 years after its original airing and possibly the last time it was shown to human eyes, all of this changed. An enterprising soul named “CartBoyProductions2,” having had the wherewithal and cougar-like instincts to pick up a copy of the film, taped off of a Knoxville NBC affiliate’s airing, ripped the movie and placed it on YouTube, for the masses to enjoy.
At last, my curiosity could be sated! Would THE INVISIBLE WOMAN be as good when I watched it through 45-year-old eyes as it had been through the eyes of an eight-year-old?
Dear reader, I would love to report that my critical instincts in the area of cinema were finely honed by the time I’d reached eight years, and that the intervening decades simply underscored the correctness of all of my opinions, be they related to television movies or Rubik, The Amazing Cube. However, I am duty-bound as a writer for the esteemed critical journal The Daily Grindhouse to not deceive you. I may have been wrong about the mind-blowing hilariousness of THE INVISIBLE WOMAN.
Produced and co-written (with his son) by Sherwood Schwartz, the sitcom mogul behind Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, and directed by Alan J. Levi (a prolific TV director who’d also helmed the Frankie Avalon slasher BLOOD SONG), THE INVISIBLE WOMAN stars ex-Island refugee Bob Denver (at least I was right about that) as Dr. Dudley Plunkett, a scientist who does…science things with chimps. (It’s a little vague.) One of his prized chimps, Chuck, fiddles with a glass jar of some random liquid and drinks a little, and then vanishes completely, much to Plunkett’s confusion.
I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “This movie is two minutes in and already has an invisible chimp! WHY IS THIS NOT CALLED THE INVISIBLE CHIMP? Think of the shenanigans that an invisible chimp could get into! Banana peels everywhere! Horseplay in the dean’s office! The possibilities are endless!”
It is, then, tragic that the movie decides to not follow the monkeymania that was at play at the time. (Keep in mind the same year had a sitcom starring a talking orangutan who became a political advisor) No, instead of following the chimp on all sorts of invisible chimp antics, the film cuts to Dr. Plunkett’s niece Sandy, played by Alexa Hamilton (DEATH SPA). Plunkett talks Sandy into coming over, tempting her with a story about an invisible chimp (which is fair!) only to have her, oops, touch the same liquid that Chuck had, causing her to turn invisible as well. How will Dr. Gilligan Plunkett get out of this one?
Complicating matters are a series of local art heists that Sandy is trying to investigate, her relationship with a local cop, and Plunkett’s diminishing reputation with the school that’s financing him. Oh, plus there’s an invisible chimp on the loose, but we don’t get nearly enough of that.
As Gilligan’s Island had re-established itself in a series of made-for-TV movies that also used a laugh track much like its original incarnation, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN tries the same tactic with…awkward results. The laugh track comes and goes randomly, with actual jokes and sight gags (predictably lame as they are) passing by while lines that don’t have any notable humor in them at all get the chuckle treatment.
It’s distracting, especially in a feature-length film where the likes of Harvey Korman (as an art thief) and Garrett Morris (as a cop) get no reaction while goofy invisible stripteases with an anguished Sandy moaning get laughs galore. Compounded with a score that sounds like Devo reimagining the music for Soap, the effect is an odd one that, while never funny, is at least memorable.
Interestingly, the film quickly finds a way to get Sandy visible via make-up, sunglasses and a wig that, of course, look totally convincing and prevent the film from having to spend too much money on green screen effects. Not that we don’t get our fair share of invisibility as Sandy goes undercover in a sauna (run by Jake Steinfeld with a creepy mustache) and tries to stop the aforementioned art thievery (perpetrated by Jonathan Banks and Art LaFleur), but the open-ended finale clearly sets this up as the potential to launch a series, in which a reporter that can turn invisible when she’s naked and her zany eclectic scientist uncle solve mysteries.
The fact that it didn’t become one is proof that even the early ‘80s had some standards. (I repeat: The same year had a political sitcom starring an orangutan.)
Beyond the star power already named, there’s Richard Sanders as a janitor, Ron Palillo as Sandy’s co-worker, David Doyle as her boss, and Toys’r’Us Kid Scott Nemes (now a producer on HANNA and 2006’s BLACK CHRISTMAS) as an annoying neighbor kid. The Director of Photography on this was Dean Cundey, who’d already been working on the likes of John Carpenter films and HALLOWEEN III and seems to be slumming it here. But hey, he does a nice job convincing us that an invisible person is actually holding stuff, to the finest of 1983 technology!
There’s probably a certain amount of odd fetishism to be had by a few moments, especially those who’ve always needed to see an invisible person in the bath, drenched in mud or putting on pantyhose, and the cast certainly sells the premise as best as it can. But it’s not surprising that THE INVISIBLE WOMAN has been lost to the threads of time—it’s a feature-length gimmicky sitcom, and not a good one at that.
Still, it does feature plenty of invisible nonsense (though not enough chimps) and the version on YouTube has all of the original commercials, so you can relive the excitement of watching this in its original airing alongside trailers for LOVESICK, Sally Kellerman shilling for Revlon, and ads for something called Golden Flake Cheese Curls.
Thank you, dear CartBoyProductions2, for scratching the much-needed itch. Now find me a copy of PLAYING WITH FIRE, the 1985 made-for-TV film where Gary Coleman plays an arsonist.
- JIM WYNORSKI RETURNS WITH THE CREATURE FEATURE ‘GILA’ - May 1, 2014
Tags: 1980s, 1983, Art LaFleur, Bob Denver, David Doyle, Dean Cundey, Garrett Morris, Harvey Korman, Jonathan Banks, made-for-television movies, NBC, Richard Sanders, Ron Palillo, Scott Nemes, Sherwood Schwartz, The Invisible Woman
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