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Tomei Ningen Arawaru
The Invisible Man Appears
The Transparent Man
Japan 1949
produced by
Hisashi Okuda (planner) for Daiei
directed by Shinsei Adachi, Shigehiro Fukushima
starring Chizuru Kitagawa, Takiko Mizunoe, Daijiro Natsukawa, Mitsusaburo Ramon, Ryunosuke Tsukigata, Shosaku Sugiyama, Kanji Koshiba, Kichijiro Ueda, Hiroshi Ueda, Shozo Nanbu, Shinobu Araki, Saburo Date, Tominosuke Hayama, Jun Fujikawa, Soji Shibata, Takeo Yano, Kazue Tamaki, Takehiro Yuasa, Tsuneo Katagiri, Akira Shimizu, Michio Yuri, Akira Shiga, Kyo Takigawa, Saburo Goda, Tomoya Yamada, Teruko Omi, Asako Takahara, Namiko Rokujo, Yoko Ueno, Hinako Fujihara, Nobuko Shiraki
story by Akimitsu Takagi, screenplay by Nobuo Adachi, music by Goro Nishi, special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya
Daiei's Invisible Man
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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Professor Nakazato (Ryunosuke Tsukigata) has developed a serum to
render creatures invisible, something which might even work on humans, but
is of yet untested - and then all of a sudden he disappears. A letter to
his family says he needs to conduct further experiments on the serum on
his own, but his daughter Machiko (Chizuru Kitagawa), his business partner
Kawabe (Shosaku Sugiyama), and his assistants Segi (Daijiro Natsukawa) and
Kurokawa (Kanji Koshiba), who are fighting for Machiko's hand in marriage,
start to worry. Then a fully bandaged man shows up at a jeweller and
identifies himself as professor Nakazato. He tries to get the jeweller to
sell him a diamond necklace called Tears of Amour, and upon
learning it's not even in the jeweller's possession, he creates havoc,
takes off his clothes and bandages, and turns out to be the invisible man.
From now on, the invisible man leaves no stone unturned to find the
necklace, who actually is in the possession of Machiko's best friend
Ryuko, but with little success. Because the invisile man has identified
himself as professor Nakazato, the police questions family and associates,
even if the clues left behind were to obvious to be true. It's found out
that the professor's assistant Kurokawa has gone missing as well, and
eventually he pays a visit to Segi - and it turns out he's the invisible
man, but he's not working on his own, he claims the professor has tricked
him into taking the serum, and has him do his bidding should he ever want
to be turned visible again. Thing is, invisibility also turns Kurokawa
slowly insane. Thing is, Kurokawa was only tricked into believing he acts
on the professor's orders, it's actually somebody else who's behind it
all, somebody who might be a wolf in sheep's clothing ... A
very early example of Japanese special effects cinema, this is a rather
fun blend of science fiction and crime drama, in approach not at all like Universal's
Invisible Man-series from only a few years earlier, telling a
lively yarn that might suffer a bit from being a bit too contrived, but
it's well-enough paced with hardly a dull moment, to entertain throughout,
and the effects-work really lives up to the task. Now historically
speaking, this movie's a bit of a milestone as it's considered as one of
Japan's earliest science fiction movies, but on a pure quality level, it's
hardly a masterpiece - but a really enjoyable sci-fi romp nevertheless.
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