The Invisible Ray (1936)

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely the worst movie.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

"The Invisible Ray" is a well crafted horror/sci fi film that features Boris Karloff in a new early Mad Scientist role and he plays it well. Bela Lugosi is cast against type as the good and honest character who attempts to help Karloff when his experiments go badly wrong (don't they always?)The subplot is a tiresome waste of time and should have been left out of the screenplay.The special effects for 1936 are very good.

Boris Karloff, billed only as Karloff in capital letters, plays a mad scientist who stumbles onto a meteoric substance that boasts incredible healing powers. Unfortunately, this radium X poisons our protagonist so he has to inject himself with a counteractive agent to survive the stuff. Dr. Felix Benet (Bela Lugosi of "Dracula") heralds Dr. Janos Rukh's discovery, and they embark on an expedition to Africa to find the meteorite. The scenes before this revelation are very strange. Dr. Rukh (Karloff) is fascinated by the nebula in Andromeda. He sets out to capture a ray from this nebula and have it transferred electronically to the projector in his laboratory at Carpathia. They would recreate what was recorded on that beam of lights. Initially, the scientific society is dubious about Rukh's claims. Sir Francis observes that the theory of reproducing vibrations from the past is not new. Rukh is able to capture an occurrence that took place millions of years ago. Rukh, his wife, Sir Francis, and Dr. Benet go on expedition to Africa. Not long afterward, Rukh leaves the main expedition and finds the meteorite. He harnesses its power to keep his superstitious workers in line. He demonstrates the power of his radium X device and the tribesmen become his hostages. Rukh can aim the radium gun and use it to kill. Later, in Paris, other members of the expedition have revealed their invaluable find in Africa. At the same time, Rukh's wife Diane (Francis Drake) wants to leave her husband for young Ronald Drake (Frank Lawton), and eventually she does that. Although he has won the Nobel Prize, Rukh is furious when Dr. Benet starts to use the radium light beam. Like Rukh, who cured his mother's blindness, Benet has been curing a lot of people, too. Rukh uses his destructive gun to blast cement statues on a church building where Ronald and Diane exchanged vows. In Rukh's warped mind, each of the six statues on the church building represented Rukh's victims. This low-key, 71-minute horror epic incorporates some element of science fiction. Karloff is good as the doomed protagonist, and Lugosi turned in a solid performance as a rival scientist. This slowly-paced chiller features robust good performances but the filmmakers do little to generate fear.

Universal tried to capitalize on the fame of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi by putting them in a bunch of vehicles together.In this one, Boris plays the Mad Scientist and Bela plays the good one, who find an element in Africa called "Radium X" because they couldn't think of cool new names for elements back then. Boris is infected with Raidum X, becoming a killing machine that glows in the dark if he doesn't take his meds. He proceeds to lose his wife to another man and then his mind, and goes on a killing spree.The ironic thing was, Lugosi always saw himself as a leading man, and this was probably as close as he got. His accent got in the way, and he didn't quite work here, being dead for the last five minutes of the movie.Cringe-worthy, the portrayal of African characters.

When you see Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi as co-stars, you expect to find a well done horror movie, but this was actually quite different, representing as it did what I would describe as an early effort at science fiction. Karloff and Lugosi both play scientists (Rukh and Benet respectively) - competitors to an extent, until Rukh wins Benet over with a demonstration that proves his great theory. The science here was - to say the least - a bit rough around the edges (thus science fiction, with the emphasis on the fiction) but somehow Rukh harnesses some sort of ray from Andromeda that allows him to look at the earth "several thousand million years ago." In that pre historic time, a huge meteorite slammed into Africa, leaving deposits of a substance the scientists call "Radium X" - which can heal and destroy. A large portion of the movie is set rather tediously in Africa, on a search for the meteorite deposits, which Rukh eventually finds and harnesses to create a great weapon, unfortunately infecting himself with some sort of disease that makes him a great weapon as well.Karloff and Lugosi were both pretty good here. Lugosi pulls off a role in which he's the good guy pretty well, although I frankly found him a bit unconvincing - especially during the scenes set in Africa. The story also plodded along a bit, and while it held my attention it didn't captivate me. Given that this is really a sci-fi rather than a horror flick, and that sci-fi was in its very early stages, I suppose the movie needs to be cut a bit of slack. It was OK - nothing more, but also nothing less than that. 4/10