I Feel (Un)Seen - The Invisible Woman (1940)

 Happy Thursday everyone!  Time to dig back into the various movies based on the H.G. Wells novel, The Invisible Man.  In this case, 1940's The Invisible Woman.  

Directed by journeyman director A. Edward Sutherland, this is a major tone shift from the first two, horror-tinged movies; in this case, it's about a whacky absent-minded professor (John Barrymore) who has invented a formula and machine combo that will turn someone invisible and needs a human subject to finally test it on.  Enter department store model Kitty Carroll, who's up for invisibility shenanigans.  The first moment she's invisible, she takes off to exact invisible revenge on her former boss (the incredibly dependable Charles Lane).  Cue tons of objects seeming floating in thin air, a breathy voice out of thin air and Lane's character thinking he's being haunted for being a jerk to his employees.  

(There's a lot of promo shots for this movie where you can see Kitty in clothes, or in a weird sillhouette deatl; she's definitely full invisible in this actual scene.)

Meanwhile, the professor is trying to track Kitty down and when she returns, tries to show her off to his rich patron Dick Russell (played by the always dependable John Howard).  Naturally, sparks fly between them even though he can't see what she looks like and is devoting a lot of her time drinking brandy and bedeviling his butler (the very fun Thurston Hall).  Unfortunately, the drinking interferes with the invisibility formula and surprise!, she is stuck being invisible.

Also meanwhile, a bumbling band of local gangsters are trying to track down the machine for their boss, who wants to use it to sneak across the border because he's hiding out in Mexico.  If any of this sounds familiar, this must have been an idea going around Hollywood at the time, since next years Ball of Fire follows some very similar plot points with gangsters and absent-minded professors and their young friend and a dame with great legs and moxie.

Naturally, in the end the gangsters are defeated, Kitty and Dick get together, she's restored to visibility and everyone's happy.  It's a very fun, frothy little thing that only runs about 70 minutes and never outstays it's welcome.  Outside of Barrymore, it's very much B and C level actors of the time, having a good time and giving us some good laughs.

Sadly, like the other Universal Invisible Man movies, this is simply not streaming anywhere, so I would check your local library to see if they have the Universal collection of them.