Happy Thursday, everyone! Sorry about the lateness on this one but work caught up with me. As we continue on our adapttaions of The Invisible Man, this week is the second Japanese adaptation in a row, The Invisible Avenger.
The movie literally opens up with an invisible man being struck by a car and appearing as he dies and surprise, he's part of a group of Japanese commandos who were turned invisible by a ray so they could be better soldiers. How do we know this? Oh, because the government immediately tells everyone about it and says hey, there's one more invisible guy out there so...keep a look out for him? Which is such a weird thing to happen in any government that I actually rewound to make sure I had heard correctly. Nanjo, the remaining invisible man, has been disguising himself as a clown because no one questions them wearing greasepaint all the time (a touch I really appreciated) and working the streets while he also befriends the adorable blind girl, Mariko, in his rooming house whose grandfather is working two jobs to pay for the inevitable operation to hopefully cure her blindness.
Also, he's falling for a local showgirl, Michiyo, in a club owned by the local gangsters, who are pretending to be Invisible Men and robbing racetracks (something this shares with The Invisible Man Appears). Naturally, they try to recruit the real invisible man to help in their thefts but he escapes them, saves the day and beats up the head of the mob (in a surprisingly thrilling fight sequence in a gas tank facility, where the mobster keeps trying to shoot him and hits gas tanks, which invariably explode) but Nanjo gets shot himself in the end and expires in the arms of the pretty reporter, Komatsu, as he asks her to look out for Michiyo.
Cut to Mariko back at the rooming house listening to the music box she's always wanted and Nanjo left for her. Look, there have not been any happy endings for the invisible men so far, but man this ones a bummer.
At 70 minutes, this is a good swift one that has a lot of good stuff in it and full credit to Seizaburo Kawazu as Nanjo; it's a lovely, sad performance and for once the invisible man doesn't slowly go insane and is a good guy!
In two weeks! We conclude this Japan interlude with The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly (1957) which already feels like as loose an adaptation as possible. You can watch it at the Internet Archive with subtitles.
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