This is a weird one, folks! Released in 1957, The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly (Tōmei Ningen to Hae Otoko) is just an odd combination of tones all over the place.
There's comedy, there's sleaze, there's multiple night club numbers. It's kind of a sequel to The Invisible Man Appears, from the same studio, but this time it's about...a serial killer who somehow can shrink himself to the size of a fly and goes around killing people fairly randomly. I simply could not tell you what the heck his motivation was as the movie doesn't think you need to know either. Like 90% of this movie is people sitting at desks at the police station, bemoaning their lack of leads, or the multiple night club scenes with scantily-clad dancers performing jazz numbers. (Seriously, I'm not a prude, but there are close-ups of the women in this movie that are uncomfortable.)
So, we get the usual "Oh, this scientist has an invisibility ray!" nonsense; they've dropped the "It turns you murdereously bobkerrs after a while" thing, but even for an Invisible Man movie there is a serious amount of hand-waving about how it all works. One of the cops wants to use it to help catch the Human Fly, and it's almst hilarious how he never explains why this would help catch the fly. And of course, the lead professor on the project has a winsome daughter, yada yada, they have eyes for each other, yada yada....and at the end of the movie they both have invisibility powers.
What?
Look, it's not terrible. But I can't quite recommend this one. Like I said, the tone is all over the place and it doesn't make a lick of sense.
Next time! We're hitting the '60s and going back to English-language films with The Amazing Transparent Man (1960).
Currently streaming on Prime, Fubo, Pluto, Shout, FreeVee, MGM+, oh heck it's everywhere.
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