THE INVISIBLE RAY

THE INVISIBLE RAY. Lambert Hillyer, dir. US: Universal, 1936. Howard Higgins and Douglas Hodges, story.[1] Boris Karloff (credited as "Karloff"), Bela Lugosi, featured players. CAUTION: There is a 1920, 15 episode serial by the same name.

"Horror / SciFi" in the IMDb classification: a science-fictional invention and a real interest in modern physics on light and time are embedded in a generically mixed fictive world of Horror, African Exploration (CAUTION: with racist views of Africans), and the Tragedy of Revenge. What the Video Hound review correctly calls "a generally hokey script" includes a fairly serious debate on Power: as powerful machines, "Radium-X" as a power source, the good or evil that the power of science and technology can do in the hands of a good scientist, who lives in Paris and cooperates with others—Lugosi's Dr. Felix Benet—vs. the megalomaniacal loner of Karloff's Dr. Janos Rukh, whose lab is in the Carpathian Mountains. (See V. Sobchack's section "Transylvania on Mars: Horror and Science Fiction," 26 f. in Screening Space.[2])

(RDE, 19/04/01), RDE, Title, 23Aug19