The Invisible Ray (1936 film)

The Invisible Ray
1948 re-release lobby card
Directed by Lambert Hillyer
Produced by
Written by John Colton
Starring
Music by Franz Waxman
Cinematography George Robinson
Edited by Bernard W. Burton
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date
  • January 20, 1936 (1936-01-20) (U.S.)
Running time
 79 min.
Country United States
Language English
Budget $235,000[1][2]
Violet Kemble Cooper confronts Boris Karloff in the climax of The Invisible Ray.

The Invisible Ray is a 1936 American black-and-white science fiction film melodrama from Universal Pictures, produced by Edmund Grainger, directed by Lambert Hillyer, that stars Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi.

A scientist creates a telescope-like device that captures light-waves from the Andromeda Galaxy, giving him a way to view the distant past. He and several colleagues go to Africa to locate a large, unusual meteorite the light-waves showed fell there a billion years ago. After discovering that the meteorite is composed of a poisonous unknown element, "Radium X", he begins to glow in the dark and his touch becomes deadly. These radiation effects also begin to slowly drive him mad.

Plot

A visionary astronomer, Dr. Janos Rukh (Boris Karloff) has invented a telescope that can look far out into deep space, into the Andromeda Galaxy, and photograph light rays that will show the Earth's past. He has theorized this as being possible for some years, much to his discredit among his fellow scientist-colleagues. Looking at the remote past on a planetarium-like dome in his lab, two of those ardently skeptical scientists, Dr. Benet (Bela Lugosi) and Sir Francis Stevens (Walter Kingsford), watch a large meteorite smash into the Earth a billion years ago in what is now the continent of Africa. Amazed by Rukh's demonstration, the pair invite him to go on an expedition to locate the impact site.

Rukh finds the meteorite in Africa but is exposed to its unknown radiation, dubbed "Radium X". This causes him to glow in the dark and to make his mere touch instantaneous deadly to any living thing. The exposure also begins to warp his mind. Returning to the base camp, he entreats Dr. Benet to devise a means of neutralizing Radium X's poisoning effect. Benet develops a serum that holds the lethal element's toxicity at bay, but Rukh must take regular doses of the antidote or he will revert to being a luminous killing machine. Rukh returns to his jungle base and learns from Benet that this situation has been complicated all along by the romantic relationship between Rukh's wife, Diana (Frances Drake), and Ronald Drake (Frank Lawton), the nephew of Lady Arabella Stevens (Beulah Bondi), Dr. Stevens' wife.

Benet takes a piece of the meteorite back to Europe, where he modifies its effects to help people, including curing the blind. Working along similar lines, Rukh cures his mother's blindness as well, but in spite of her warning, he goes to Paris to confront Benet and the others. There he pretends to acknowledge his wife's new relationship with Drake, in reality it is the first step of his plan for revenge. Rukh murders a Frenchman who closely resembles him, making it appear that he has died and been rendered unrecognizable by an accident with Radium X.

Believing the deception, Diana marries Ronald. Rukh now begins to use his radiation poisoning to kill off the members of the expedition. He marks each death by disintegrating a single statue on the exterior of a church across from where he is hiding. Each time, he focuses the radiation through a window using a raygun-like apparatus. Rukh manages to kill both of the Stevenses before the police realize what is happening. Dr. Benet helps them set a trap by convening a conference of scientists at his home to discuss Radium X, but Rukh secretly gains access and kills Benet. He has saved his revenge on Ronald and Diana for last, but finds himself unable to kill his wife. This hesitation brings him to a confrontation with his mother, the most important woman in his life. She has foreseen her son's growing madness and smashes the last of his antidote bottles to stop him. As the Radium X begins to consume him from within, Rukh jumps from a window. He disappears in an explosive flame, vaporized before reaching the ground.

The tone of the film - somber, dignified, tragic - is established by the opening bars of Franz Waxman's score, one of his most accomplished (and one, of that period, with least borrowings from major 19th Century composers, employing only a snippet of a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody). The film is undisguisedly a morality play, and arguably an effective (dare we say inspiring?) one, particularly given the final lines in the film, uttered by Madame Rukh - "My son, you have broken the first law of science...Janos Rukh is dead, but part of him will go on to eternity, working for humanity" - nine years before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Cast

Production

The Invisible Ray was originally budgeted at $166,785 but went $68,000 over budget.[2]

Soundtrack

The Invisible Ray features a score by film composer Franz Waxman. Many of the sets and sound effects were later recycled in Universal's Flash Gordon movie serials.

Legacy

Stock footage from The Invisible Ray was later recycled into the 1939 movie serial The Phantom Creeps, starring Bela Lugosi.[3] The film was part of the original Shock Theater syndication package of 52 Universal creature feature films.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Michael Brunas, John Brunas & Tom Weaver, Universal Horrors: The Studios Classic Films, 1931-46, McFarland, 1990 p151
  2. 1 2 Stephen Jacobs, Boris Karloff: More Than a Monster, Tomohawk Press 2011 p 189
  3. ↑ Internet Movie Database
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