The Invisible Ray Film Review

This was the third pairing by Universal of its two horror icons - Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. There were eight films in which they appeared together. The previous two horror films were the brilliant The Black Cat and the creepy The Raven. Perhaps, Universal should have stuck to diabolical straight horror tales - but here they mix horror, sci-fi, mad scientist, a forbidden love and a safari in deep Africa. It is to say the least a strange little film without much of a budget - so much so that they had to borrow sets from other films. I wonder if there was any debate about who would play the mad scientist - Boris or Bela - but likely Boris's English accent won out. He plays the mad scientist with the short curly hair who at one time brags that he can destroy the whole world if he wishes to. Fortunately, he doesn't and keeps his destruction much more modest. The lack of a budget shows up in the fact that much of what is talked about is not shown. We have to read about it in the papers like the other characters do. The special effects budget was likely kept to a few scenes. Karloff gives his character pathos - a tragedy that is inevitable - but his love for his mother and his wife make him very human. Though mad, I suppose. Killing people will get you that reputation.

He plays Dr. Rukh who lives in a gothic castle in Carpathia with his much younger wife (Francis Drake) and blind possessive mother (Violet Kemble Cooper). He is a busy man with a huge observatory/laboratory of devices, test tubes and a giant telescope. Slightly paranoid and unsocial, he still invites a few eminent scientists to show what he has discovered. And what a discovery. He can look back through time from the perspective of a star looking down on earth. Everything in our history has been recorded by light. He shows them a comet hitting Africa thousands of years ago. They all decide to go looking for this comet - Rukh, Dr. Benet (Lugosi), his wife, two other scientists and a young adventurer. One look between the wife and the adventurer and you know this will not end well.

In Africa, Rukh goes off on his own to look for the comet - leaving his wife and young man at the camp. She tells him, "My father made me marry him". He discovers the comet - a new element - Radium X - but even in his nifty protective outfit gets exposed to it and begins to glow in the dark. And his touch kills. When he weaponizes it, he can disintegrate anything. Bela as Dr. Benet plays his role very straight - no overacting or hyperventilating - the good sane person in this tale of the dangers of science - kind of disappointing because I love Bela in full-on madness. Not particularly scary - but Karloff and the designs keep it interesting - and in the film the laser cures people of blindness - sort of a forerunner of today.