The Invisible Man

I thought we'd never see this! Of the classic Universal Monsters, the Invisible Man is the only one who's a plain human. Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy are mystical, Frankenstein is enhanced by science, the Gill-man is functionally a wild animal... but the Invisible Man is an invisible man, with no increased strength, no increased durability, no nothing other than the permanent element of surprise. And yet in a single movie, he kills more people than the rest of them. Combined. In all their movies and all their sequels! While the others may have personally killed a handful of victims in each outing, Jack Griffin starts by killing a police inspector, then pushes a pair of people searching for him off a cliff (it's said 20 people from the search parties have been murdered, but those are the only ones we see), and eventually works his way up to derailing an entire train just because he felt like it, killing at least 100 people in the process. Even modern slashers can't compete with those numbers! NECA, wanting to get as much value as they can out of the fees they've had to pay to get the Universal Monsters license, made their first Invisible Man in his lesser-known look, wearing a suit, because who but the ultimate Claude Rains fans would buy that one if they already had this one? When you think of the Invisible Man, you think of him like this, head all wrapped in bandages and wearing a robe, not dressed for business with fake hair and a fake nose. None of these clothes are his, by the way: he borrowed both the robe and the pajamas beneath it when he went to call upon his associate, Arthur Kemp. The sculpt was done by Ray Santoleri, making two Universal Monsters in a row that are from him. And they're both wearing robes! Though this one gets the benefit of full legs, which the other didn't. The figure includes five heads, which sounds like a lot, but when you remember that two of those are just glasses on/glasses off versions of other heads, it gets much less impressive. Plus, even those two sets look mostly identical to one another, since they're all just "face wrapped in bandages" with some minor differences. But there is a reason for that, though you'd have to be a pretty big fan of the movie to know what it is off the top of your head: the version with the looser bandages, and consequently the longer "chin," is how he looked when he first dressed up like this at Kemp's house; the version with the tighter wrapping, and the smoother chin, is how he looked later, when his girlfriend and her father came over to see him, to try to talk him out of his madness. Isn't that cute? He cared enough to straighten up his appearance even though he can't actually be seen! So those four heads may all be functionally identical, but the fifth isn't. The movie's plot goes like this: Jack shows up in a town called Iping, in southern England, where he rents a room to work on his experiments. His temper gets him police attention, so he makes his invisible escape. He walks (naked, in the winter - maybe he does have increased durability after all!) 15 miles to Kemp's house, puts on this disguise so Kemp will actually pay attention to him instead of being freaked out by the invisibility, then makes Kemp drivee him back to Iping so he can collect the things he left behind. This head represents Jack when he was taking the bandages back off for the journey, so it's a solid, hollow piece with a length of bandage hanging down, and empty holes where the eyes and nose would be. When you're swapping the heads, you'll also notice the collar can be removed and traded for another. This is one more change meant to represent the conversation with Kemp and the conversation with Flora: originally we just saw the pajama top sticking out of the robe, but when he had to make himself more presentable, he added a stylish cravat. So the striped shirt goes with the pointy head, and the white shirt goes with the rounded head. Both these pieces slip on and off easily, with the lower edge being held in place by the robe. The chest underneath is sculpted with buttons, like the pajame top has, but there's no paint. (Fun fact: his girlfriend Flora was played by Gloria Stuart, who you'll know as Old Rose in Titanic. And her father was the angel Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life.) We don't get much in the way of accessories. There are a pair of relaxed hands, a pair of fists, and then three more right hands, one pointing and two for holding things, all of them wearing gloves, of course. Hes got the fireplace tongs he threatened Kemp with before putting on clothes, the stack of books they retrieved from his hotel room, and two loose bandages so you can spice up the scene of him unwrapping himself. Honestly, there isn't much more they could have given him, unless it was going to be a plate of breakfast and a cup of tea. Since he has full legs under the robe, he also has full articulation: ankles, knees, thighs, hips, waist, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck, and balljoints on the four solid heads, but not on the hollow one because, after all, it needed to be hollow. There's only so much utility to be had from the leg joints, due to the robe, but you could have guessed that just from the design. The robe is a dark, dark burgundy, with a yellow checked pattern on the lapels, cuffs, pockets, and sash. The blue stripes of varying thickness on the pajamas are applied cleanly, even over the wrinkles. His gloves are tan, and the bandages he wears are a different shade of white than the ascot, which you'll really notice when they're next to each other. The glasses on the two heads that wear them are solid black, with silver frames, and there are a few small silver clips on the head, two show where the bandages are being held in place. That last one would have been easy to overlook, but here they are regardless! Instead of a movie poster, like the boxes of all the other Universal Monster Ultimates have gotten, this packaging instead features an illustration by Jason Edmiston. Oh, it was put on a poster, but one by Mondo, not an actual one. A 1933 movie did not advertise itself using art from 2020. I guess The Invisible Man didn't warrant alternate posters like the other films did, leaving NECA no choice but to use something modern. It's nice, but it does kind of throw off the vibe the rest of the releases have created. Like the other Universal Monsters, The Invisible Man got a bunch of sequels. But uniquely, none of them featured the same character: everybody either died or got cured, so it was always a new dude turning invisible when a sequel rolled around. This figure is the most iconic look any of them ever had, so it's great to finally get him in this line. -- 08/31/25 If you yourself were invisible, how would you defeat thermal sensors? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.