Watch The Invisible Woman For Free

Pretty Good

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Brassy model Kitty Carroll (a delightfully vivacious performance by Virginia Bruce) volunteers to be a guinea pig for an invisibility experiment conducted by dotty old duffer Professor Gibbs (an endearingly eccentric portrayal by John Barrymore). Complications ensue when three bumbling gangsters steal Gibbs's invisibility machine so they can make their nefarious boss Black Cole (Oskar Homolka in fine oily form) invisible.Director A. Edward Sutherland relates the enjoyably silly story at a brisk pace and maintains an amiable lighthearted tone throughout. Moreover, it's acted with zest by an enthusiastic cast: John Howard as smooth playboy Richard Russell, Charles Ruggles as blundering butler George, Margaret Hamilton as shrewish housekeeper Mrs. Jackson, Charles Lane as the sadistic Mr. Growley, Shemp Howard as the klutzy Frankie, and Donald McBride as the doltish Foghorn. The clever script by Robert Lees, Gertrude Purcell, and Frederic I. Rinaldo offers a wealth of witty dialogue. The practical old school special effects possess a certain quaint charm. Kudos are also in order for Frank Skinner's bouncy score and Elwood Breden's crisp black and white cinematography. A frothy'n'funny romp.

John Barrymore plays Professor Gibbs, who has invented an invisibility machine that needs a paid volunteer to try it on. Enter Kitty Carroll(played by Virginia Bruce) a model who agrees to the experiment because she plans to get back at her slave driver boss. Unfortunately, a trio of gangsters(led by Oscar Homolka) find out about the device, and plot to abduct the good professor in order to make it work for them. Can Kitty use her invisibility to stop them? Surprisingly good entry has no plot connection to the first two films, but is still an effective mix of comedy and science fiction. Charlie Ruggles costars as a bumbling butler, but unlike a similar role in "Murders In The Zoo", is actually amusing here.

Virginia Bruce is "The Invisible Woman" in this 1940 comedy that has nothing to do with the classic "The Invisible Man." The sad part for me is seeing John Barrymore, one of the greatest actors who ever lived, in a character role in this B+ film (budgeted at a whopping $300,000, a great deal more than usual B movies), even though he was excellent and the film is very enjoyable.Bruce plays Kitty Carroll, a department store model. She and the other models at the store are badly treated by their boss (Charles Lane) -- if they come in two minutes late, they're docked an hour, if they're sick, they're fired - he's a beast.John Barrymore is Professor Gibbs, a scientist who has invented a machine that will render people invisible. His patron, the wealthy Robert Russell (John Howard) is now broke thanks to all the lawsuits he's lost to girlfriends, and tells Gibbs that he can no longer support him. Gibbs desperately needs to make a human person invisible so he can patent his machine and both he and Russell can make some money. He advertises and gets Kitty, who has a particular agenda in mind.The Bruce role was intended for Margaret Sullavan, who refused to do it. Bruce is delightful, but with her in the lead, one thinks this was intended as a B movie when it wasn't at all. There are some wonderful characters on board, some of whom play gangsters trying to get their hands on this all-important machine: Oskar Homolka, Charles Ruggles, Shemp Howard, and Maria Montez. Margaret Hamilton is on hand as the Russell maid.What can I say about John Barrymore, except the man was adept at both drama and comedy and adds a great deal to this movie.Entertaining.

Played strictly for laughs, I'm hard-pressed to label "The Invisible Woman" a horror film, but the movie does feature within the "The Invisible Man" Universal Studios franchise even if it stands alone from the first two films. A professor and friend to a rich family who have been providing funding to his experiments for years, Gibbs (John Barrymore), has finally hit pay dirt, having developed an "invisible machine". Miss Kitty Caroll (Virginia Bruce; receiving top billing, although she's barely visible during most of the running time, her voice depended on to earn giggles) answers an ad to be the human guinea pig to be turned invisible, her reason to frighten a grumpy, horrible boss for a modeling company (she is a model and one of his many victims; we see in the sequence where she uses her invisibility to scare him that he fires a girl because she has a cold!). Gibbs promises millions to broke playboy Richard Russell (John Howard) when the results of lots of money poured into his experiments proves successful. Sufficed to say, complications ensue. George (Charlie Ruggles), the butler, is the main source of comedy, his slapstick, physical comedy, and dialogue always on the silly side... He often faints, and gets nervous very easily, stuttering and quivering like a ninny. With goofy mobsters (including Shemp Howard of Three Stooges fame) after the invisibility (boss Oscar Homolka(William Castle's "Mr. Sardonicas") wants to become invisible so he can return to America, remaining a fugitive in Mexico), "The Invisible Woman" never remotely approaches horrifying, so you might as well place this as an invisibility comedy alongside "Now You See Him, Now You Don't" or "Memoirs of the Invisible Man". There are plenty of special effects featuring shenanigans involving Kitty (she gets drunk on Russell's well stocked booze when Gibbs and her go to Richard's hideaway hunting lodge, and we see the bottle pouring scotch into a glass while Kitty is invisible), such as a missing head while she is in dresses, a club bopping mobsters on the head (knocking them unconscious), and often foiling Homolka and his goons. Definitely inferior to the previous films which had a level of intensity in the storyline due to the progressing madness caused by remaining invisible (with an antidote hard to come by), "The Invisible Woman", nevertheless, has its fun moments thanks to a game cast playfully giving over to the kooky screenplay and dialogue.