kalibeans Ulmer manages to take zero money, unknown actors, a script with more plot holes than swiss cheese and pull you in from the first 30 seconds. And keep you there. I know it seems over the top silly to those who cut their movie teeth on CGI, but the story and the moral are in there. It's also a good look into the mindset of a nation post WWII, in a Cold War. And into the thought process of an Austrian Jewish Refugee. Very simple little film, but kept my attention throughout and it will leave you with many questions swirling around inside. Many of these low budget filmmakers like Corman and Castle and Ulmer gave us much more than newer directors would think possible with precious few dollars. They are worth investing the time to watch their films and study their struggles to produce the best possible on a shoestring. A film does not need $200 million to tell a good story.

SanteeFats First off the scientist was not crazed as it states in the lead in. Doctor Ulof is being forced to do the bidding of a Major Krenner. Krenner is holding Ulof's young daughter locked in a room. Krenner is threatening to kill the girl if Ulof does not cooperate and conduct the experiments. Krenner springs Joey Faust, a well known safe cracker, from prison. Joey is needed to get Krenner the things he needs. Joey is turned invisible and robs a depository of a nuclear material called X13 to facilitate the experiments. Krenner forces Ulof to use the new stuff on Joey. Invisible Joey goes to rob a bank and turns visible and then invisible. He is recognized so the jig is coming to a climax. Returning to the decrepit hide out Joey finds out he has maybe a month to live. So he goes up to the lab, fights it out with Krenner, and they get blown up in a nuke blast. So the world is saved from an army of invisible soldiers which was Krenner's ultimate goal.

Scott LeBrun Fans of the cult director Edgar G. Ulmer may consider this routine, forgettable, but adequately entertaining sci-fi feature to be one of his lesser efforts. Still, one could do worse. It's decently acted, features very amusing visual effects, and is thin enough on story to clock in at a very short 58 minutes. It also leads to a pretty entertaining resolution; as one would say, things end with a bang.Tough guy actor Douglas Kennedy stars as Joey Faust (!), a criminal busted out of jail by nefarious Major Krenner (James Griffith) and his associates. Krenner has forced unhappy scientist Peter Ulof (Ivan Triesault) to perfect a method of turning a man invisible, and Krenner wants to use this method on Faust so that the hood can commit acts of espionage for him. Faust, not surprisingly, has other ideas: he'd rather rob banks.The scenes with the invisible Faust are the most entertaining in this thing, such as when Griffith has to mime being strangled, or the development late in the tale when Fausts' body begins to appear and disappear. The music by Darrell Calker is good, maybe too good for something like this. Kennedy is a hoot as the swaggering Faust, and Griffith is an okay villain. Triesault is pitiable as Ulof, who's had a very hard life. Marguerite Chapman ("Flight to Mars"), in her last feature film, is reasonably engaging as Laura, who finds Fausts' offer of proceeds from potential bank robberies to be too hard to resist. Buffs may be interested to note that veteran character actor Patrick Cranshaw, who achieved fame late in his life and career as Blue in "Old School", plays a security guard here.Certainly the denouement is priceless, as Triesault ends up addressing us directly, hoping that we find the idea of an "invisible army" as appalling as some of the characters in this thing do.Five out of 10.

gavin6942 A crazed scientist (Ivan Trisault) invents an invisibility formula. An Army major (James Griffith) plans to use the formula to create an army of invisible zombies.Does this film rip off "The Invisible Man"? To some degree, of course. There is no possible way the creators did not know about that earlier film. But it goes its own way, too -- for one thing, the transparent man is not invisible from the beginning.The only person I know attached to this film is the makeup artist, Jack Pierce. That may explain why people have rated it so incredibly low. I am sure the cast was known in their day, but they are not known to me, and the fact this comes from a defunct movie studio suggests a lot. Director Edgar G. Ulmer is a legend in his own way, perhaps ironically.I appreciate that a guinea pig is used as a guinea pig, but beyond that, I do not know what to say. Even with its very short run time, it does not move quick enough in some scenes. The special effects -- which made "Invisible Man" a classic a few decades earlier -- are not nearly as good here. Perhaps author David Wingrove summed it up best when he said, "Its cheap-budget origins show throughout. Amazing claims too much for what is essentially a thriller involving an escaped criminal..."