SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Tockinit not horrible nor great

Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

mark.waltz When a daffy newlywed married couple (Eddie Craven and Marie Wilson) find a corpse in a military base warehouse, fingers point automatically to the brooding Boris Karloff who must think quickly to defend himself. This lame programmer, either filmdom's longest short, or shortest feature, seems rushed into production, not giving time to really develop the characters and a plot that is extremely cliched. Combining a supposed sci fi element, this film totally disappoints, and the comedy is ridiculously unfunny. Wilson overdoes the dumb blonde act, and Craven has no screen presence. Karloff does all he can to rise above the mediocrity, and the direction by John Farrow (his second with Karloff in just a year) has no real flow. The painless short running time makes this easier to get through, but I classify this as one of the worst Warner Brothers second feature, one that should have ended up in the public domain with a few others whose copyright they chose not to renew, which like this, are among their worst films.

utgard14 Fine B mystery from Warner Bros. with nice foggy atmosphere and a good performance from Boris Karloff in a small but important role. Directed by John 'father of Mia' Farrow, it's a good-looking picture that has a horror movie feel to it. The story involves a murder on an army base, with Karloff as one of the suspects. There's also some comic relief from Eddie Craven and Marie Wilson as a pair of newlyweds trying to have their honeymoon on the base without anyone knowing. The comedy upsets the fine mood Farrow sets but I'm sure his hands were tied on that front. The rest of the cast includes Regis Toomey, Charles Trowbridge, Frank Faylen, and Henry Kolker. Cy Kendall plays a brutish investigator brought in to solve the crime. His method is to slap suspects around until they confess. Sherlock Holmes he's not! It's worth a look for Karloff fans or anyone who enjoys old B mysteries. The short runtime helps a lot.

TheLittleSongbird The Invisible Menace has two things going for it. The dark and foggy production design is striking and very effective. And Boris Karloff gives a great sympathetic performance. Unfortunately, they are the only things about The Invisible Menace(anybody want to explain the significance of this title, because it was irrelevant as far I'm concerned. Of the cast, only Karloff is close to good. Talented character actors like Regis Toomey are wasted, while Marie Wilson is incredibly irritating-of any performance in any of the movies that Karloff starred in, you'd be hard pressed to find one as annoying as Wilson's- and Eddie Craven's mugging is just embarrassing. The fact that the comedy is dated and unfunny doesn't help, and it also seemed misplaced. The same goes with the whole thing about the voodoo, seen in a short flashback, which seemed to have been thrown in at last minute without any relevance to what was already there. The Invisible Menace does try to be a number of elements, I've mentioned already that the comedy didn't work, but we also see the film trying to be a mystery, a melodrama and a thriller. Including comedy too, all four of those elements fail. The mystery element is too obvious and coincidental, the melodrama is overwrought and brings the film to a screeching halt at times and there's nothing thrilling here, merely tedium. The script could have been much tighter, and could have given the actors much more to work from, that is including Karloff. At 55 minutes, you'd think The Invisible Menace would be too short and that it would feel rushed. Actually, the story has trouble sustaining the length, you know there's a problem when the IMDb summary alone sums up the entire plot of the film. To conclude, the production design and Karloff are good, but the rest is a disaster. 2/10 Bethany Cox

krorie This is a very watchable programmer centering on a murder mystery that takes place at an island army arsenal. Director John Farrow (husband of Maureen O'Sullivan/father of Mia Farrow)wisely keeps this thriller short and breezy. The only part of the movie that sometimes falls flat today is the humor, which I'm sure was much better received by the audiences in 1938. Marie Wilson tries to be a Gracie Allen clone. This persona worked much better years later when she played My Friend Irma opposite Martin and Lewis. Eddie Craven does fine as Marie Wilson's comedy partner but again much of the humor is dated.It's good to see the great Boris Karloff strut his stuff. His bad guy/monster image kept him from receiving deserved recognition as one of Hollywood's most capable actors. This image is used in an interesting way in "The Invisible Menace" but I won't go into detail and spoil the movie for you. The flashback scene when Karloff is on the island of Haiti fits well into the story but also provides variety in what could have become a boring film since all the action takes place in a confined setting. A talent such as Hitchcock could overcome such a setting as he did in his classic "Lifeboat," but Farrow was not that adept although a skilled director.All in all a gem for fans of the genre.