People have been wondering why I’m in such a good mood lately. They tell me that there’s a glow to my skin and an extra spring in my step. They ask me if I’m in love or if I’m enjoying the spring weather or if I’m on prescription medication.
I honestly have no idea what these people are talking about. My best guess is that I’m just happy that there’s a really nice new Blu-ray for the 1941 movie, The Invisible Ghost, put out by Kino Lorber.
That’s gotta be it.
Now, I’m not saying that it’s a great movie.
It isn’t.
The Invisible Ghost is hard to recommend to anyone who isn’t already sympathetic to the otherworldly effect of 1940s Poverty Row productions. They were movies that clung to simple storytelling formula, zipped by in roughly an hour and were often slapped together on the quick on low budgets. There are thousands of them, in all genres. Its vastness is part of the fascination.
The Poverty Row had their own stars, and caught a few of Hollywood’s fallen stars, such as this film’s Bela Lugosi. They were films from Hollywood’s gutters and back alleys, but you can learn a lot from places like that. They tell secret histories.
Among the pack, The Invisible Ghost is arguably among the more eccentric and dreamy. It’s a film that gives itself over to absurdity with ease. The plot: an otherwise harmless man (Lugosi, in a rare role in which he’s not some evil schemer) is driven mad by visions of his wife, whom he thinks died in a car accident, but is really alive and out wandering their estate at night with amnesia. When he sees her through his bedroom window, he gets all scrambled in the head and starts killing.
There ain’t a dime’s worth of sense in that story. To this movie’s credit, it deals in a whole other currency.
Making it extra fascinating is that it’s an early work from director Joseph H. Lewis, who would go on to make some real low-budget art in films like Gun Crazy and The Big Combo.
Today, cult films from the 1970s and 80s that critics either panned or ignored in their day now get the princess treatment on Blu-ray all of the time. If it’s seedy and puerile and Roger Ebert hated it, there’s a lavish HD set with three commentary tracks and five hours of deleted scenes and documentaries either already out or coming out. It’s beautiful.
However, the Poverty Row flicks of the 1940s, virtually all of which sit in the public domain, never get this kind of attention.
It’s understandable. Original negatives or high-definition worthy vintage source material are hard to find. The cast and makers are all well into the grave. And the audience for this sort of stuff is on the sparse side.
But we’re out there.
We’re a bunch of weirdos, but we do exist.
We like old stuff and we’re used to it looking on the rough side, so our minds are ripe to be blown by a fresh transfer of The Invisible Ghost that doesn’t look like it passed through someone’s digestive system. On that count, Kino Lorber have exceeded all expectations. It’s a beautiful disc.
The black-and-white picture quality is so sparkling at times that you can almost tell what brand of pomade is in Bela Lugosi’s hair. He looks alive enough to follow on Twitter. If you’ve previously watched this film on late night television or on budget home video releases, you’ve never seen it look even close to this good before. It’s almost like a different movie, but no less hallucinatory as it stalks its way across a cool hour and two minutes.
Meanwhile, the consistently entertaining commentary track–from film historians Tom Weaver, Gary Rhodes, Dr. Robert J. Kiss and filmmaker Robert Tinnell, all recorded separately, but giving the film equal respect–is like hearing someone narrate one of your dreams.
It’s surprising that anyone even knows this much about an obscure item like this. The commentary is a blizzard of facts and personal reflections. It’s also proof that The Invisible Ghost is real. You didn’t dream it. Others have picked up on the signal.
The Blu-ray disc is real, too. I double-check my shelf everyday, just to be sure.