H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man The Original Series Season One – DVD
Dark Sky Films
H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man was a TV series that started in 1957. It told the tale of Peter Brady (who is in no way related to the Brady Bunch) who while working on invisibility experiments, becomes invisible himself when a harmful chemical leak in his lab contaminates him. After going into hiding, he eventually not only returns to work, but thanks to his chemically induced “gift”, he now is the most desirable person in the world to people with evil intentions, as well as a prized British Secret Agent. Each episode tells a different story of blackmail, sabotage, crime, etc. all the while distracting Brady from his one true goal, which is to find the cure for his ailment. The episodes are a half hour in length and they are really quite entertaining. For 1950’s technology, they did some pretty amazing things in bringing this Invisible Man to life. There always seems to be a new gimmick in any given episode to show off their creativity of having the main character be someone you can’t see unless he is wrapped in bandages. The effects and the show in general has really stood the test of time.
This 2-disc set contains the entire first season, which has a total of 13 episodes. The easy to navigate menu lets you pick any episode you want to view, or there is the handy “play all” option as well. The picture is black and white and was remastered and looks sharp and has nice contrast. There are a few different audio options; original mono, 5.1 surround, Spanish, and French language. The 5.1 option is the default when you play the disc for the first time but I found that the music was mixed too loud and it made the speech hard to hear, so I preferred the mono mix where the music was much more subdued and the voices were crystal clear. The whole thing is packaged in a keep case with a lenticular cover where when you move it, the Invisible Man’s face vanishes.
If you are a fan of old television, you’d find a lot of enjoyment out of this series. I remember seeing a few reruns of this when I was a little kid and thinking it was pretty neat back then, and now 50 years after it was originally made, I still think it is a pretty neat show, and in fact as enjoyable, if not more so, than a lot of what you find on TV these days. I don’t know how many seasons this show ran, but I look forward to more coming out should there have been any.
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