ORLOFF
AND THE INVISIBLE MAN (1971)Director: Pierre Chevalier
Image Entertainment
ORLOFF
AND THE INVISIBLE MAN (1971)In his long career, Howard Vernon has portrayed the mad Dr. Orloff many times for director Jess Franco, starting with 1962's THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF and ending with 1988's FACELESS. Here, he gets to interpret the character for a French director who manages to create something as silly as Franco would envision, though the wooden direction is more under control and free of excessive zoom shots.
Despite the "don't go to the castle"-type warnings that he receives from his fellow villagers, a young doctor travels to the home of Dr. Orloff (Vernon) due to a reported medical emergency there. When he arrives at the castle, he's greeted by the odd servants who play dumb and are unreceptive to his visit. The doctor then runs into Orloff who at first holds him at gunpoint, but then tells of an invisible creature that he's created. The doctor is in disbelief of Orloff at first, but when he witnesses a page in a book turning by itself, and a lantern floating in mid air, he begins to suspects otherwise.
There's a flashback that Orloff tells about his daughter's pseudo death. She's discovered buried alive by the grave-robbing gatekeeper and his trampy mistress, who steal the valuable jewels from her body. Orloff punishes them, and keeps the gatekeeper locked in a cell in the castle to supply blood for his creation. Meanwhile, he lets the invisible creature run amuck and rape a servant girl, and he keeps the young doc hostage as well. The doctor is able to escape with the help of Orloff's cute daughter who knows exactly how to view the transparent creature: Fling powder all over it. When she does, the creature is revealed to be an actor in a gorilla suit left over from "The Banana Splits" Saturday morning TV series.
Although dumber than dumb in terms of plot and execution, ORLOFF AND THE INVISIBLE MAN manages to be enduring enough to sit through barely 80 minutes of period costumes, a gothic castle setting, a plethora of naked ladies, and the always interesting Vernon holding things together. The film was released years ago on video from Wizard (as THE INVISIBLE DEAD) and earlier surfaced on a drive-in triple bill (as THE LOVE LIFE OF AN INVISIBLE MAN) but has still remained relatively obscure through the years.
Image has now released the film on DVD as part of their "EuroShock Collection," in a nice letterboxed (1.66:1) and 16x9 presentation. The colors look impressively vivid and there is only slight wear and tear in the source material in the form of some lines and speckling. The mono sound is very good, despite some underlying scratchiness beneath the very audible voices. The disc can be played in English, German or French languages.
As a bonus, alternate "clothed scenes" are included that were originally used for different, softer versions of the film. These scenes replace gratuitous nudity with a scantily clad equivalent, although it's very had to imagine a girl making love in her bloomers! There are also other various scenes on display that are not in the feature, including more subplot with the gatekeeper and his attempt to escape the burning castle of Orloff. There is also a French trailer that includes something not in the feature or the alternate scenes: The ape creature getting lopped in the head with a stone, complete with cartoonish sound effect! (George R. Reis)