The Invisible Man

This is one of those flashbacks that you remember as a kid. We lived in Brooklyn, N.Y. back in the day and I remember as a child watching previews for a show that I thought was The Invisible Man. All I remember about the previews was a man with the bandages sitting in a chair (possibly in a theater)smoking a cigarett while someone opened a curtain above him looking to see where the cigarette smoke was coming from. Then in another scene I think the Invisible Man was lying on a bed while a fireman came in a door to the room and the fireman passed out from fright. This is all I remember except that I had nightmares from thinking about these scenes. To this day I don't know if this was the scenes from this show or not. I love this site because you can find pretty much all the old shows.

Rather provocatively entitled 'H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man', this was the first of two fifties television series based on fictional characters who were originally villains.

Anticipating 'The Third Man' by transforming the title character into a champion of the underdog and righter of wrongs; set against a backdrop of probably a deliberately drably rendered London finally emerging from postwar austerity our hero - his invisibility mainly suggested by wires and with optical effects largely confined to smoking a cigarette but never inhaling - to intervene to remind assorted mercenary meanies to stop their bullying ways and embrace law and order.

The British television series, "H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man," may have been based on the character created by Wells but had very little to do with the novel or classic James Whale film from Universal. In direct contradiction to the source material, the hero Dr. Peter Brady, was doing remarkably well as a workaholic scientist employed by the British government. He accidentally becomes invisible (fortunately for him, clothes and all) after a radiation leak interferes with his experiments on optical density and refraction. Naturally, the British authorities are suspicious of Brady, wondering what he'll do with his new-found "powers."

Brady becomes a one man Impossible Missions Force. In subsequent episodes, he's dispatched to one mythical Middle Eastern, Eastern European, or African country after another, to foil the forces of evil threatening the British Empire. Despite supposedly being a secret agent, as the series progressed, Brady's invisibility became public knowledge leading to trouble in some episodes.

The special effects were cheap and downright awful by today's standards. For the most part, the "invisibility" special effects were handled by wires holding various objects such as car keys, test tubes, guns, and the like. Scenes were frequently shot from Brady's point-of-view to limit the use of special effects. Despite these shortcomings the series eventually attracted the interests of US television networks. H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man ran for 39 half hours on the CBS network from November 4, 1958 to September 22, 1960.

Although I normally don't watch shows this old, I found this one to be good for the time period. The special effects were pretty good (until that episode where the invisible man was just wearing glasses) and I enjoyed the plots of each episode. The plots are pretty unique and some of them even feel like they could be their own movie. The actors were also good, even the characters who only appear once. I felt like the women were not treated any differently from the men, which was something I was kind of worried about when I started this show, given the time period it was created. Overall, I find this show to be exceptional, with memorable characters and interesting plots.

lucky enough to have bought both seasons on DVD from a market stall. 26 episodes on 4 discs ($30 aud). the picture & sound quality are excellent. the series pre-dated 'the saint'& 'the baron' etc, but its interesting to see( no pun intended) Brady tackle similar hazards to the TV heroes that followed.

i think the show was very well written,special effects are as good as one could expect from that period, & best of all is the inclusion of some top class British character actors. i was very young when this series originally came out & it brings back fond memories of my childhood in england!