Dr. Kenzo Nakazato (Ryunosuke Tsukigata) is talking to his protégés, Shunji Kurokawa (Kanji Koshiba) and Kyosuke Segi (Daijiro Natsukawa), about their separate research projects. The one who completes their research first will win an award. The men are in competition in more ways than one. Both men are in love with Nakazato’s daughter, Machiko (Chizuru Kitagawa) and hope to get Nakazato’s blessing to marry her. Machiko hasn’t decided what she wants to do. Neither man knows that Nakazato has already developed the formula that they are both working on.
Nakazato has developed a serum that can render people invisible. He calls it “Atomina Invisibilitator” and has used it on small animals, proving that the formula works. The problems he is having are twofold. First, he has no antidote. Once someone is invisible, they stay that way until they die. The second problem is that the serum drives the creature that uses it insanely violent.
Ichiro Kawabe (Shosaku Sugiyama) is a pharmaceutical owner and an acquaintance. Nakazato shows Kawabe the formula, in private, and demonstrates how it works. Kawabe is actually a collector of rare and fabulous jewels. He is also in league with jewel thieves and believes that with the Invisibilitator formula he can acquire a famous and expensive diamond necklace called the “Tears of Amour” that he has been lusting after. Since no one else knows about the serum, Kawabe has Nakazato kidnapped. Now all Kawabe needs is someone he can manipulate into using the formula and stealing the necklace.
“The Invisible Man Appears” was released in 1949 and was directed by Nobuo Adachi. It is a rather obscure Japanese science fiction horror film that was produced by the Daiei Film Company.
The film pays homage to Universal’s film “The Invisible Man” 1933 which was loosely based on the 1897 novel by H.G. Wells. It is the first of two films done by Daiei Film that were based on the Wells story. The other film was “The Invisible Man vs The Human Fly” released in 1957. It is also considered the first Japanese Invisible Man film.
For the most part, the special effects are pretty decent, especially for the forties. The movie itself was just a tad bit slow, but an easy watch. I rather liked it.
The special effects were created by Eiji Tsuburaya. Tsuburaya would go on to be the special effects supervisor for TOHO’s Godzilla films as well as many other Japanese science fiction movies.