User Reviews

This frantic Warner 'B' comedy about how millionaire Jeffrey Lynne copes with being invisible succeeds, in large part, because of the great, great comedy chops of Everett Horton, who takes over the movie as the mad scientist who turns him invisible. Well, he's not mad, actually. He is, in fact, quite amiable, so amiable that he allows his colleagues to send him to an insane asylum after a lovely variation on the "Mayhem in the Classroom" vaudeville sketch.

Jane Wyman is also on hand doing her wide-eyed comedy gal, and Willie Best does a decent turn for the era. The cast is filled out by the usual competent Warners B cast of the the era.

Jeffrey Lynne, as the lead, is given very little do do and his plot is disposed of efficiently. This pretty much describes Mr. Lynne's career. But this comedy remains with some reasonable pleasures in it.

E.E. Horton, the pro, was already 55 when he made this one... he's still in pretty good shape, and this caper movie required a lot of energy! if you haven't seen him in my favorites "Lost Horizons" or "Top Hat", you gotta rent those! The first 1/2 hour is fast paced, and things move right along. You don't have time to get bored. Pretty good special effects too, as the Professor and Willie turn Peter DeHaven (Jeff Jynn) invisible.... of course, his daughter Joan (the lovely and talented Jane Wyman) catches them, and now they have to explain what they are up to.... and these crazy goings on threaten to interrupt the wedding of DeHaven and Christine Lunceford (Marguerite Chapman). AND, it's got invisible monkeys, too! Fun, if you can keep up with it. A little silly, but what the hey. We don't hear much about this one, probably because it was released ONE day before Pearl Harbor Day, December 1941.... Directed by Ross Lederman, who was married to "Doris Warner"... I wonder if that's the same Doris, daughter of Harry Warner... This WAS a Warner Brothers film....

The casting of Edward Everett Horton as a nutty professor is reason enough to watch The Body Disappears. Horton has been experimenting at the small college he teaches with both invisibility and resurrection.

He and his trusted assistant Willie Best steal Jeffrey Lynn's body from the morgue and bring it back to Horton's laboratory at home. Lynn isn't dead, just completely ossified from his batchelor party and his buds thought it would be fun to have him wake up at the morgue.

Horton gives the invisibility potion to Lynn instead of his experimental resurrection concoction and Lynn goes invisible like Claude Rains. Also like a monkey that he had tried it on earlier who escapes.

Meanwhile when he leaves his bride Marguerite Chapman at the altar a manhunt starts for him with the suspicion of foul play in the air.

The Body Disappears is a nice item from the B picture unit at Warner Brothers with none of their big box office stars. Jane Wyman who plays Horton's daughter falls for Lynn invisible though he may be. Lynn has a good line of patter that gets her.

This one really is Horton's film and it is nice to see him carry a film for once as brilliant as he in support.

...For I have never seen such a physically nondescript and dramatically bland actor as Mr. Lynn. And yet Warner Brothers gave him a pretty good build up in the late 30s and early 40s, including unbelievably having him play a character that Priscilla Lane prefers over the enigmatic brooding John Garfield in "Four Daughters". But I digress.

Here Lynn plays wealthy sportsman Peter DeHaven who is to be married the next day, and this is his bachelor party. He likes to play all kinds of corny jokes on his friends and fellow party goers, like exploding cigars and hand buzzers. And then he passes out from drinking too much. Three of his friends and fellow medical students decide to carry him over to the Medical College dissecting room, lay him out on a slab, and place a lily in his hand. They figure he will freak out when he wakes up the next morning, thus repaying him for all of the jokes he played on them.

Meanwhile, eccentric chemistry professor Shotesbury is testing a potion that is supposed to bring dead animals and people back to life. He has just been successful at bringing a monkey back to life, and decides to move abruptly to human testing. So he goes to fetch a body from the dissecting room which turns out to be Peter. He gives what he thinks is a dead person the injection, and Peter comes to. Shotesbury thinks he has succeeded when a previously unknown side effect of the drug appears - invisibility of both the monkey and Peter. Complications ensue, not the least of which is that the police figure that something criminal has befallen Peter when he turns up missing the day of his wedding.

Edward Everett Horton is really the lead here as the confused professor of chemistry. Interesting note here - this film was released the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor. I originally thought the film was released in 1943, the middle of the war, mainly because it is an object lesson in how to make a movie when there are no leading men to be found. All of the younger men have very small supporting roles with just a few lines. The lead is actually a 55 year old man, Horton, and Jane Wyman as his daughter. Lynn's voice is present during the entire film, but most of the time Lynn is not physically present at all - he is invisible. Actually anybody could have been playing Lynn's part when you can't see him.

This one is actually pretty funny for what is obviously a Warner Bros. B effort of the time. Horton is comically befuddled as always, workhorse Willie Best is funny and gets to flex his comic muscles here more than in most of the films he was in, and the plot has some interesting twists and turns. Also this film has something I thought I'd never see in the production code era - Actor Willie Best driving around New York City with Jane Wyman's bra on his head. Watch this one for the fun of it all and in spite of one rather obvious plot hole towards the end. See if you can find it.

I'd recommend this one. It was unexpectedly entertaining.

This is one of those thin little comedies that played the second half of a double bill back in the '40s. EDWARD EVERETT HORTON has a tailor-made role as an eccentric scientist who has inadvertently developed a serum that can make people invisible. On this one-note thread, the whole plot ambles on for little more than an hour in what seems like an endless comedy of errors.

While Horton at least does his best to keep things lively, poor JEFFREY LYNN has little more to do than pop up once in awhile in the flesh--remaining invisible for a good portion of the film. JANE WYMAN has the hapless task of making all the silly shenanigans look less foolish than they are--but she rarely succeeds. And WILLIE BEST does his best to look frantic and frightened by all the invisibility going on around him, as Horton's wide-eyed assistant in his usual stereotyped role as a black man.

It passes the time quickly but there's little substance to any of the plot with some nice cast members striving to make it agreeable enough--CRAIG STEVENS, MARGUERITE CHAPMAN and David BRUCE among them.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by D. Ross Lederman; Produced by Benjamin Stoloff for Warner Brothers release. Screenplay by Scott Darling and Erna Lazarus; Photography by Allen Siegler; Edited by Frederick Richards; Music by Howard Jackson; Special Effect by Edwin Dupart. Starring Jeffrey Lynn, Jane Wyman, Edward Everett Horton, Marguerite Chapman, Craig Stevens, Herbert Anderson, David Bruce and Willie Best.

Silly little Invisible Man comedy, which gets very little mileage out of its premise. At least it has attractive leads comfortable in a romantic comedy mode.

Peter De Haven (Jeffrey Lynn) passses out during his bachelor party. His friends play a prank by putting him in the college morgue. Professor Shotesbury (Edward Everett Horton) is doing an experiment to bring the dead back alive. He recruits dim-witted driver Willie (Willie Best) to get a body from the morgue. Of course, they grab the unconscious Peter and bring him to Shotesbury's home. When Peter wakes up, Shotesbury assumes his experiment is a success. Surprisingly, the formula actually makes Peter invisible. They are interrupted by Shotesbury's daughter Joan (Jane Wyman). The monkey has also turned invisible.

First, it's Weekend at Bernie's. Then it's a fun Invisible Man. This starts great. It just needs to be those three characters chasing after an invisible Peter. That's the hilarious part of the movie. The rest of the stuff is not much of anything. It doesn't need the wrap-around trial story. Certain parts of this are a fun screwball comedy.

Jeffrey Lynn was one of the most attractive and interesting actors of the 1940s and early fifties. What a shame that he is invisible for most of this silly endeavor.

Be assured that this is no "Invisible Man." Claude Rains was a great actor and he was superb in the excellent movie. This one is lightweight and silly.

Movies like this and "Topper," as well as "Blithe Spirit" suffer today from something fro which they cannot be blamed: We are very much accustomed to people disappearing and reappearing and voices coming from nowhere while household objects are moved: We grew up on "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie." Edward Everett Horton gets billing under Lynn and Jane Wyman, quite good playing Horton's daughter. But he is the central figure. And he is surprisingly unappealing. He dithers as usual but he is a scientist who seems to have no regard for life so long as he gets his experiments completed.

Willie Best, so often cast and directed to play the most embarrassing stereotype of a black man, here comes through better than many, certainly better than Horton: Before the tile (human) body disappears, Horton is experimenting on a monkey named Charlie.

His character shows no concern for the animal's well being or comfort. Best does.

The movie is entertaining enough but it is a one-note joke. As it moves on, its 72 minutes begin to feel as if they need a roadshow-style intermission -- during which much of the audience would flee..

(1941) The Body Disappears COMEDY

It has yuppie and jokester, Peter DeHaven (Jeffrey Lynn) engaged to be married and having a bachelor party with his friends, George "Doc" Appleby (Herbert Anderson), Terence Abbott (DeWolf Hopper) and Jimmie Barbour (David Bruce). When as soon as it was time to leave, the only person who was passed out was Peter. Because Peter earlier played some jokes on his friends, while he was passed out they decide to put one on him by letting him sleeping it off in the college morgue. It is during then Professor Reginald X Shotesbury (Edward Everett Horton) instructs his assistant, William (Willie Best) to go into the college morgue next door to carry a body out into his lab, and it happens to be Peter DeHaven. The professor then pricks a needle into him calling his discovery a breakthrough, and it was at this point Peter disappears or turns invisible- hence the title "The Body Disappears". This was also during the time, the professor's daughter, Joan Shotesbury (Jane Wyman) happens to come home too. She becomes his eventual love interest.

Very amusing comedy with many gags that involves Peter's invisibility. It begins to be routine and it gets better.

Due to a prank at his bachelor party, Jeffrey Lynn, who is a rich guy known in the society circle and who passed out drunk, gets put in the college science lab/morgue by his friends! When scientist, teacher, and eccentric Edward Everett Horton needs a body for experiments, he and assistant Willie Best takes Jeffrey Lynn's body. Jane Wyman is Horton's daughter who knows of Lynn and meets him, kind of. The side effect of the serum to bring Jeffrey back to life is that he disappears. And, the plot and the laughs take it from there. Miss Wyman and Jeffrey Lynn are fun in their roles and are very easy on the eyes, but this film really belongs to Mr. Horton and Willie Best who are great in their over-the-top portrayals. Despite the fact blacks were at times reduced to being afraid of ghosts, etc. and made fun of during this era in films, Willie Best is just great and you don't really feel at all that he is the butt of any meanness towards him. If anything, he is laughing along with everyone else. And, Mr. Horton seems to be enjoying himself very much in this madcap story which of course defies believability. It's a nice change to see him shine without the presence of Fred and Ginger. And another thing, Jeffrey's clothes don't disappear, so that means in order that no one sees clothes walking around by themselves that Jeffrey Lynn is, well,.... With a crazy ending and last scene, this is one invisible man you just have to see for yourself.

In addition to the original "Invisible Man" and its later sequels, Universal Studios made some comedic versions of the Invisible Man stories. "The Invisible Girl" was a comedy starring John Barrymore, there was "Abbott & Costello Meet the Invisible Man" and here we have "The Body Disappears"...yet another comedy using the same invisibility gimmick.

The story begins in a courtroom and the story is told through flashbacks as the folks testify. Apparently, they believe someone killed Peter (Jeffery Lynn) and they explain how he's not dead...just invisible. What follows is a silly story that is extremely enjoyable and cute...and well worth seeing.

Body Disappears, The (1941)

** (out of 4)

Weak Warner comedy was released the same year as the much better THE INVISIBLE WOMAN from Universal. In this film a professor (Edward Everett Horton) makes a serum that will bring the dead back to life. He accidentally puts it in a man (Jeffrey Lynn) who he thought was dead but since he wasn't it turns him invisible instead. I had heard a few good things about this one over the years but having actually seen it now I must admit that I found it to be quite boring from start to finish. I seems that the cast knew they were working with a bad script and went into overdrive in terms of trying to keep the energy up but it really doesn't work here. The biggest fault is the actual screenplay that has one lame invisible joke after another. I don't think THE INVISIBLE WOMAN is a masterpiece or anything close but it at least knew had to write for some good and funny jokes. The screenplay here seems to have been written in the matter of hours as there's never really any clear focus on what it wants to do or what type of humor it really wants to try for. Horton is full of energy and isn't too bad in his role but he doesn't get much to work with. Lynn is wasted and pretty much only lends his voice. Jane Wyman plays the daughter of the scientist but isn't given much and even Willie Best doesn't get any good lines. The special effects aren't any better, although they're not as bad as I was expecting. Whenever anything invisible is on the screen you can see the outline of their body but the center portions of them are pretty clear and hard to see. The film runs a brief 72-minutes but it feels at least a half-hour longer. Fans of sci-fi who must see everything in the genre might want to check this out but others should stay clear.

I know the movie The Body Disappears is like an Invisible Woman parody. I think this is a great movie to watch. Even if they made a remake of this movie, Carmen Electra, Megan Fox, Charlize Theron, Natalie Portman, Anne Hathaway, Shannon Elizabeth, Tara Reid or Mena Suvari would be terrific to play Jane Wymann's character. This movie makes me laugh anyhow. I hope this movie comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray because it is the kind of classic invisible woman movie to watch. Maybe Warner Brothers studios would love to make a modern remake of The Body Disappears. Both the original and remake, if they will make a remake will make me laugh out loud.