"The Invisible Man" (1933) -- Initial Thoughts

I watched The Invisible Man (1933) for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and my real takeaway simply is: wow.

I got it from the library to watch with my mom and, as I started it up after I had put my teens to bed, she said to me, "This isn't going to give me nightmares, is it?"  I was like, "Mom, I haven't seen this before either.  But we've both read the book.  And it was made in 1933.  How scary can it be?  The special effects will probably make us laugh!"

I was half right and half wrong.  It wasn't scary in the slightest.  But the special effects?  They were most impressive and didn't make us laugh once.

The film begins when a mysterious stranger (Claude Rains) all bundled up against the snow arrives in a small English inn and pub.

He asks to rent a room, and to have supper served to him there, which leads to rampant speculation amongst the pub's regulars.  We may not have laughed at the movie's special effects, but we definitely laughed a lot while watching this movie!  It has lots of humorous parts, especially revolving around the pub's landlord and landlady.

Speaking of the landlady (Una O'Connor), she surprises the stranger at his supper, and he snatches up a napkin to cover his lower face quickly before she can see him.

She finds this most shocking and leaves in a huff.  But she would have been much more shocked if he hadn't!

He lowers his napkin after she leaves, revealing to us that... this is the Invisible Man, and boy howdy, is he ever invisible!!!

Now, thanks to the internet and film historians, I know in my head that they achieved this effect by having Claude Rains wear a black body stocking sort of thing with other clothes on top of it and filming him in front of a black cloth, and then they superimposed that over a background.  Something like this, yes.  But it is still breathtakingly cool!

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Great Britain, a scientist (Henry Travers) and his pretty daughter Flora (Gloria Talbott) are worried because one of his assistants has gone missing, and he was courting Flora, and she thinks he would surely not have left her without saying goodbye, right?

Well, we don't really have to wonder who that assistant is, or why he left so abruptly.  He's holed up now in this little inn, working madly away at figuring out how to reverse his condition.

The landlady hates her new lodger because he threatens people if they try to get in his room and even throws things at them, sometimes pushes them down the stairs.  Her husband is more concerned about getting a drink quick while his wife isn't looking than he is about pressing charges, though.

The police decide to intervene.  They burst into the stranger's room and demand he take off his disguise.  So he obliges.  

Once again, even when you pause and screencap it, these effects are so incredible!

Bit by bit, he removes all his clothing until he has nothing left but his shirt.  

He dances around them mockingly, then slips off the shirt and runs away unseen.  Now there's an invisible naked man loose, which terrifies absolutely everyone.

Flora's dad confides in his other assistant, Arthur, about what his protege had been working on and how dangerous some of the substances he'd used could be.

Arthur wants to get together with Flora himself, so he figures it's good riddance to bad rubbish until the Invisible Man shows up in his house and gets comfy there.  He's no longer interested in returning to visible form -- he wants to use his invisibility to get rich, to terrorize the authorities, to do whatever he wants to do.  He goes on a crime spree with spectacular results, and ends up back at that same inn.

There are a multitude of constables after him by then, and they converge on the inn, trying to capture him somehow.  The Invisible Man makes a desperate bid for freedom, and... is it really SPOILAGE if a book is 128 years old and a movie is 92 years old?  Well, if it is, skip to the shot of The End and don't read what I write between now and then.

Flora is distraught.  They finally find the Invisible Man by tracking his footprints in the snow, and are forced to shoot him before he can kill again.  Flora and her father rush to his bedside, for they're pretty sure he is dying.   

When he dies, the Invisible Man becomes visible again at last, leaving us with the biggest shock yet: Claude Rains Does Not Have a Mustache!!!  I repeat, it's a mustacheless Claude Rains, folks!  What?!

It's been a while since I read The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells, but from what I remember, this movie actually sticks really close to what happens in the book.  Unlike a lot of horror pictures made from classic books in the 1930s, it doesn't take a few character names and some story beats and make something new up around those, which is really refreshing.

This has been my contribution to the Early Shadows and Precode Horror Blogathon hosted this week by the Classic Movie Blog Association.  Be sure to click on that link or the blogathon button to read the other contributions by association members!

An Autumnal Sunshine Blogger Award

Cecilia at Craft, Coffee, and Cake has tagged me with a Sunshine Blogger Award!  Thank you, Cecilia!

Rules:

1. Display the award’s official logo somewhere on your blog. 
2. Thank the person who nominated you. (Thank you again, Liz.) 
3. Provide a link to your nominator’s blog. 
4. Answer your nominator’s questions. 
5. Nominate up to 11 bloggers. 
6. Ask your nominees 11 questions. 
7. Notify your nominees by commenting on at least one of their blog post

Cecilia's Questions:

1. If you had to live out the events in a book as the main character, which book would you choose? 

I'd like to be Miss Mary Russell in The Beekeeper's Apprentice for a run through the book, and get to be mentored and befriended by Sherlock Holmes.

2. Favourite weird combination of flavours that everyone else hates? 

Hmm.  I don't make them often, but I do enjoy peanut butter and onion sandwiches.

3. Whom are your favourite actor and actress? 

John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara!  How lucky I am -- they made five movies together!

4. If you had all the money in the world to buy an outfit for a ball, what would you wear? (The sky's the limit for this one - you can wear any dress, shoes, bag, hairstyle you like!) 

I'd wear anything from White Christmas that would look nice on me -- probably any of Rosemary Clooney's outfits.  These are two of my favorites:

5. Quote from a film that makes you smile/laugh? 

So many!  Basically every single line from Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), which we quote alllll the time.  "I don't really have much to say about old Millard, as he only arrove amongst us a few days ago and was promptly struck down by whatever deadly disease it was that struck him down" tends to be a big favorite, oddly enough.

6. Social situation from a book/film to which you completely relate? 

Again, so many!  How to choose one?  Maybe, let's go with the exchange in The Avengers (2012) where Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is confused by Nick Fury's (Samuel L. Jackson) casual mention of "flying monkeys," and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is all pleased with himself for understanding the reference.  I have been all three of those characters in various situations like that, at different times.

7. Most inspiring quote from a non-religious book? 

I mean, choosing just one is almost impossible.  I do find this line from The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery to be very inspiring, though:

She brushed the old years and habits and inhibitions away from her like dead leaves. She would not be littered with them.

(From my Instagram)

8. What personal quality do you think, if everyone possessed it, would make the biggest difference to the world? 

Cheerfulness.

9. You have to have one antagonist from a novel tag along with you for the next six months. Who would it be? 

Oh my.  How about Severus Snape from the Harry Potter books?  He's a dear favorite of mine, but Harry certainly considers him an antagonist in every single book.  And, odd as this might seem, I don't think I would mind having him living in my house for half a year.  If he got sarcastic about my cooking, I would get sarcastic back.  If he ridiculed my coffee, I'd have an excuse to buy an espresso machine and teach him how to use it.  I'd introduce him to chocolate-chip pancakes and peppermint mocha and sitting outside on the swing reading a book.  Maybe I'd even manage to make him smile once or twice.

10. Can you speak another language? If so, which one? If not, which one would you like to learn? 

I can speak a little bit of German.

11. Would you rather be an amazing homemaker and housekeeper, or be able to write beautiful poetry?

I can write poetry already, and I enjoy doing homemaker things like cooking and baking and arranging nice flowers for the dining room table and switching out some decorations with the seasons... so I pick some kind of magical spell that will turn me into a better housekeeper!  Because I am not good at keeping my house clean and tidy like I ought to be.

Now, it's my turn :-D

My Questions:

1. Thanksgiving or Halloween?

2. Candy apples or caramel apples?

3. Hot apple cider or cold apple cider?

4. Walnuts or almonds?

5. Pecan pie or pumpkin pie?

6. Caramel corn or Chex mix?

7. Bonfire or a fire in a fireplace?

8. Hiking or camping?

9. Canoeing or kayaking?

10. Sweaters or hoodies?

11. Gloves or mittens?

I Nominate:

Anyone who wants to answer these!  I haven't had much time for blogging lately, as you might have noticed, so I'm not going to pick anyone for this.  If it looks fun to you, consider yourself tagged!

"Chocolat" (2000)

How is it possible that Chocolat (2000) is twenty-five years old now?  Wow.  I remember hanging a magazine ad for it on my dorm room wall.  I didn't manage to see it in the theater, but some college friends and I rented it as soon as it came to video, and if I hadn't already been a Johnny Depp fan before that, boy howdy, I would have been by the end of that viewing.  And same goes for Judi Dench.  They're both absolutely perfect in this movie -- honestly, everyone is!  

At its core, Chocolat is about finding a balance between discipline and indulgence.  If you are all discipline like the rigid Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina), or all indulgence like the abusive Serge Muscat (Peter Stormare), you're going to bring a lot of grief to others and yourself.  Even the heroine, Vianne (Juliette Binoche) swings from one to the other too much before finding her balance by the end.  The same goes for all the other main characters.  You have to stand on both feet to balance, knowing when to be disciplined and when to indulge in something fun or enjoyable.

I really love how Chocolate is framed as almost a sort of fairy tale.  Once upon a time, a woman named Vianne and her daughter Anouk (Victoire Thivisol) blow into a sleepy little French village on the earliest wings of springtime.  Vianne rents a vacant shop and revitalizes it with paint and love.  The locals are excited by having something new in town, even if it's just a new patisserie (aka bakery).  

But it's not a new patisserie.  It's a chocolaterie.  Opening just at the beginning of Lent, the forty days that lead up to Easter which Roman Catholics traditionally observe by "giving something up," or abstaining from some specific enjoyable thing (often meat, sometimes sweets -- it really depends on the person).  "Giving something up for Lent" is supposed to be a way to help a believer focus throughout the day on what Jesus gave up in order to win their eternal salvation from sin, death, and Hell.  But, too often, it gets turned into a pietistic outward act to make a person look good in the eyes of their friends and neighbors (or their local judgey minor aristocrat).  In this little village, everyone is expected to give up all sweets, it seems.  And yet, Vianne does a pretty good business.

This village is governed by the Comte de Reynaud, who makes it his business to know everything about everyone, or so he thinks.  He knows everything about the outward appearances of everyone's lives, anyway.  He's a one-man morality police, and even writes sermons for Pere Henri (Hugh O'Conor), the mild-mannered local priest.  

The Comte instructs Pere Henri to tell everyone in the village not to patronize Vianne's store.  Not only is she flouting convention by trying to sell delicious sweets during Lent, she has a daughter and has never been married.  She's a ruined woman who's going to ruin the whole town.  Repentance is a word the Comte likes to throw around, but he's very fuzzy on the ideas of forgiveness and living a renewed life.  

Vianne makes a few friends, like crusty old Armand (Judi Dench) and troubled Josephine Muscat (Lena Olin), as well as a sweet old widow (Leslie Caron) and her devoted would-be suitor (John Wood).  But her daughter Anouk is bullied at school and struggles to make new friends, relying on her imaginary kangaroo to keep her company.  

The last straw for the Comte comes in the form of a band of gypsies, among them a roguish musician and handyman called Roux (Johnny Depp).  Vianne befriends the gypsies.  The gypsies are even more Suspiciously Different than Vianne.  A careless comment dropped by the Comte in the hearing of a desperate and angry man leads to a dangerous and almost deadly crime, and the Comte suddenly begins to see that perhaps he's been terribly wrong about a good many things.  At the same time, Vianne realizes that her too-indulgent parenting and lifestyle comes with a potentially terrible price.

An epic (and comic) fall from grace puts the Comte back on the level with all the ordinary people of the village, particularly in his own eyes.  And Vianne has learned that indulging her whims and wishes, and relying only on herself instead of allowing others to truly befriend and help her, is also an unbalanced way to live.  

The movie closes with the whole village celebrating Easter, which is absolutely fitting in every way since Easter is the celebration of the day when Jesus rose from the dead, proving that he had balanced God's scales of justice and mercy for all time.

Is this movie family friendly?  Not exactly.  Some characters use double entendres.  We see the evidence of a man's physical abuse of his wife.  There are several suggestive moments and a fade-to-black love scene.  There's one scene of fairly intense physical violence and a scary fire.  An old woman dies, and a child finds her body.  And there are a handful of cuss words.  Not to mention a chocolate sculpture of a naked woman, although it's got a classic art sort of thing going on, it's not meant to be erotic.  I've told my teens they can watch it after they graduate from high school.

This is my contribution to the Food and Film Blogathon hosted this week by 18 Cinema Lane.  Check out Sally's blog for all the other delicious contributions.

Ten Favorite American Civil War Movies

Every week, I watch a movie with my teens over lunch.  During the school year, they take turns picking the movie to watch each week, but during the summer, I get to choose them.  This summer, I chose to have us watch all kinds of movies set during the American Civil War.  I realized while out at the Manassas Battlefield on a field trip last spring that, when I was a kid and teen, I had a really great grasp of the major events of the American Civil War because I had seen quite a few movies set during it, particularly the mini-series The Blue and the Gray (1982), which encompasses the whole war.  And my kids didn't have that because we simply hadn't watched those movies yet.  Sure, we had studied the war repeatedly during school over the years, but it's harder to envision how everything fits together when you are reading about it.

So, we spent the whole summer watching movies set during that war, plus a few that take place shortly after it but are strongly influenced by it.  I eventually added a couple more to the list above as we went, and we didn't manage to watch quite all of them, but my teens now have a good grasp of the basic sequence of events in the American Civil War.  

Inspired by our summer viewing, I decided to share my list of my Top Ten Favorite American Civil War movies.  Here they are!

1. The Blue and the Gray (1982) Yeah, yeah, technically a miniseries.  Anyway!  This is a masterful piece of storytelling that focuses on a young Virginia artist (John Hammond) who has abolitionist leanings and family on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.  He and his extended family and friends end up mixed up in just about every major piece of the war, from John Brown's execution to the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.  It delves thoroughly and entertainingly into the difficulty of a war fought between brothers, cousins, and friends.  I grew up watching it every year or two, and I absolutely credit it with giving me a thorough grasp of the main sequence of events of the war.  Also, nobody but Gregory Peck should ever be allowed to play President Lincoln.

2. Gettysburg (1993)  A talented ensemble cast shows many of the events leading up to and during the battle that is now considered the turning point of the American Civil War. Jeff Daniels turns in a particularly wonderful performance as Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, one of my personal heroes.

3. Little Women (1994)  Four sisters grow up in New England under their mother's guidance while their father is away with the Union Army.  People don't tend to think of this as a Civil War story, but the war influences everything in their daily lives, sometimes more overtly and sometimes subtly.

4. How the West was Won (1962)  A sprawling saga tracing the lives of two sisters (Debbie Reynolds and Carroll Baker) who move west as young women, and the lives of their husbands and children.  The Civil War is technically only shown onscreen briefly, but its echoes sound out across the rest of the movie as it follows the son of one sister, a veteran who heads west and uses his experiences in the war to inform his decisions from then on.

5. Shenandoah (1965)  A Virginia farmer (James Stewart) insists on his large family never getting involved in the Civil War that rages around them, but there is no way for him to keep them isolated from it forever. 

6. Friendly Persuasion (1956)  A Quaker family tries to remain neutral during the Civil War, but there is no way for them to remain uninvolved forever.  Anthony Perkins is so likeable in this.

7. The Horse Soldiers (1969)  A Union Cavalry colonel (John Wayne) sneaks his troops deep into Confederate territory to destroy the railroads and hasten Union victory, but he has this pesky medical officer (William Holden) along who keeps causing problems.

8. Harriet (2019)  Biopic of Harriet Tubman (Cynthia Erivo) that portrays her escape from slavery and courageous rescue of so many others.  I ended up not watching this one with my teens this summer because it is pretty stern stuff and I think my youngest won't be ready for it for another year or so, but it's an excellent movie.

9. Gone with the Wind (1939)  Eating radishes straight out of the ground after drinking whiskey on an empty stomach convinces a spoiled Southern belle (Vivien Leigh) that she will do anything necessary to avoid repeating that sensation.

10. The Undefeated (1969)  A former Union cavalryman (John Wayne) teams up with a former Confederate officer (Rock Hudson) to get a herd of horses and a wagon train of people safely to Mexico.  Technically takes place just after the war, but the war echoes all through the film, so I say it counts, and it's my list, so there ;-)

Have you seen any of these?  Do you have other favorite Civil War movies?  Are you aghast that I left Gods and Generals (2003) off this list?  Do tell!

Free Book Shipping for National Day of the Cowgirl

Today is National Day of the Cowgirl!  AND I got my author copies of Follow the Lonesome Trail, which means I can start selling signed copies.

Since it happens to be such a cool day, I am offering FREE shipping (to US addresses only) on ALL of my books ordered directly from me!  This offer is only valid on September 15, 2025, and only on books ordered via this order form.  

This could be a great chance to pick up some Christmas presents for readers in your life :-D

Alan Ladd and My Writing

It's Alan Ladd's birthday today :-D 

This year, to celebrate, I'm going to share about the ways that Alan Ladd has shaped my writing and my books.

When I write fiction, I see and hear the story in my head like a movie.  I can replay scenes, move the camera angles, rewrite lines, and so on -- I see and hear it all in my imagination, and I write it down from there.  Because I love movies, I tend to use actors and actresses as a kind of jumpstart for my imagination, and often "cast" specific stars in different roles.  Eventually, the characters step a bit away from who I have cast as them and come to life in their own ways, but it's a good way to get a book started, for me.

(If you're ever curious about exactly whom I have cast as different characters in my books, I have Pinterest boards for all my books with character choices, pictures of setting and clothing and objects that I have saved as I research, and so on.)

I fell for Alan Ladd hard back in February of 2016.  At that time, I was working on rewrites for my Sleeping Beauty retelling, The Man on the Buckskin Horse, which had won a contest and was to be published in the anthology Five Magic Spindles.  I didn't actually recast any of the characters as him, since they were all very much themselves by that point, but he did help me out with one scene.

One of the changes the editors had me make after I won the contest was to give my "handsome prince" character, the gunfighter Luke Palmer, a backstory.  And I needed to write a scene where Palmer explains his past to Miss Emma, my "fairy godmother" character.  I banged my head against that scene for the longest time because Palmer Did Not Want To Share His Trauma.  At all.  Not a bit.  And I finally threw my hands up in disgust, booted my usual actor for him out the door, and tried running the scene in my head with Alan Ladd in the character instead.

And the character sat down, got a little quiet, and then reeled off this heartfelt speech about how his experiences as a Civil War surgeon had led to his present job as a gunfighter for hire.  One writing session.  Bam.  Whole scene, perfect and complete.  And, when I reread that book (because, yes, I do reread my books -- I write them because I want to read them!), I see and hear Palmer as his tall, dark self... except for that scene, where he flips into quiet and fair Alan Ladd.

Well, I had such a good time working with an imaginary Alan Ladd in my head while rewriting The Man on the Buckskin Horse, I knew I wanted to write him again.  So, when I was casting my Little Red Riding Hood retelling, Cloaked, I put him in as the woodcutter character, Hauer.  And Hauer absolutely stole my heart.  This is Alan Ladd in his 50s, which he never quite reached in real life, and I loved getting to imagine him a bit older and with a lot of life ahead yet, even if only as a fictional character.  (Hauer would obviously be a bit older than in the photo above, but it captures the Hauerness of Hauer too well to use something else.)

I even dedicated Cloaked to Alan's memory, and a tradition of dedicating my Once Upon a Western books to a Classic Hollywood actor or actress was born.

It's pretty easy to know which character I cast Alan Ladd as in my Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling, Dancing and Doughnuts, if you know his full name is Alan Walbridge Ladd.  I gave Sheriff Gideon Walbridge that last name as a placeholder because I didn't have a name for him initially, and it stuck.  Sheriff Walbridge is Alan in his 40s, wise and starting to mellow, but still sharp and ready for trouble if it comes his way.

I was so giddy when I realized that Hauer could show up again in One Bad Apple, my Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs retelling.  It takes place a decade before Cloaked, and I spent a long time scrutinizing the personal history I have for Hauer to make sure he could be there in Missouri in 1873.  I tried not to tell too many people ahead of time that he was going to show up again in it so he would be a fun surprise for initial readers, and the reactions I got to his return were everything I hoped for.  

Because I love Hauer dearly, I am especially pleased that he got to be the first character to show up in more than one Once Upon a Western book.  The little ties and crossovers will keep coming as the series lengthens, I promise!

Dan McLeod in my Beauty and the Beast retelling My Rock and My Refuge is the kind of friend we all should have.  He's had so many sad things happen in his life, but he never lets them get in the way of being a good friend to those around him.  I love his quiet dignity, his determination to do anything rather than lose another son, and the fact that he is both soft and resilient.  I want to write more characters like that.  

I have loved the last name McLeod since I was a kid and first saw the movie El Dorado (1966), in which John Wayne's character has a frenemy named McLeod.  I only heard it pronounced, I didn't see it spelled, and thought it must be spelled McCloud, which seemed to me like the absolute coolest name ever.  I even gave it to a character in a story I was writing at the time.  I was super disappointed to later learn how it is actually spelled... but I still love the way the name sounds, so I used it here for a character with lofty ideals and a high moral character, who lives high in the mountains.  Like a cloud.

If you look at the Pinterest board for A Noble Companion, my Ugly Duckling retelling, you'll see lots of photos of a young Ewan McGregor, and not one of Alan Ladd.  That's because Alan was my original casting for Javier Moncada, the love interest.  I wrote the first couple of drafts with him in mind, but then switched Javier to Ewan McGregor because he was a better physical fit for what the character as I was writing him.  But I still hear all of Javier's dialog in Alan's voice when I reread the book.  I loved finally getting to write him as a younger character!  

And then I went right back to writing him older in my short story "Safekeeping," which is in the anthology Follow the Lonesome Trail.  He just has a bit part, and barely any lines, as the weary Dr. Masterson who drinks too much.  In a way, that's me kind of addressing Alan Ladd's own struggles with alcohol, which is also something a lot of people I know have dealt with.  It's not a big focus of the story, but it's there, and my own headcanon involves Dr. Masterson eventually moving away from town and getting (and staying) sober with the help of his daughter-in-law.  

Those last two books are not part of my Once Upon a Western series, but the book I'm about to start writing is!  It's a retelling of The Steadfast Tin Soldier, it involves a Civil War veteran amputee, and Alan Ladd is once again playing a supporting character in it.  I think his character is in his late twenties, a bit older than the main character, and again something of a mentor, because I just really love writing him that way, I guess!

Beyond that?  Who knows!  Will I one day write a book without Alan Ladd in it?  I mean, yeah, it could happen.  It probably will, one day.  But for now, you can expect to keep seeing characters show up in my books who look, sound, and behave like characters he often played.  Because my imagination isn't tired of him yet :-)