As the traumatized contractor Jevries in Farrow’s misleadingly titled THE INVISIBLE MENACE.
mission and drapes his sword over a Christian homily and replaces hymns and lessons with a san-hsien-playing Chinese singer. The Anglo- Indian Karloff, unlike the Swedish Warner Oland, didn’t give the same performance every time he was cast as an Asian: his Warlord Fang is very different from his Fu Manchu and Mr. Wong. However, screenwriter Crane Wilbur (MYSTERI- OUS ISLAND) simply puts an Eastern slant on all the clichés about crass, cynical, sentimental Mexican bandit chieftains. Vladimir Sokoloff plays (very well) a Chinese general assassinated on Fang’s orders in an early, cinematic knife-in- the-dark scene before we get to the mission and it becomes obvious that the script is based on a play, but some actual Asians appear as well. Ri- chard Loo (MR. WONG IN CHINATOWN) is good as Fang’s loyal, sinister lieutenant, an Asian- American gangster who speaks perfect Warner Bros. English. The only extra on the disc is a wonderful trailer for WEST OF SHANGHAI which promises “It’s Boris (Baby-Scarer) Karloff as the fightin’est, shootin’est, meanest bad man in the whole orient!”
Farrow and Wilbur also crafted THE INVISIBLE MENACE (1938, 54m 37s), another exercise in
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filmed theater, from Ralph Spencer Zink’s play WITHOUT WARNING, which Warners would do again in 1943 as MURDER ON THE WATERFRONT. The title suggests Warners were hoping to pull in hor- ror-starved fans with a little bait-and-switch (Karloff had, of course, starred in THE INVISIBLE RAY, 1936). It turns out that the menace responsible for a torture-murder on a military outpost is merely invisible because the base is on an island in a har- bor shrouded in fog. Jevries (Karloff), white-haired and traumatized by events depicted in a flashback which breaks the claustrophobia, is a civilian con- tractor suspected but (spoiler!) obviously a red herring in the case. Comedy relief is provided by Eddie Craven and Marie Wilson as a GI and his new bride, who get a glimpse of the invisible men- ace as he’s running from the scene of the crime— Craven’s character name is Edward Pratt, which was Karloff’s father’s name. There’s foggy, shad- owy atmosphere and a decent roster of suspicious character actors (Regis Toomey, Henry Kolker, Cy Kendall, Charles Trowbridge, Frank Faylen) but it’s a thin mystery (the macguffin is gun-running). Even at its abbreviated length (the IMDb lists John Ridgely in a deleted role), it drags somewhat. Karloff is obviously doubled in a big fight at the
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