aimless-46 The 26 half-hour episodes of the science fiction series "The Invisible Man" were originally broadcast on British ATV during the 1958-1959 season. It should not to be confused with the recent Sci-Fi Channel series of the same name, which featured Vincent Ventresca. Nor is it to be mistaken for the David McCallum series, which played on NBC in 1975. This one is the granddaddy of "The Invisible Man" TV franchise and is about as obscure a television series as you are likely find. I'm sure there is an interesting reason why they saw fit to release something this unknown on DVD, but for now your guess is as good as mine. It was a pretty decent program for 1958 but is more a curiosity than anything else 50 years later. It was actually a precursor to the James Bond craze a of the mid-1960's. Ralph Smart was the producer and he and his writing team would follow up "The Invisible Man" with "Danger Man"; which Patrick McGoohan would later follow up with "The Prisoner". Jim Turner plays Dr. Peter Brady, a young British scientist who is accidentally turned permanently invisible. While hoping for the discovery of a process that will reverse his condition, Brady kills time helping MI-5 or some other British intelligence service with their espionage operations in Europe. The series is actually pretty faithful to the spirit of the H.G. Wells story as Brady walks around on camera dressed in an overcoat and gloves, with bandages covering his face. The gimmick was that during the show's original run, it was never revealed that Turner was the actor playing the title role. In fact this stayed secret until the 1980's. Apparently the identity mystery was not enough to hook viewers and the series was not renewed for a second season. But it left quite a legacy as the spy genre (both parody and serious) soon replaced the western as the primary action adventure focus of television. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

sullymangolf 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.

brechtbug Warning.....Contains Mild Spoilers! This version of "Invsible Man" has the distinct advantage of not having the scientist , Peter Brady, go slowly insane. Brady turns transparent due to a "radiation" leak while exposing a guinea pig to an unspecified element. He spends the rest of the series constantly looking for a formula to make himself reappear, has a tantrum or two, but otherwise maintains a rather sunny disposition. After an initial misunderstanding with the British Government he moves in with his widowed sister and freckle faced niece and unofficially puts up a shingle to help any passer-by who needs invisible espionage assistance. The show is a little like "The Saint" in that everyone always recognizes the famous Simon Templar yet he is still able to work undercover assignments. The first few "Invisible Man" episodes has the British Government hoping to keep Brady under wraps but after a relatively harmless auto accident "the cat is out of the bag". The press starts flocking to Brady's sister's house and goes nuts trying to figure out how to photograph our unseen hero. I was impressed by the amount of exterior location shoots around London making this series refreshingly not studio enclosed. I loved the fact that Brady's sister seems totally comfortable driving him to each assignment and exposing her daughter to dangerous individuals while always having dinner served on time. The special effects are minimal - a few floating chairs, reusable head bandage unwrapping shots and dangling cigarettes, but hey, you either go with the concept or you don't.It's also good to know that Brady's cotton lab coat and shoes became invisible with him so he can avoid the chill of creeping around in the buff and stepping on broken glass.

CommandoCody 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.