On a stormy night, a group of people—Lady Stevens (Beulah Bondi), her husband Sir Francis (Walter Kingsford), their nephew Ronald (Frank Lawton) and Dr. Benet (Bela Lugosi)—arrive at a castle in the Carpathians to witness an experiment by Dr. Janos Rukh (Boris Karloff, sporting curly hair and 'tache), who believes that a ray from a nebula in the Andromeda system will reveal secrets about the earth's distant history. The guests are astounded when Rukh shows them a projection of a meteor hitting Africa, an event that occurred a few thousand million years in the past.
Convinced that the meteor has left deposits of a previously unknown element, Rukh and his visitors launch an expedition to the dark continent, joined on the venture by Rukh's beautiful wife Diane (Frances Drake); going on ahead of the others, Rukh locates the element—Radium X—but suffers from radiation poisoning in the process, which leaves him deadly to the touch and just a little unhinged.
When I was a kid, I had a model figure of Lugosi as Dracula that had glow-in-the-dark hands and face; in this film, it is Karloff who has the luminous head and hands, the result of exposure to the radioactive element with which he creates an all-purpose ray that can both kill and cure. As fun as the sight of a glowing Karloff is, if it wasn't for the teaming of the Frankenstein star with Lugosi, I imagine that this clunky sci-fi potboiler from Universal would have been all but forgotten by now, suffering as it does from a meandering pseudo-scientific plot that can't decide what it wants to be (sci-fi, jungle adventure, horror, or murder mystery), a rather leaden pace, and a dull illicit romance between Diane and Ronald.
3.5 out of 10, not rounded up to 4 because the ray doesn't actually make things invisible.
Convinced that the meteor has left deposits of a previously unknown element, Rukh and his visitors launch an expedition to the dark continent, joined on the venture by Rukh's beautiful wife Diane (Frances Drake); going on ahead of the others, Rukh locates the element—Radium X—but suffers from radiation poisoning in the process, which leaves him deadly to the touch and just a little unhinged.
When I was a kid, I had a model figure of Lugosi as Dracula that had glow-in-the-dark hands and face; in this film, it is Karloff who has the luminous head and hands, the result of exposure to the radioactive element with which he creates an all-purpose ray that can both kill and cure. As fun as the sight of a glowing Karloff is, if it wasn't for the teaming of the Frankenstein star with Lugosi, I imagine that this clunky sci-fi potboiler from Universal would have been all but forgotten by now, suffering as it does from a meandering pseudo-scientific plot that can't decide what it wants to be (sci-fi, jungle adventure, horror, or murder mystery), a rather leaden pace, and a dull illicit romance between Diane and Ronald.
3.5 out of 10, not rounded up to 4 because the ray doesn't actually make things invisible.