Universal Monsters Movies Ranked
22. Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)
Bud and Lou are private detectives investigating a corrupt boxing racket and assist a wrongfully accused man (Arthur Franz) in procuring an invisibility serum to help solve his manager’s murder.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is probably the best, or at least the most consistently funny, of their horror parodies, but Abbott and Costello Meets the Invisible Man features one of the best comic set pieces of their career: a genius slapstick boxing match where Lou is being puppeteered by the Invisible Man.
With this scene as its centrepiece, who cares if some of the rest loses momentum?
Recommended for you: 10 of the Best Remakes
21. The Invisible Woman (1940)
A recently sacked model (Virginia Bruce) becomes a test subject for an invisibility device and uses it to get her own back on her boss and fight back against some inept criminals attempting to steal the miraculous invention.
The Invisible Woman is a knockabout slapstick comedy with some good jokes but some dated sexual politics.
Virginia Bruce seems to have fun in the lead role but comedian Charles Ruggles steals every scene he’s in as an acrobatically clumsy butler.
This film remains notable for an extended scene where our lead character strips completely naked for plot reasons, but crucially she is also invisible.
20. Revenge of the Creature (1955)
The Gill-man (Ricou Browning / Tom Hennesy) that was discovered in the Amazon is captured and taken to an aquarium in Florida to be studied, but soon escapes to pursue researcher Helen ((Lori Nelson), the woman who made a connection with him.
The first sequel to the last addition to the classic Universal monster canon recycles quite a few ideas and visuals from the first film but is fairly refreshing due to the decision to bring the otherworldly threat back to a then-contemporary USA.
It is this instalment in particular, as opposed to the original Creature from the Black Lagoon, that seems to have influenced Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning The Shape of Water (2017) in its twist on the “Beauty and the Beast” narrative.
How dare you put Dracula so far down. We shall have to fight this out in the SecondCutPod podcasts.