The Invisible Man (1933 film) The Invisible Man (1933 film) The Invisible Man is an American 1933 Pre-Code science fiction horror film directed by James Whale. It was based on H. G. Wells' science fiction novel "The Invisible Man", published in 1897, as adapted by R.C. Sherriff, Philip Wylie and Preston Sturges, whose work was considered unsatisfactory and who was taken off the project. Produced by Universal Pictures, the film stars Claude Rains, in his first American screen appearance, and Gloria Stuart. The film has been described as a "nearly perfect translation of the spirit of the book". It spawned a number of sequels, plus
The Invisible Man Griffin's notes; but since they are written in code, he is completely incapable of understanding them. Children's literature was a prominent genre in the 1890s. According to John Sutherland, Wells and his contemporaries such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling "essentially wrote boy's books for grown-ups." Sutherland identifies "The Invisible Man" as one such book. Wells said that his inspiration for the novella was "The Perils of Invisibility," one of the "Bab Ballads" by W. S. Gilbert, which includes the couplet "Old Peter vanished like a shot/but then - his suit of clothes did not." Another