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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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The Amazing Transparent Man (1960)

Rating: 3 Stars (out of 4)

See Through

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy The Amazing Transparent Man on DVD

Surely one of Edgar G. Ulmer's most wretched efforts, this extra-low budget sci-fi thriller stars Douglas Kennedy as a master safecracker with the not-so-subtle name of "Joey Faust." Maj. Paul Krenner (James Griffith) arranges to break him out of prison so that he can participate in some invisibility experiments, followed by some bank robberies. Unfortunately, everyone is able to effortlessly outwit everyone else, for the main reason that everyone seems pretty dumb. Marguerite Chapman plays the wisecracking dame whose allegiances keep switching. Ulmer wraps things up with an anti-nuke message! Despite all this looniness, there was a reason that Ulmer only worked in low-budget genre films: he was the best at it. Even something this ridiculous has its inventive charms, not least of which are the wonderfully chintzy invisibility effects. Ulmer shot this simultaneously with Beyond the Time Barrier.

Starring: Marguerite Chapman, Douglas Kennedy, James Griffith, Ivan Triesault, Boyd 'Red' Morgan, Carmel Daniel, Edward Erwin, Jonathan Ledford, Norman Smith, Patrick Cranshaw, Kevin Kelly, Dennis Adams, Stacy Morgan
Written by: Jack Lewis
Directed by: Edgar G. Ulmer
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 57 minutes
Date: October 3, 2008