Orloff Against the Invisible Man (1970)

You know, it's easy to become jaded when you watch as many schlocky films as I do - you begin to think that you've seen it all, that this stuff can no longer surprise you.  Then, out of the blue, you'll come across something that leaves you asking "What the Hell was that?"  Twice this past weekend I've experienced this reaction, both in reaction to films that I've stumbled across unexpectedly.  In one case, Tragic Ceremony (1972), I came in part way through a showing on American Horrors, which left me perplexed, intrigued and scratching my head as to what I had just seen.  My final verdict will have to wait until I've managed to see it all the way through (knowing American Horrors, it will turn up several more times this week).  I did, however, manage to see in its entirety 1970's Orloff Against the Invisible Man, (also known variously as Orloff's Invisible Man, The Invisible Dead, Orloff's Invisible Monster and Orloff Against the Invisible Dead - the original French title translates, literally, as Love Life of the Invisible Man).  As can be judged by the title, the film is attempting to pass itself off as some kind of continuation of Jess Franco's Dr Orloff character, who had featured in a number of sixties Euro horror films.  Indeed, the whole film seems to go out of its way to convince the viewer that it is a Jesus Franco film, sharing a look and style with many of his sixties Gothic schockers - it even stars Franco regular Howard Vernon as Orloff.  But, in reality, it is French production directed by Pierre Chevalier, who had been turning out B-movies since the fifties.

Rather than being Dr Orloff, this Orloff styles himself 'Professor' and lives, with his daughter and a couple of surly servants, in a castle shunned by the locals.  Something the local doctor discovers when he is summoned there - the coachman drops him off miles away in the rain, refusing to go any further.  It turns out that the maid has summoned the doctor on behalf of Orloff's daughter, who has been having some strange experiences with an unseen force.  Orloff then appears, to tell the doctor that his daughter is mad, but that he has created an invisible man, a superior being, destined to be first of its race which will eventually rule the earth - in the meantime, it just acts as his servant, carrying lamps and books around.  As it turns out, what Orloff has actually created is an invisible rapist.  Something which becomes obvious when the Professor tells the invisible entity to 'punish' the maid for calling the doctor - all her clothes are torn off as she is dragged into a cellar and assaulted by the creature.  Now, the sight of a woman being violently raped by an invisible assailant isn't something one sees, (or necessarily wants to see), everyday and you have to feel for the poor actress who had to simulate being sexually assaulted b by an unseen attacker.  When challenged by the doctor, the Professor calmly states that he wanted to see what his creation would do with a human woman.  Well, as far as the creature is concerned, the cork is now truly out of the bottle and his sexual cravings are unleashed - so he goes after the only other available woman, Orloff's daughter.  Chasing her into her bedroom, her nightdress is ripped off (naturally) before the beast starts feeling her up.  'Beast' turns out to be the appropriate description for, after throwing flour over it, the invisible assailant is revealed to be a man in an ape suit.

A revelation which means that director Chevalier hasn't just given us what is possibly the first invisible raping of a woman on celluloid, but has also got away with depicting bestiality.  Which is pretty astounding (as, indeed, are the scenes of women being molested by this invisible ape creature).  Having whacked the monster over the head with a heavy object, the doctor and the girl try and make their escape as the castle catches fire.  They run into Orloff, who tells them the monster has run amok and will no longer obey him, urging the couple to escape while he tries to deal with the creature.  Which he clearly doesn't as, having escaped, the doctor and the girl see the beast's footprints appear in the mud of the moat as it tries to get away into the forest.  The beast, however, falls foul of the (presumably) late Professor's pack of hounds, which corner it and tear it into invisible pieces.  Now, all of this only takes up the last twenty minutes or so of a seventy five minute film, (this is the DVD running time - it had an original release running time of ninety one minutes).  The bulk of the preceding hour or so mainly consists of the doctor taking ten minutes to even get to the castle, a lot of talking in drawing rooms and labs, some wandering around dark passageways and cellars and a series of rambling flash backs as the Professor tells the doctor how he came to create the invisible creature. Watching, you get the distinct impression that somebody had what they thought was a great idea for a Gothic sexploitation horror film involving an invisible rapist - unfortunately, they couldn't spin this idea out for more than fifteen minutes or so of script, so had to come up with an hour or so of padding.

Indeed, so rambling are the flash backs that you are frequently left wondering what on earth they have  to do with the rest of the plot.  They start with Orloff recalling how, several years earlier, his daughter had been declared dead and buried, only to have the house keeper and game keeper break into the family mausoleum in order to grave rob her of the jewels she was buried with.  (This includes an aside of the two servants plotting, with the house keeper displaying some nudity to tempt the bovine game keeper into doing her bidding).  An attempt to cut off the daughter's finger to free a ring shocks the girl from her catatonic state.  Despite having been stabbed by a panicking game keeper as he fled the tomb, the girl manages to return home and tell her father what happened.  He gives the game keeper a good thrashing and locks him in the dungeon, before going after the house keeper who is busy making her getaway.  After his dogs catch up with her, the Professor gives her a bloody good whipping, (which, inevitably, results in her top falling off, revealing her breasts - Chevalier is definitely developing his theme here), before dragging her back to the castle and an unspecified fate, (this might well have been dealt with in the missing fifteen minutes of footage).  With this having taken up a huge chunk of the film's running time, we're still none the wiser as to how and why Orloff created his invisible creature.  He makes some vague comments about having experimented on the game keeper (although he isn't the invisible creature - it is later revealed that he is still alive in the dungeons) and that the creature lives on fresh human blood (procured by the now degenerate and deranged gamekeeper by kidnapping villagers).  While we are given to understand that the invisible beast was originally a normal human, we never learn who he was or exactly how he was created by Orloff.

The truth is that it isn't just Orloff's explanation of his monster that is perfunctory, but the entire film.  It effectively tells two stories - the grave robbing servants and the rapist invisible monster - which are barely related and, worse, not terribly well developed.  To be fair, those fifteen minutes missing from the DVD print might fill in many of the plot's gaps, (indeed, the French language trailer seems to show an encounter in the dungeons between the gamekeeper and the invisible creature, which was absent from the English language version I saw).  The actors all seem on auto-pilot for most of the film - even the maid seems more than slightly bored at times during the monster's assault upon her, simply going through the motions.  Howard Vernon had played this sort of mad scientist so many times he could do it in his sleep by this point in his career - which is precisely what he proceeds to do.  For her part, Brigit Carva, playing Orloff's daughter, is frequently so subdued that she might have been hit over the head with a sandbag prior to each scene. The film also has serious pacing issues: to describe it as proceeding at walking pace would be unfair - it is more of a meandering stroll, that abruptly breaks into a sprint for the last fifteen minutes.  Yet, despite all of this, it is a perversely entertaining film - as if the meandering flashbacks weren't disorienting enough, the sudden lurch from mock-Franco Gothic titillation into full blown bizarre sexual violence in the last twenty minutes leaves the viewer utterly perplexed.  This climax is not only utterly insane, not to say surreal, but comes completely out of left field, with no warning whatsoever, providing a true 'What the fuck?' experience for the viewer.