Invisible Voyeurs

I was watching a film called The Invisible Maniac (1990) over the weekend and it occurred to me that, cheap sex comedy/horror crossover that it might be, the film was at least realistic in its depiction of what the average guy would do if he actually did have the power of invisibility.  In the movie, a voyeuristic kid who is caught by his mother using his telescope to watch a female neighbour getting undressed, grows up to be a mad scientist who claims that he has developed a serum which can turn living beings invisible.  When a demonstration goes awry and the top scientists observing it laugh at him, the mad scientist murders them with his bare hands and ends up incarcerated.  Inevitably, he escapes and under a new identity takes a job as a science teacher at a high school.  Perfecting his serum, he of course uses it to spy on various nubile female students (all of whom look at least twenty five) in the locker rooms and showers.  Which is the bit I find realistic because, let's face it, we'd all be tempted, wouldn't we?  Oh come on - you know you would.  It doesn't matter how enlightened and liberal you claim to be, how much a 'new man' and down with women's issues you think you are, given the opportunity to ogle some bare breasts, buttocks etc, without fear of detection, retribution or judgement, you'd take it.  For, at heart, we're all voyeur: face it, most of modern popular entertainment - film, TV, even social media - are based around the idea of living vicariously through observing the lives of others.  Don't believe me?  Just look at the rise of so called 'reality TV', surely the most nakedly voyeuristic form of entertainment.

But would you go any further, like the character in the film?  Would you be tempted to cop an invisible feel, a quick grope or a phantom slapping of the buttocks?  You wouldn't even have to be invisible in a girls' locker room or showers - it might be on a crowded bus or train.  If no-one could see you, would you risk a grope?  Because that's the point at which you cross the line from the creepy thrills of voyeurism to sexual assault.  But the point I'm making is that, no matter how deep we bury them, no matter how much we 'civilise' ourselves, certain primal urges lie deep in all of us, just waiting for some opportunity to express themselves, without fear of retribution.  The urge to look, to watch others, is one of the most basic of these - doubtless derived from our ancestors' time as hunters, looking for prey while simultaneously trying to assess potential threats.  Combined with human curiosity, we end up with voyeuristic urge.  Of course, the irony is that if you were invisible, then you wouldn't actually be able to look at anything, let alone naked women - human sight is based around the ability of light to enter the eye and be registered by the receptors there, where it is translated into nerve impulses which are sent to the brain, (a crude explanation. I know, but adequate for our purposes).  To achieve invisibility in the way usually depicted in fiction, then light would have to pass through you completely, so it wouldn't be caught by the receptors in the eye, rendering you blind.  So, in reality, the invisible maniac of the movie would have been blundering around, feeling his way by touch.  Or grope.

Getting back to the film, The Invisible Maniac, it is pretty much what you'd expect from a low budget direct to video movie of its era.  There are plenty of bared breasts and behinds on view, a number of bizarre murders involving all of the methods you'd expect an invisible man to use.  Much of the effects work is actually OK.  The performances from the cast re highly variable, with most taking a pretty broad approach, but as the whole thing is played as parody anyway, that hardly matters.  In which regard, it does succeed in raising the odd smile and even snigger.  Overall, I have to say that it is a lot more entertaining than that invisible man film they released a few years ago.  I also learned something from the finale - that two invisible guys can, apparently see each other.  We live and learn.