Go Retire Psychiatrist

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

The Svengoolie show movie last night was “Invisible Agent” and this was released in 1942, directed by Edwin L. Marin and starred Ilona Massey (as Maria Sorenson); Jon Hall (as Frank Raymond); Peter Lorre (as Baron Ikito); J. Edward Bromberg (as Karl Heiser); and Sir Cedric Hardwicke (as Conrad Stauffer), whose voice and looks reminded me of some other movie, which turned out to be “The Ten Commandments” in which Hardwicke played Sethi, the king of the Pharaohs, a popular rock band known for the tune “King Tut.”

I’ve never seen any of the other Invisible Man movies, although a couple of years ago I saw a cameo of him (voiced by Vincent Price on the 1948 Abbott and Costello movie, “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”

Anyway, Frank Raymond is the man with the plan to use his invisibility drug and act as a secret agent to fight the Nazis and Japanese in World War II. It’s actually his grandfather’s recipe. Now that I mention “recipe,” that reminds me of why they used Braunschweiger and Miracle Whip in last night’s movie in the scene with Maria and Heiser having dinner.

Heiser kept getting Miracle Whip and Braunschweiger from the sandwiches smeared all over him. This came in handy a little later when the suspected double agent Maria rubbed Miracle Whip on Frank’s face which revealed his face.

That was way before Kraft Heinz company changed the Miracle Whip recipe, which several readers of my blog post “Whatever Happened to Miracle Whip?” complained about. That post still has the record for the most comments and regularly is still at the top of the list of the most read posts in the last seven days category.

The inconvenient fact about the invisibility recipe is that it can’t make clothes invisible. That means Frank was buck naked the whole time he was beating the tar out the enemy soldiers and flirting with Maria. If you can’t see him, it doesn’t count as far as XXX-ratings go.

The Nazis and the Japanese tried to bully Frank for the recipe of the drug, but Frank refused to give it up to either the enemy or the American side—because he couldn’t see himself doing it (rimshot). That changed after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and he agreed to its use. The caveat was that only he could use it.

Baron Ikito, Conrad Stauffer, and Karl Heiser, all stabbed each other in the back in their efforts to get the invisibility drug. The stabbing eventually leads to the action speeding up with a rising body count that feels a little rushed towards the end. Despite that, I think this is an OK movie and I give it a Shrilling Chicken Rating of 3/5.