Probably the most resourceful director of the American cinema, Edgar G. Ulmer carved out a reputation for making stylish, strange and often innovative films while being shackled to budgets that were, by Hollywood standards, microscopic. Working outside the major studio system had its drawbacks but Ulmer accepted the lack of production resources in exchange for a much greater degree of creative freedom. Ulmer used this freedom to explore his personal interests and to bend, almost to the breaking point, the conventions of genre filmmaking.

Produced for Miller-Consolidated Pictures (MCP), a short-lived concern that hoped to tap into the low-budget drive-in market which thrived on exploitation pictures, The Amazing Transparent Man (1960) would test the limits of how quickly and cheaply a film could be made. Ulmer was given a small crew in Dallas, Texas, and was afforded only eleven days to shoot not one but two films. One of these films, Beyond the Time Barrier (1960), was a science fiction spectacle and, by its very nature, consumed the lion's share of Ulmer's production budget, requiring more sets, costumes, props, actors and perhaps the most precious commodity of all: time. The futuristic drama was filmed first, and any remaining time was devoted to the second feature.

As if matters could not be worse, The Amazing Transparent Man faced another obstacle when the hotel which housed the cast and crew burned to the ground after the first day of shooting. But Ulmer was contracted to deliver two films and two films he delivered. One (Time Barrier) is a tidy little sci-fi thriller, laced with political allegory. The other film is less easily categorized: a remarkable exercise in cinematic thrift and reckless creativity.

"The Amazing Transparent Man got short shrift," remembers Ulmer's daughter, Arianné Ulmer Cipes. "It didn't get as many days production as Beyond the Time Barrier and it certainly didn't have as large a cast.... People talk about how inexpensively he could shoot... well the contributing factors were that he would utilize two, three, four, five productions simultaneously in different stages that were cannibalizing from each other. Costumes, cast, design, writing, musicians -- you could juggle them all at one time."

There were no illusions about the fate of The Amazing Transparent Man. The finished film lasts just less than one hour, barely long enough to qualify as a feature, guaranteeing its place on the lower berth of a double or triple bill. Ulmer was therefore relieved of the burden of narrative coherence and deep meaning. He could weave an extemporaneous thriller that was swift, energetic and perfectly fitting the designation of "added attraction."

Douglas Kennedy stars as Joey Faust, a hard-boiled bank robber who is sprung from prison by a seedy mob boss, Krenner (James Griffith), who has secret plans for the gunman. Krenner takes Faust to his criminal lair -- a large Victorian farmhouse -- and reveals to him a state-of-the-art laboratory within. There, Dr. Ulof (Ivan Triesault) is experimenting with a radical form of radiation therapy that can render living creatures invisible. Krenner's intention, revealed mid-film, almost as an afterthought, is to create an army of invisible, anti-American soldiers to take over the world. The more selfish Faust defies Krenner, teams up with a tough moll (Marguerite Chapman) and instead uses the power of invisibility to rob bank vaults. Everyone's plans unravel when the experimental process begins to fail. Faust is identified during a robbery and returns to the criminal farmhouse to avenge himself upon neo-Nazi Krenner.

Scripted by Jack Lewis, The Amazing Transparent Man compensates for its technical shortcomings by sending itself in a half-dozen thematic directions. On one level it is a modernized retelling of Goethe's Faust, as the criminal sells his soul for magical powers that promise wealth, power and love. It is also a Cold War thriller (complete with stock-footage A-bomb detonation in the final reel). It is a heist picture. It is social commentary (a German doctor during WWII, Ulof was forced to experiment on concentration camp victims). It is an homage to the classic horror film (specifically James Whale's The Invisible Man, 1933).

But no single film can be all these things. Eventually, the entire plot explodes and Ulmer abruptly ends the film with the cinematic equivalent of a question mark: a character, faced with a moral dilemma of monumental proportions, turns to the camera and says, "What would you do?" Roll credits.

There is enough material in The Amazing Transparent Man for three films, but Ulmer compacts it all into a single hour. "You have only a short time to tell a story," Ulmer said, "and therefore...you must have two sides, as in the commedia dell'arte, and later in our great Western successes as: the man with the white hat, the man with the black hat."

Corners were cut not only in narrative structure but in the special effects as well. Only a handful of optical shots were used to depict the "transparency" of Faust. Instead, Ulmer was satisfied to show doors opening and closing, objects hanging from wires and, most brilliantly resourceful of all, to merely focus the camera on empty sets, as if someone were actually there.

The publicity artists of MCP likewise reaped the value in invisibility, and released the film with the following warning: "Joey Faust, escaped convict, The Amazing Transparent Man, has vowed to 'appear' invisibly in person at every performance of this picture in this theatre. Police officers are expected to be present in force, but the management will not be responsible for any unusual or mysterious happenings while Faust is in the theatre."

Producer: Lester D. Guthrie
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Screenplay: Jack Lewis
Cinematography: Meredith M. Nicholson
Production Design: Ernst Fegte
Music: Darrell Calker
Cast: Douglas Kennedy (Joey Faust), Marguerite Chapman (Laura Matson), James Griffith (Major Paul Krenner), Ivan Triesault (Dr. Peter Ulof).
BW-58m. Letterboxed.

By Bret Wood