Frank Raymond is the grandson of the original Invisible Man Jack Griffin. He is happily and safely living in the United States. World War breaks out and the German agents are wanting the information for invisibility. Frank gets away from the German agents and becomes an invisible secret agent for the U.S. government. He ends up falling in-love with a beautiful double agent.This is a fun war-drama. It's comical in a way but makes for an exciting game of spy vs. spy, cat-n-mouse film. A few fun things happen when the Invisible Agent shows up.The opening scene is great - I wish they would have kept the rest of the film this eerie but I still enjoyed the fun of the movie.Worth watching if you like the older war films and/or the Universal Horror Invisible Man series.8/10

Jon Hall plays Frank Raymond, the grandson of the Invisible Man, who has changed his name from Griffin to Raymond and runs a print shop in hopes of avoiding people looking for his grandfather's formula for invisibility. When Axis agents led by the nefarious duo of Stauffer (Cedric Hardwicke) and Ikito (Peter Lorre) show up and threaten Raymond, he decides to become the Invisible Man and spy for the Allies.The least of Universal's Invisible Man films but still enjoyable. The continuity's a little sloppy. Frank is said to be the grandson of the original Invisible Man, also named Frank Griffin. But the original was named Jack. It was his brother from The Invisible Man Returns that was named Frank. Plus the original Invisible Man died without kids, unless we're to believe his fiancée in the first movie was pregnant. Anyway, it's probably best to assume Frank Griffin took credit for his brother's discovery...or, you know, don't bother explaining it at all because it's really not that important.Hall is fine but his character can be irritating at times. The film's worst scene is where he pranks Nazi Karl Heiser (J. Edward Bromberg). The whole scene is a juvenile attempt at laughs that fails badly. Bromberg's character is a perfect example of the movie's main flaw: the out of place comedy within the darker wartime plot. For the most part, Heiser is a joke and treated like Schultz from Hogan's Heroes. But then there are scenes where his darker side comes through that makes the comedy parts a poor fit. Ilona Massey looks great but her character seems to exist just to fall for Hall, even though he treats her pretty crappy. The climax of the movie plays like an action serial with the Nazis pursuing Hall and Massey as they try to escape by plane. What happens next I won't spoil but it's unintentionally silly.Two characters that actually do work are the evil Stauffer and Ikito, played by Cedric Hardwicke and Peter Lorre. These two are the best part of the film, providing a real menace to the hero. Lorre's Ikito is an especially evil character. He begins the film by threatening to chop Frank's fingers off and later ingeniously (and sadistically) catches him with a net lined with fish hooks! These great actors own every scene they're in and it's worth seeing the movie just for them.

You know he's a bad guy when Peter Lorre sarcastically refers to an American sporting event as "an event of major national importance". And sure enough, he is. Both him and Sir Cedric Hardwicke, the actor who proved that both an Ancient Roman and Egyptian ruler came with imperious British accents. "You old wind bag", he old an Eygyptian underling as Pharaoh Seti in "The Ten Commandments", and perhaps, he should say the same thing to Lorre here, 'cause as German and Japanese agents, they obviously don't trust each other, only using their allies for their own use. That is all to find the secret formula for making people invisible that Jon Hall has, unwilling to sell it even to his own country. But Hall managed to escape the enemy, changes his mind of selling it to the allies, and makes it to Germany where he dive-bombs out of a crashing plane, strips naked and invisible, and locates another agent (the seductive Ilona Massey) who is using portly dumb Nazi J. Edward Bromberg to get information on intended American targets. Lots of comic visuals around, especially of Hall using cold cream (which exposes not only his handsome face but his teeth as well, in addition to clearing up any acne that an invisible man can get) to show Massey what a handsome invisible man he is. (The thought of seeing the missing insides from a cold-cream covered man is both spooky and comical). The result of this film is silly propaganda fun with elements of science fiction thrown in to the wartime world.

Invisible Agent (1942) ** (out of 4) Strange mixture of sci-fi, WW2 propaganda and comedy has Universal trying to hit several genres at once but failing all around. Jon Hall plays Frank Raymond, the grandson of the scientist from the original James Whale film, who is asked by the American government to use his invisible potion to sneak behind German lines and spy on the enemy. Despite the attractive cast this here is pretty bland from start to finish. The biggest problem is the B-movie script, which is just too silly to be all that entertaining. The film's screenplay is also all over the place because it doesn't know what type of movie it wants to be. One minute it tries being all serious but then the next we get slapstick scenes like the one early on where the invisible man spills food all over a German man. The humor didn't work that well but neither does the drama because it's just so poorly written. I remember enjoying this film more as a child and perhaps this is due to me not really knowing everything I now know about the war. The "drama" the film tries to get by talking about a suicide mission attacking New York City is something I'm sure freaked people out back in the day but today it just seems rather tasteless. Hall is pretty good in the role, although he's certainly no match for Raines or Price. Ilona Massey is wasted in her non-believable role as is Peter Lorre. Sir Cedric Hardwicke delivers a fine performance as does J. Edward Bromberg. Those two almost save the film but they're not enough to make this one here a winner.