NOW YOU SEE HIM, NOW YOU DON’T (1972)
Article #1226 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-23-2004
Posting Date: 12-20-2004
Directed by Robert Butler
Featuring Kurt Russell, Cesar Romero, Joe Flynn

Due to a freak accident, a science student creates an invisibility formula. He hopes to use it to win a science award, which will allow the dean of the college to pay off the mortgage to gangsters intent on foreclosing on the college to open a casino on the property. However, the gangsters discover the invisibility formula, and must have it for themselves.

If you take a peek at the cast and the plot description, you won’t need to be told that this movie is from Disney to know that we’re deep into “shopping cart” territory here. Invisibility comedies are nothing new, of course, but the folks at Disney do manage to find some new twists to the gimmick and they do have the special effects wherewithal to pull it off for the most part. The golf game is a bit of disappointment; with an invisible man guiding the ball, we do expect it to do impossible things, but for the most part, those movements don’t look as if they were being guided by an invisible man; the ball is just doing strange things. The best special effects are in the final chase scene, where the students and the cops combine forces to chase the crooks in an invisible car; not only are they effective, but they’re fun and creative, and this is easily the best part of the movie. One odd little touch; since the most memorable image of an invisible man is that of him being wrapped from head to toe in bandages, it’s rather ironic that the only character who ends up wrapped in this fashion is not due to invisibility. The movie also features Jim Backus and Ed Begley Jr.