Oh good, there’s finally a good home video release of David McCallum’s brief TV stint as The Invisible Man.
Every part of that statement probably demands some explanation. McCallum, then late of The Man From UNCLE and, just prior to this series, the BBC’s acclaimed WWII drama Colditz, starred in a well-regarded TV movie and subsequent series that reimagined H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man for a prime time schedule that Mission: Impossible had previously dominated. Developed into this new TV format by hot, up-and-coming writer/producers Steven Bochco and Harve Bennett, McCallum’s Invisible Man was a spy-fi piece, in which his character, David Westin, used his seemingly incurable invisibility to investigate crimes both international and domestic, to engage in occasional acts of both espionage and good samaritanism, and to keep wooing his lovely wife, who was his partner at work and at home. (It was the mid ’70s, a show like this had to be at least a little shagadelic.)
Previously released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the United States, The Invisible Man’s previous Blu-Ray release was a textbook study in, quite frankly, how not to put a pre-HD television series on Blu-Ray. Fortunately, this set corrects that error, but introduces a few quirks of its own. For starters, the previous U.S. release made available in the aughts brought the series to Blu-Ray not by rescanning the original film at high-definition resolution, but by zooming in on the same transfer used for the DVD release so that it created an artificially widescreen, 16:9 picture. This practice keeps happening – though thankfully not as often as it used to – and it baffles me; it’s the diametrical opposite of the debate over widescreen vs. pan-and-scan VHS releases. Where pan-and-scan used to leave out sometimes as much as half of the information in the name of filling a 4:3 tube television, the “zoom until it’s widescreen” approach to material originally shot and edited for 4:3 TV might have filled the then-new HDTV sets on the market, but – here we go again – at the cost of leaving out a lot of the picture information. Sure, we had the show on DVD and Blu-Ray for the first time, but the Blu-Ray wasn’t in HD, and cropped every second of every episode.
Universal’s brand new (in 2023) UK/European release corrects all of the above. The 1975 pilot movie and the dozen subsequent weekly episodes are presented in their original aspect ratio, all rescanned at HD resolution at last. It’s the best the show has ever looked since it was filmed, hands-down, whether those hands are visible or not. You’ve never seen The Invisible Man like this. Yes, I just said that. The sound is also nicely cleaned up, making it all the easier to hear Henry Mancini’s gorgeously sinewy theme tune, and Pete Rugolo’s episode scores that play with that theme as a motif.
But sometimes the best only goes so far. With each episode requiring the production somehow present scenes of Westin’s invisibility in action, on budget, some unorthodox measures had to be undertaken. Sure, there were plenty of scenes that used items on strings or using other time-honored ways to show Westin’s presence without showing Westin himself. Often, it involved the guest stars of the week – such as Roger C. “Harry Mudd” Carmel – miming being manhandled by someone the camera couldn’t see. Sometimes it was just the camera “following” Westin through a scene which was, in fact, empty. Considering how much of each episode is spent with his character represented by stage tricks and a voice-over, this was a pretty sweet gig for McCallum…but he didn’t always get off so easy. Some scenes were shot on video, using bluescreen technology that was just then coming into use for things like local weather forecasts. For scenes involving Westin either getting ready to go completely invisible (which, let’s face it, means he’s completely naked) or returning to visibility by donning a lifelike mask and gloves so the nominal star of the show gets actual face time, the videotape was then replayed to a film camera positioned in front of a video monitor. In 1975, the studios were still shooting and cutting film (and distributing film aboard as a way of overcoming the differences in video standards), so even though that video material was now on film, it just looks like video footage shot off of a screen. There’s enough of a difference in color fidelity and resolution, as well as frequent instances of telltale chromakey blue fringe. The higher resolution of HD is, frankly, not kind to the scenes shot this way.
Even worse, there tends to be a noticeable flickering effect in some of these filmed-from-video-playback scenes, probably the result of just enough of a variance between the monitor’s scan rate and the shutter speed of the film camera to be detectable. It can be a bit distracting. To be clear: these deficiencies existed in the original film footage. Rescanning that film at high-definition just makes those deficiencies even more visible. (Or, if you like, less invisible.)
The show, however, continues to be a not-even-guilty pleasure. After the more serious and dramatic pilot movie, the weekly show settles into a more playful groove. McCallum and the late Melinda O. Fee have a terrific chemistry, enough that you believe their characters are a real couple. Craig Stevens is just one of those reliable and familiar ’60s/’70s TV faces as their boss (a role played in the pilot by Jackie Cooper). The show quickly establishes a reliable, playful formula, which often involves Fee’s character (Mrs. Westin) being put on the spot kind of semi-seducing the bad guy of the week to distract from her husband’s invisible presence. (So, let’s again check the halftime score: the invisible man is standing somewhere in the room, completely naked, watching his wife put the moves on some other guy. Is it even possible for a show to be more ’70s than this?) Westin gets himself in a bind – thermal sensors still pick up his heat, dogs still smell him, etc. – and then has to get out. Rinse and repeat. The show actually gets better as the writers seek to steer this formula away from high-profile espionage into more “local” concerns, usually ditching the serious drama in favor or something that borders on outright comedy. And just as the show is hitting its stride…it’s all over. Don’t weep for Bennett – who was simultaneously producing The Six Million Dollar Man – or for Bochco, who would turn out many a ’70s prime time near-miss before creating Hill Street Blues in 1981. McCallum would bounce between guest starring roles, movies, and more series (Sapphire & Steel, anyone?) for years before becoming a regular fixture on the long-running NCIS.
If there’s something sorely missing from this set, it’s value-added material. McCallum, now 89 years old as this review is being written, is the sole surviving member of the regular cast. both of the show’s creators have left us. McCallum alone knows the behind-the-scenes stories of The Invisible Man. It would’ve been great to get just one or two commentaries or an interview piece out of him, to get those stories on the record. The issues with picture quality of scenes shot on video aren’t really correctible on this release’s almost-certainly-nigh-nonexistent budget. But putting together even bare-bones VAM for this release is something that could’ve been done. Surely there’s an audience and an appetite for such material; if there wasn’t, I doubt The Invisible Man would be appearing before us once again.