I'm sure I saw The Invisible Man Returns (1940, directed by Joe May) when I was a kid, but I didn't remember much except some of the special effects gags, particularly the scene at the end when the Invisible Man is slowly returning to visibility and all you can see is a net of veins and arteries. I am not fond of the Universal horror movies of the 1940s so I am mildly surprised to be wrong about this film. While it may not be a masterpiece like its predecessor, it's a worthy successor. Its main innovation is a change of genre. This is not exactly a horror movie. Rather, it is a horror-adjacent crime story/whodunnit. It also has director Joe May, one of the titans of German cinema during the silent era who was reduced to helming B-movies for Universal after fleeing to Hollywood in 1933. His career was winding down at the time but he had a couple of fireworks displays left in him for 1940, including The Invisible Man Returns and The House of Seven Gables. Both star Vincent Price.
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