The Invisible Man
I don't want to start this out on a combative note, but if you don't think that Claude Rains is the BEST, then you probably don't know the meaning of the word "best". He's a commanding presence from the moment he steps on screen, and he holds your attention even when there's nothing on that screen but his voice.
In the opening scene, he arrives at a rooming house wearing a long coat, a slouch hat, gloves, goggles and swathed in bandages. As rumors rumble among the guests about what his condition may be he locks himself in his room to work on...something science-y. He wants to be left alone but of course house matron Una O'Connor (she is as shrill as Rains is menacing) has other ideas and soon he's showing them exactly what his condition is. The trick photography is a marvel of the era, and to be perfectly frank it still astounds. It certainly beats the hell out of the liquidly cartoonish CGI effects found in modern invisible man movies like the Hollow Man pictures.
Rains gets to relish being all kinds of evil as the movie goes on, and he's captivating despite the fact that you never see his face (at least not until the final scene. Uh, 80-year-old spoiler, I guess). In my favorite moment, he's detailing his plans of murder and mayhem to a colleague: "We'll begin with a reign of terror, a few murders here and there, murders of great men, murders of little men, just to show we make no distinction". That line kills me, thankfully not literally.
Annoying autobiographical aside: when I was 11, I went trick-or-treating dressed as the invisible man (under a puffy coat and winter hat, because parents). I was all wrapped up in bandages and sunglasses, and spent most of Halloween explaining to people that no, I wasn't a mummy. Mummies don't wear shades, dammit.
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