The film involves a stranger named Dr. Jack Griffin (Rains) who is covered in bandages and has his eyes obscured by dark glasses, the result of a secret experiment that makes him invisible, taking lodging in the village of Iping.

The Invisible Man was in development for Universal as early as 1931 when Richard L. Schayer and Robert Florey suggested that Wells' novel would make a good follow-up to the studio's horror film hit Dracula.

Dupont, Cyril Gardner, and screenwriters John L. Balderston, Preston Sturges, and Garrett Fort all signing on to develop the project intending it to be a film for Boris Karloff.

In 2008, The Invisible Man was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

[4] On a snowy night, a stranger, his face swathed in bandages and his eyes obscured by dark goggles, takes a room at The Lion's Head Inn in the English village of Iping in Sussex.

The stranger is Dr. Jack Griffin, a chemist who discovered the secret of invisibility while conducting a series of tests involving an obscure drug called monocaine.

[6] Universal had purchased the rights to the Philip Wylie 1931 novel The Murderer Invisible, intending to lift some of the more gruesome elements from it to incorporate into Wells' story.

[8] Following the release of Frankenstein, which would break box office records across the United States, Universal had the film's star Boris Karloff signed to a five-year contract.

[12] Unwilling to wait while Florey worked out the script and the film's technical difficulties, Universal made The Old Dark House (1932) Karloff's next feature with Whale as director.

[2] By June 6, John L. Balderston, whose name had appeared in the credits of Dracula and Frankenstein, submitted a screenplay for The Invisible Man in collaboration with the film's new director Cyril Gardner.

[15] By November, following the release of The Old Dark House, Whale was again set to be the director of The Invisible Man with a new script being written by Preston Sturges.

[16] Sturges' script involved a Russian chemist who makes a madman invisible to wreak vengeance on Bolsheviks who have destroyed his family.

[7] Whale considered Colin Clive for the film's title role, but he also thought of actor Claude Rains, whom he met at a London performance of The Insect Play in 1923.

[34] After viewing the screen test, Whale wanted Rains as the lead and had him do another reading of the scene where Griffin boasts to Dr. Kemp of his plans to rule the world.

[7][34] Universal approved of the screen test and signed Rains for a two-picture deal, including top billing in The Invisible Man.

"[36] Whale did not fully divulge the details of the role to Rains but sent him to studio labs to prepare for special effects, where molds and casts of his head were made.

[39] Other actors cast in the film were on the verge of Hollywood success, including Walter Brennan playing a man whose bicycle is stolen, and John Carradine as an informer.

Then with an ordinary printer, they made a composite first printing of the positive of the background and normal action, using the negative matte to mask the area where the invisible man was to move.

[45] Following the October 26 press screening, a reviewer for The Hollywood Reporter praised the film, declaring it "a legitimate offspring of the family that produced Frankenstein and Dracula" and predicted it would "fare better [...] than either of its predecessors".

[71][72] Critics also praised the crew, such as Thornton Delehanty of The New York Post who referred to the film as "one of the best thrillers of the year", complimented the work of Sherriff and the "quality of awesomeness and suspense" Whale provided.

[76] Clarens noted that "not only is the show a technical tour de force, The Invisible Man also contains some of the best dialogue ever written for a fantastic film".

[76] Jack Sullivan wrote in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986) that the gags in The Invisible Man were "the opposite of strained", noting that Griffin singing wearing only his pyjama pants was "a piece of unabashed prankishness, but it's also something beyond that: the sudden eye-opening enchantment of the scene is worthy of Grimms or L. Frank Baum" concluding the scene was "the perfect image to define Whale's lightly horrific fairy-tale magic".

[79] Newman also praised Rains's role as Griffin, noting the "expressive gestures" as "vital to his performance" and his "terrific voice: velvety with a sly twist, perfect for those wonderful mad scientist speeches".

[81] In 2008, The Invisible Man was selected for inclusion in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The website's consensus reads: "James Whale's classic The Invisible Man features still-sharp special effects, loads of tension, a goofy sense of humor, and a memorable debut from Claude Rains.

[87] Universal Pictures first announced the development of The Invisible Man Returns in March 1939, around the time Son of Frankenstein (1939) had been performing decently at the box office.

[95] In 2019, Universal began production on the new The Invisible Man that was written and directed by Leigh Whannell and produced by Jason Blum, starring Elisabeth Moss and Oliver Jackson-Cohen as the titular character.

[96][97] When a trailer for the film was released in December the same year, Robert Moran of The Sydney Morning Herald commented that it "met with the kind of confusion that could rattle a filmmaker, not to mention a studio.

It seems monster movie fans, long-attuned to the bandage-wrapped antics of The Invisible Man of yore, weren't expecting Whannell's allegory on domestic violence trauma".

[98] Whannell commented on his change from the norm on the style, explaining that he knew there was going to be some backlash against the film as he was "modernizing it and centering it not around the Invisible Man but his victim".