The 1933 Invisible Man is the story of Dr. Jack Griffin who had been turned invisible by an experiment involving a rare drug named monocane. Unbeknownst to Dr. Griffin, monocane had a side effect of turning subjects mad. When the audience first is introduced to Dr. Griffen, he is invisible, wrapped in bandages, curt, rude, and clearly under stress. He rents a room with a sitting room for a makeshift laboratory at a tavern and inn named the Lion’s Head. Life goes downhill from there.
Griffin eventually is evicted for being a week late in rent. He slammed the door on one of the owners of the inn, followed by assaulting the other by pushing him down the stairs. At that point, Griffin goes full super villain. His rampage included:
Straggling a police inspector to death;
Taking his colleague Dr. Kemp as a hostage for assistance;
Forcing Dr. Kemp to assist in recovering Dr. Griffin’s notebooks;
Assaults a room full of people by throwing beer steins;
Threatens to kill Dr. Kemp the next night at 10:00pm;
Causes a train derailment that resulted in 100 deaths;
Kills two volunteers searching for him;
Kills Dr. Kemp; and
Trespasses in a barn
Dr. Jack Griffin did A LOT of harm. He had a death toll over 100, plus a long list of people he assaulted. Defending him would not be easy, but he does have one defense: insanity.
The insanity defense requires the defense to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Dr. Griffin was unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his actions because of a severe mental disease or defect. 18 U.S.C.S. § 17. This requires expert testimony and evidence that Dr. Griffin suffered from a mental illness and did not understand murdering people was wrong. The defense could actually be successful with testimony from Dr. Cranley (played by Henry Travers, who would later play the guardian angel Clarence Odbody in It’s a Wonderful Life). Dr. Cranley knew the dangers of monocane from published German research. Additional evidence could be offered from the German publication on the dangers of the drug and Dr. Griffin’s notes to show he had treated himself with the drug.
It is worth noting that Dr. Griffin not knowing the harmful effects of the drug should be entered into evidence. While there is no doubt risk from trying to turn oneself invisible, the fact the research he had was prior to the publication of the German research, shows he did not knowing take a drug that could drive him mad.
The Invisible Man has one of the largest body counts of any of the Universal Monsters. He also has a legitimate claim to the insanity defense. Does that excuse the deaths? No, but it would be unjust to simply call him a monster without giving him a fair trial.