The Man Who Wasn’t There is a 1983 3D comedy with a very apt title. It stars Steve Guttenberg, who, as I have written previously, consistently plays deeply bland roles—incredibly inoffensive nobodies whose favorite color is probably beige.
I saw a lot of beige while watching this, or at least varying degrees of some sort of weird monochrome with varying amount of a color somewhere between light brown and light pink. Sometimes, there would be an especially strong blue or red, which is jarring. The reason for this is because I watched this as an anaglyphic 3D presentation on Kino Lorber’s new blu-ray issue. That is the kind you watch through glasses with red and blue lenses. Needless to say, colors have to be limited or else those color filters would be wrecking havoc with the image. And so you end up with this weird color scheme that reminds me most of those weird old two-strip Technicolor films.
What is odd is how there are so few effects that realize the potential of the gimmick. Instead, one is left with the bizarre experience of seeing largely unremarkable objects seeming to jut out from the screen. I was so irritated by the mundane objects and dull scenes we witnessed that I started sarcastically yelling out what we were seeing in 3D!!! “A common handrail…in 3D!!!” “An unremarkable meeting of four old men around a small table…in 3D!!!” “Steve Guttenberg’s bare ass…in 3D!!!”
To that last statement, there is a shocking amount of nudity in this movie—a solidly R film with humor that is at a pre-pubescent level. That’s not the only incongruity here, in a picture that plays like a combination of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Porky’s and Memoirs of an Invisible Man. Oh, and in 3D, of course.
Guttenberg is a low-level US diplomat who we first see working the second room at an event, one where the representatives of lesser countries are given far less preferential treatment. I’ll concede that is an interesting idea, except it is very poorly executed. The extent to which this is explored here is limited to a food fight between broad ethnic stereotypes. The worst of these, and the only character from this scene who will reappear is Charlie Brill, playing an ethnic character of indeterminate origin. It’s the kind of shtick Peter Sellers used to do, and this guy isn’t Peter Sellers.
Inexplicably, Guttenberg, while working this event, is late for his own wedding to Morgan Most. It is completely unbelievable anybody would be working while everybody at the wedding is waiting for him. And it is that kind of lack of logic which kneecaps every single setup in this film. Jokes only work if the premise on which they hang adheres to some degree of believability. It would also help if a single joke here was funny.
Soon, he is stripped down to his boxer shorts in front of the wedding party (don’t ask) and locked in a hotel room. It is here a double-agent for the bad guys enters the room, though our hero can’t see him, as this agent is invisible. We only know roughly where the guy is between he is carrying something that looks like a miniature version of one of those deadly spheres from Phantasm. That is only the container for several vials of what looks like windshield-washing fluid, which is the serum that renders consumers of it invisible.
Then a group of characters who are very unlikely to be together bursts into the room. There’s a guy in a business suit, a Native American in painter’s overalls, a George Romero impersonator and the world’s least believable punk rocker. Way to blend in, guys, especially in Washington D.C.
Our protagonist escapes with the sphere and is soon using those vials when needed. Being invisible should lead to all kinds of clever scenes, but this film caters to the lowest common denominator, with him doing such things as sneaking into the showers at a girl’s school. There was a lot of this kind of crap in the 80’s, and another constant of that era which hasn’t aged well include homophobic slurs and jokes. There’s even a joke about women drivers. I’m just surprised there isn’t a joke about airline food.
The effects should really be the star in a movie like this, but they are so-so. Much of the invisibility is accomplished through chroma keying. As much as I hate how prevalent CGI has been in the cinema of this century, I have to admit this particular niche genre is where that technology shines. Before that, you had such lousy moments as a bit here where a drinking glass is suspended by very obvious wires that are even more conspicuous in 3D.
Another element of this particular niche of sci-fi/horror I find grating is how the becoming transparent apparently motivates people start talking to themselves ad nauseum. We see a window raise and we hear the invisible person doing that say something like, “Guess I’ll try to sneak out this way”. Well, no shit. We don’t think the window just raised itself. We don’t think there’s now ghosts in the world of this film. It’s a movie that thinks it’s audience is deeply stupid, but it might be correct in that assumption.
When it isn’t insulting the audience’s intelligence, it is often confusing them. The identity of the main villain has been concealed until a moment that should be shocking, but is instead stupefying in that it doesn’t make any sense. I suspect it is impossible for this person to have filled that role, but I don’t care to scrutinize the film to find out.
Even more bizarre is a concluding scene, where Guttenberg and Lisa Langois are invisible and getting married at a ceremony where everybody else, including the priest, are blindfolded. This scene makes less than no sense, to the extent it becomes a tad creepy, like we are seeing an outtake from Midsommar by way of Eyes Wide Shut. There’s plenty of guests at this wedding, so everybody knows the couple getting married, so why are they invisible? I assume everybody is blindfolded so they won’t see the bride and groom being inexplicably invisible. But wouldn’t everybody be questioning why they had to put on the blindfolds? And then the potion wears off, the happy couple are standing there naked and everybody takes off their blindfolds anyway. What prompted people to take a peek? Did they hear those two resume visibility?
But perhaps the most inane scene in The Man Who Wasn’t There has Langois making out with an invisible Guttenberg. I found it impossible to not see this as basically what is really happening: a woman is weirdly contorting herself and thrusting her tongue around in the air. It is no surprise she will also get naked, making this is an uncomfortable scene of what appear to be an elaborate act of autoeroticism. I felt embarrassed watching this. The titular man may or may not have been there, but I know I wish I hadn’t.
Dir: Bruce Malmuth
Starring Steve Guttenberg, Lisa Langois
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray