As if John Carpenter fans didn’t have enough to be excited about this coming October, what with the new version of Halloween and a second world tour for his music both just around the corner, now comes news that the director’s oft-forgotten 1992 cult sci-fi comedy Memoirs of an Invisible Man is getting a re-release courtesy of UK label Fabulous Films! Available on both DVD and Blu-ray, the title will be available to buy from October 1st.
Read on for more details!
The laughs and visual effects are out of sight as Chevy Chase stars in Memoirs of an Invisible Man alongside Darryl Hannah (Splash), Sam Neil (Jurassic Park), Stephen Tobolowsky (Momento, Groundhog Day) and Michael McKean (Spinal Tap, Better Call Saul).
The legendary John Carpenter (Halloween, Big Trouble In Little China) directs this classic 1992 sci-fi comedy with eye opening special effects conjured up by the dream weavers at Industrial Light and Magic. Carpenter said due to the effects work “we essentially had to shoot the same movie twice”, as after normal takes the effects team would set up their bulky VistaVision motion control cameras to film the same elements again while gathering digital data for the computer-generated imagery.
Chase would wear a blue bodysuit below his clothing, so that computer artists would erase his body through chroma key and match the clothes with computer-generated replicas so that even the inside of the clothing could be seen, along with other touches such as erasing the shadow made by Chase’s body. Along with blue eyeball sized contact lenses, Chase had to have his teeth and tongue stained with blue food colouring to make him disappear on the blue screen during filming.
Memoirs of an Invisible Man was based on the book of the same name by H.F. Saint. It was Saint’s first and only novel. He was a business man in New York, and submitted his novel to publishers prior to completion as he thought it would give him the incentive to actually finish it. He got a $5000 advance and then his agent managed to secure an additional $2.5 million in film and book-club rights. Saint hasn’t been seen since, that’s not a joke, it’s thought he moved to Europe with his family and retired.
Synopsis: Just a quick nap and stock analyst Nick Halloway is sure he’ll emerge good as new. Instead he wakes up good as gone. Vanished. Poof. Thin air. A nuclear accident has made Nick invisible. Invisibility makes it easier to spy on agents (particularly chief adversary Sam Neill) who’d put him in his predicament. But now he can romance a lovely documentary producer (Daryl Hannah) in a way she’s never ” seen” before.
Cast: Chevy Chase, Daryl Hannah, Sam Neill, Michael McKean, Stephen Tobolowsky, Jim Norton.
