The Invisible Maniac (1990) User Reviews

I loathe that laugh

[movieman_kev · 3/10 · 20 June 2005]

Young Kevin is scolded for spying on an undressing neighbor. When he grows up, he's a scientist working on an invisibility potion. When said potion doesn't work when he shows it to his colleagues, they laugh it him so he kills them and is sent to a nut house. After escaping he gets a teaching job and perfects the potion. So when the kids laugh at him he becomes an invisible maniac. Even the extreme copious amounts of nudity can't really save this film, that being said I have seen worse. MUCH worse. I didn't even know it was supposed to be a comedy though. So at that it fails miserably.

My Grade: D

Eye Candy: Savannah,Dana Bentley,Stephanie Blake,Debra Lamb,Melissa Anne Moore,Kalei Shallabarger all show breasts and ass numerous times, Tracy Walker shows breasts, buns, and quick bush

it's a good bad movie

[rookie-3 · 5/10 · 16 November 1998]

Well, this is a bad movie but it's pretty fun to watch. A sex maniac professor makes a serum that enables him to be invisible. From this you should be able to know the rest of the story. There are girls chasing, screaming girls, beaten up boyfriends, and high school naughtiness. It's fun.

Invisibility Makes Being a Peeping Tom Easy

[Cineanalyst · 5/10 · 12 March 2020]

Reworking the invisible man idea originally from H.G. Wells's book for a sexploitation horror flick is rather oddly effective. Seeing while not being seen plays well into cinematic voyeurism, as the Invisible Man here joins us, the spectator, in ogling naked women (although, they're playing high-school teenagers) before the killing spree rooted in the psychosexual handbook taken straight out of "Psycho" (1960). You know, mommy issues. Multiple scenes of the girls locker room in this one. Apparently, after every pathetic suggestion of a cheerleading practice, they need to shower. Even though the film takes place during summer school, so I don't know why they're practicing--did they flunk that, too, along with physics and so need to retake it? I don't know; maybe this district doesn't work the same way I thought the rest of the American school system did.

Regardless, "The Invisible Maniac" has just about everything one could hope for from a so-bad-it's-good film. Besides the ridiculous gore and gratuitous nudity, the scenes of Kevin Dornwinkle attacking people tend to be choreographed poorly--obviously pulled punches, conspicuous cuts and such. Noel Peters as Dornwinkle plays raving lunatic believably, and he has a strange way of delivering his lines. Women and teenage girls are objectified, while the men and boys are treated as sexual predators (although, a female principle treads both lines). The invisibility serum also works well here as an allegory for drug addiction. You can't ask for much better than this before you're requesting a movie that's actually good.

"I was inexplicably drawn to the girls locker room."

[poolandrews · 2/10 · 13 January 2006]

The Invisible Maniac starts as a young Kevin Dornwinkle (Kris Russell) is caught by his strict mother (Marilyn Adams) watching a girl (Tracy Walker) strip through his telescope... Cut to 'Twenty Years Later' & Kevin Dornwinkle (Noel Peters) is now a physics professor who claims to have discovered a way to turn things invisible using a 'mollecular reconstruction' serum. However during a demonstration in front of his fellow scientists it fails & they all laugh at him, Dornwinkle goes mad kills a few of them & is locked away in a mental institute from which he escapes. Jump forward 'Two Weeks Later' & a group of summer college students discuss the tragic death of their physics teacher when the headmistress Mrs. Cello (Stephanie Blake as Stella Blalack) says that she has hired a replacement, yes you've guessed it it's Dornwinkle. The student don't take to him & treat him like dirt, however Dornwinkle has perfected his invisibility serum & uses it to satisfy his perverted sexual urges & his desire for revenge...

Co-written & directed by Adam Rifkin wisely hiding under the pseudonym Rif Coogan (I wouldn't want my name to be associated with this turd of a film either) The Invisible Maniac is real bottom of the barrel stuff. The script by Rifkin, sorry Coogan & Tony Markes is awful. It tries to be a teenage sex/comedy/horror hybrid that just fails in every department. For a start the sex is nothing more than a few female shower scenes & a few boob shots, not much else I'm afraid & the birds in The Invisible Maniac aren't even that good looking. The comedy is lame & every joke misses by the proverbial mile, this is the kind of film that thinks someone fighting an invisible man or having Henry (Jason Logan) a mute man trying to make a phone call is funny. The Invisible Maniac makes the Police Academy (1984 - 1994) series of films look like the pinnacle of sophistication! As for the horror aspect that too is lame. It's also an incredibly slow (it takes over half an hour before Dornwinkles even becomes invisible), dull, predictable, boring & has highly annoying & unlikable teenage character's.

Director Rifkin or Coogan or whatever does absolutely nothing to try & make The Invisible Maniac an even slightly enjoyable experience. There's no scares, tension or atmosphere & as a whole the film is a real chore to sit through. He does nothing with the invisibility angle, just a few doors opening on their own is as adventurous as it gets. There is very little gore or violence, a bit of splashing blood, a few strangulations & the only decent bit in the whole film when someone has their head blown off with a shotgun, unfortunately he was invisible at the time & we only get to see the headless torso afterwards.

The budget must have been low, & I mean really low because this is one seriously cheap looking film. Dornwinkles laboratory is basically two jars on his bedside cabinet! When he escapes from the mental institution he has all of one dog sent after him & the entire school has about a dozen pupils & two teachers. The Invisible Maniac is a poorly made film throughout it's 85 minute duration, I spotted the boom mike on at least one occasion... Lets just say the acting is of a low standard & leave it at that.

The Invisible Maniac is crap, plain & simple. I found no redeeming features in it at all, there are so many more better films out there you can watch so there is no reason whatsoever to waste your time on this rubbish. Definitely one to avoid.

ain't enough drugs in the world...

[pass_d_bud · 1/10 · 18 December 2007]

... to make this eye-sore any less painful on the brain. The girls were pretty I guess, but after the sixth or seventh time they suddenly say "hey, let's go take a shower together" it just gets kind of boring. The Invisible Maniac is basically a porno movie without any porn, just lots and lots of naked girls and no story. It's like they have a video camera and just made a movie without a script, just making it up as they went along. And the invisible bad guy is TERRIBLE! He's funny or scary, just a really bad actor in a really really bad movie.

The Invisible Maniac is by the same people who did Detroit Rock City and Bikini Island, two WAY better movies. I highly recommend this movie to people who've never seen breasts, and to people who will just sit and watch anything, even paint drying or war dripping. If that's you, dude, you'll love this movie. For the rest of you out there with brains and stuff, seriously, don't waste your time.

A terrible mess, best left unseen

[CommandoCody · 15 March 2003]

Why is it that insane, sexually-repressed geeks are the only people who seem to learn the secret of invisibility? A nerdy scientist goes mad and kills some of his colleagues. Why? Cause they laughed at him and his failed invisibility experiment. He soon escapes from an asylum and gets hired as a high school physics teacher. He's teased by several vixens in one of his classes. This inspires him to perfect his formula. Despite being injected into his bloodstream, the serum affects his clothes and eyeglasses (how convenient). Once invisible however, all he can think of is to hang out inside the girls' locker room. After his secret is discovered he goes on another senseless killing spree.

If 700 monkeys were pecking away on 700 computer keyboards for 700 years, one of them might come up with Shakespeare's "Hamlet." It would only take about five days however, for a dozen of them to come up with "The Invisible Maniac." This movie is unimaginably silly and stupid with gratuitous nudity its only redeeming feature. By comparison, it makes other invisible man schlock like "The Amazing Transparent Man" seem worthy of a best picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Then again, you know you're in trouble when the theme song playing during the closing credits is the best thing about the movie.

Even Savannah can't save this

[frankfob · 2/10 · 17 March 2002]

Saw this late one night on cable. At the time I didn't know that the girl billed as "Shannon Wilsey" was actually porn star Savannah, but she was so beautiful (and got naked so often, thank God) that I actually sat through this brain-rotting drivel. I like cheesy flicks as much as the next guy--more than the next guy, actually--but this was way beyond cheesy and more into rancid. The truly annoying overacting by the mad scientist and the director's, writers' and special effects people's virtually total incompetence detracts from the gratuitous nudity that is the movie's only saving grace. Savannah, before she turned into the plasticized Barbie Doll she became as a porn queen, is really interesting to watch--she's drop-dead gorgeous, bursts into uncontrollable giggling at times, glances off-camera and laughs and just generally seems to be having a really good time, which is more than can be said for the audience. For even though Savannah and her colleagues spend a fair amount of this picture naked, it still can't hide the fact that this is an incredibly stupid, badly made and annoying movie. If you know someone who has it on video, or if it comes on cable some night, check it out, but don't waste your money on a rental.

A full blow B-movie

[stefanozucchelli · 5/10 · 10 April 2022]

Poor quality, non-existent texture. A couple of partial nude scenes and a perverse professor who from an early age gave clear signs of a problematic personality. The ending was the most reasonable thing I've seen and hinted that there must be a sequel.

So bad, it's good? Hmmmm....

[emm · 2/10 · 5 March 1999]

Here's an interesting little movie that strictly gives the phrase "low budget" a horrible name. Our physics teacher who has about nine kids creates a strange serum that causes "molecular reorganization". Students are hopelessly killed from fake coincidences of submarine sandwiches and flying school supplies. Sounds like a resurrection of classic B-movies from the 50s, right? Nope! It's not an example of high camp fun, which is way, WAY off the mark. A glamorous showcase of breasts and butts ensues our desire for pleasure, opposing the horror that should have had 99.44% more in the first place. Bottom-of-the-barrel entertainment at its best, aided by pints of red blood and dead student bodies. Atrocious movies like this would make the ultimately catastrophic GURU THE MAD MONK (1970) the work of an intelligent genius who has a Master's degree in film production! It's an automatic "F", so rest easy!

A triumphant film!

[pizowell · 7/10 · 30 September 2002]

An insane high school science teacher (Noel Peters) solves a problem that has plagued mankind for decades. How can we spy on chicks in the shower without detection, become INVISIBLE!

What a premise, what a payoff, what a flick! The Invisible Maniac is schlock at it's best, a movie about a guy who becomes invisible to get revenge on the students who enjoy making his life hell. Of course he finds time to sneak into the women's showering facilities more than once to catch a peak and I don't blame him. While made in 1990, Invisible Maniac has all the pure and unpretentious qualities that made the 80's so special. Everyone is sex crazed, the girls take lots of showers, and and invisible science teacher is trying to kill 'em all. What more could you ask for?

The movie keeps its tongue firmly in cheek, but does so in a smart way. Deliberately being cheesy, over the top, and exploitative The Invisible Maniac follows the formula but manages to be a bit different here and there. I won't get into too many specifics, but the virginal heroine doesn't save the day. The dialogue is hilarious, the characters cliche (but fun), and they never miss a chance for some good old fashion female nudity. Savor each and ever scene featuring the lovely Melissa Moore and Shannon Wilsey and their "friends". Never has comedy, horror, and soft core porn came together to give us such a landmark film!

Call it misogynistic if you want, I just call it fun. If you're into this kind of flick (you know who you are) then your life won't be complete until you see The Invisible Maniac. R.I.P Shannon Wilsey.

The Invisible Maniac has a respectable enough story, in the tradition of the Nutty Professor, but it makes up for the bad acting and directing by throwing in numbing amounts of gratuitous nudity.

[Anonymous_Maxine · 4/10 · 13 September 2000]

Take one look at the cover of this movie, and you know right away that you are not about to watch a landmark film. This is cheese filmmaking in every respect, but it does have its moments. Despite the look of utter trash that the movie gives, the story is actually interesting at some points, although it is undeniably pulled along mainly by the cheerleading squads' shower scenes and sex scenes with numerous personality-free boyfriends. The acting is awful and the director did little more than point and shoot, which is why the extensive amount of nudity was needed to keep the audience's attention.

In The Nutty Professor, a hopelessly geeky professor discovers a potion that can turn him into a cool and stylish womanizer, whereas in The Invisible Maniac, a mentally damaged professor discovers a potion that can make him invisible, allowing him to spy on (and kill, for some reason) his students. Boring fodder. Don't expect any kind of mental stimulation from this, and prepare yourself for shrill and enormously overdone maniacal laughter which gets real annoying real quick...

Brilliant

[NowDoINotLikeThat · 9/10 · 8 October 2006]

Basically this film does exactly what it says on the tin.

-IE-....He's invisible and ...yes....he's a maniac.

Like a weird mixture of a Carry-On and Friday the 13th...or....errrr...or something ! Plenty of tits on display to boot as well . Mind you some of the murder scenes to be fair.. do tread a bit of murky waters...of taste ...admitedly

...And do high schools in America really have such low class sizes of ...er...6 or so?!? ... Anyhow the sheer silliness and crudeness of this film and the laugh out loud classic "jock"-fightin fight scenes towards the end make this a truly great if demented Benny Hill-esquire type of comedy-horror

Good cheesy fun

[zombieoutbreak-74199 · 7/10 · 22 March 2021]

This movie reminds me of The Toxic Avenger and Doom Asylum! It's a hilarious horror comedy that's not meant to be taken hilariously. If you appreciate good bad movies then this is the movie for you!

Another Classic Restored To 4K?

[damianphelps · 4/10 · 28 December 2022]

This film is fundamentally dumb, there is no getting around it.

There are a few highlights, like when some guy gets punched in the face by the invisible dude, its pretty funny.

This film is full of bad actors, not the naughty country kind or spies, just regular bad actors. Like next level bad.

The movie has more shower scenes than a Rheem commercial and praise be to God because they are all the best bits.

It borrows from lots of movies and none of those are any good either.

The movie does provide a few giggles and a couple of wtf moments but don't expect to find any thing more than that :)

primarily for voyeurs

[mattkratz · 20 March 2002]

This movie had plenty of shots of the cheerleaders without their clothes on (especially Savannah and Melissa Moore), and was about a physics teacher who spied on them while perfecting an invisibility formula. Might be a waste of your time. It was a pretty hokey movie.

*1/2 out of ****

I wish this film were "Invisible"...

[Mister-6 · 1/10 · 23 February 2000]

Okay guys, we know why we watch film like "The Invisible Maniac" (just look at the cover, man!). T and A all over the place (with a lot more T than A). But...shouldn't there be a story to go with it?

"C'mon," I can hear you say - "this is just girls gettin' naked! Who needs a story??!"

Well, if this were called "The NAKED Maniacs", I wouldn't have a problem. But since these guys are cribbing from "The Invisible Man", they need to have a bit of story hereabouts, you know, to keep your mind busy.

However, all they can muster up is how this crazy doctor creates an invisibility serum and, when he cracks, uses it to spy on naked women and ends up killing a lot of teenagers. And when you see the smarmy-looking teenagers he goes after, you'll be grateful.

One star, for the T and A, but there's a little too much gore for you skin fans, so proceed with caution.

TIDBIT - yes, it's THAT Savannah.

Not even bad in a good way

[BigGuy · 2/10 · 14 June 1999]

This movie is just plain bad. It isn't even worth watching to make fun of it. The lunatic professor is just plain annoying. Even suspending disbelief to allow for invisibility (which I glady do for the sake of good bad movies) and allowing for exceedingly stupid victims in a horror movie, this movie asks for even more than that. If you are looking for women's locker room shower scenes, and random sexual encounters, get a porn, if you are looking for a good-bad movie, get something else. If you want to simply waste your time on an annoying bad movie, rent this.

Sterotypes on top of stereotyopes.

[okpilak · 5/10 · 3 September 2023]

In the tradition of over the top WIP films, this provides a lot of laughs. Very heavy on the stereotypes. Edna, the dorm 'mother' plays the sadistic favor playing tough as nails order keeper. Break the rules, and you get an infraction, unless....... The girls are sentenced to reform school, and they have to surrender everything and are issued reform school clothing. And sure enough, when the three girls are introduced to the Dorm, is seems the standard issue clothing is from a lingerie show, with plenty of string bikinis. So funny and so over the top. In the shower, it seems several have a mark, but one mustn't ask about it or even pretend they see it. The laughs don't quite make up for the terrible acting, but they do elevate this film. And of course, there is a new psychologist who wants to do things by the book, but naturally those in charge are happy the way things are. It is rated R, probably for the release date of 1986, but if today's rating, it would be a very very mild R. And that is probably for the best.

Silly cheesy yet enjoyable enough

[Floated2 · 4/10 · 25 August 2023]

Released in 1990 apparently straight to video, this film is described as a comedy or even a slasher horror type. Hard to be taken serious given the premise and subpar acting.

The lead character of the teacher/scientist (Invisible maniac) over acts especially with his fake evil laugh. The acting by the students are noticeably bad as most of them weren't exactly veteran actors by that point.

There is very little humor or clever witty jokes. The comedy comes from seeing the teacher spying on the students or some of the awkward interactions and overly sexual acts by the women (students and the one teacher). As noted this film contains a lot of skin throughout as a way to purposefully distract audiences into further enjoying the film. The writing is weak, the directing isn't great but its cheesy and silly tone with its gratuitous nudity makes the film worthwhile enough.

Second half of the film includes more of a slasher element where we see kills by the teacher taking down each student one by one. Some kills were clever and intriguing, although cheesy. The film never fully gets too horror but contains some elements. Overall not a great film but enjoyable for it's purpose.

Really Dumb

[arfdawg-1 · 1/10 · 3 January 2023]

This movie is sort of a directorial cross between the Reanimator, Porky's and Troma type movies. Only it's realy bad from frame one.

The acting is dismal and I suspect no one was paid.

You cannot fathom how pathetic the acting really is.

But as I said, no one in this train wreck can. It's horrible. Really.

The basic premise of the movie seems to be to put young girls in scantily clad outfits, or no outfits at all, so the pervy maniac can practice voyuerism on them.

It's a thin plot that never goes anywhere good. I was bored thru most of the movie. Really bored.

I want my 90 minutes back.

a good T&A film but not really a comedy

[zep-3 · 7/10 · 18 August 2012]

The cover makes it seem this is another teen sex comedy,but in reality there is little humor and its actually kinda a teen sex horror film. the plot: First as a young boy he is caught by his mother spying on his neighbor and is ridiculed by her.Flash forward to adult and he is ridiculed by his scientist peers when his invisibility experiment does not go as planned.He flips out on them and ends up in the mental hospital,where he later escapes,changes his name and ends up teaching high school science to a class full of A-holes and hot chicks that constantly ridicule & pull pranks on him. When he finally perfects his invisibility serum of course he immediately heads for the girls locker room shower,and finds other ways to see girls boobs too.After eavesdropping on what the students are saying about them he starts to kill them all while still seeing the girls bare breasts. Can he be stopped?? How many nice boobs will he see?? You will have to watch to find out! The movie is fun,and there is CONSTANT female nudity and most the girls are very good looking. A nice one for the t&a movie fan.

Rather strange movie...

[paul_haakonsen · 3/10 · 18 December 2022]

Right, well I stumbled upon this 1990 movie late in 2022. And truth be told, I had never even heard about the movie prior to picking it up by random chance. And since I hadn't already seen it, of course I opted to give director Adam Rifkin's 1990 movie a chance.

Writers Matt Devlen, Tony Markes, and Adam Rifkin put together a storyline and script that definitely had potential, I will say that much. Now, I am not familiar with the comic by Milo Manara upon which the script is based, so how true the 1990 movie is to the comic book materials, I honestly do not know.

What ruined "The Invisible Maniac" for me was the excessive need for director Adam Rifkin to show female nudity. I am not a prude, but it simply was over the top in this movie. Less is sometimes more, and it definitely would have been in this instance.

The acting performances in the movie were not grand. In fact, many of the performances were a bit too much, and thus a bit forced as well, especially from lead actor Noel Peters (playing Kevin Dornwinkle). It generally lowered the overall enjoyment of the movie, as it felt sort of amateurish.

But now being able to check off "The Invisible Maniac" from my watched-movies-list, I can honestly say that this is not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time. Nor is it a movie that I will particularly recommend for people to track down and watch.

My rating of "The Invisible Maniac" lands on a three out of ten stars.

Gloriously un-PC and tons of fun.

[BA_Harrison · 8/10 · 29 September 2008]

In H.G. Wells' classic story The Invisible Man, the protagonist, a research scientist named Griffin, slowly descends into madness when he is unable to reverse a formula that renders him invisible; in The Invisible Maniac, Professor Kevin Dornwinkle (Noel Peters) is completely off his rocker way before he successfully pulls his disappearing act.

After his initial experiments fail, and he is mocked by his peers, Dornwinkle snaps and goes on a murderous rampage, winding up in an asylum for the criminally insane. Six months later, however, he escapes, adopts a new identity, and gets a job as a teacher at a high school (with one helluva lax vetting process for new employees).

By day, Dorwinkle teaches physics to a class of obnoxious teenagers, who make life hell for their nutty professor; by night he tries to discover where he went wrong with his previous experiments. Eventually he develops a serum that allows limited periods of invisibility which he uses to spy on girls in the shower and have a little grope every now and then. However, when his class play one trick too many on him, he totally wigs out, injects himself with his formula, traps his unruly pupils in the school, and proceeds to bump them off one by one.

Trashy, misogynistic, and completely one of a kind, The Invisible Maniac is a totally bonkers and thoroughly entertaining piece of early 90s schlock that any fan of weird cinema has just got to see. Peters' wonderfully unrestrained performance as Dornwinkle is absolutely perfect, his cartoonish psycho-nerd being everything you could ever want in a mad scientist (his maniacal laugh alone makes this an unmissable film). The supporting cast also do a great job, with Stephanie Blake putting in a particularly memorable turn as the school's nymphomaniac principal, and porn-star Savannah (credited as Shannon Wilsey) as a very sexy blonde student.

Besides the endless nudity from a very fine selection of busty babes, and the brilliantly OTT Peters, The Invisible Maniac also offers some terrific scenes of twisted humour and slapstick, with the funniest moments being when an invisible Dornwinkle gets punchy with some jocks: watching the poor actors throwing themselves all over the place and reacting to unseen punches is absolutely hilarious (although, credit where credit's due, they do a pretty convincing job!).

On top of all of this craziness, there are also several genuinely disturbing moments which make the film rather chilling at times: Dornwinkle's night-time visit to one sleeping beauty hints at nastier things that might follow (and is remarkably similar to a scene in Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man, which makes me think that the Dutch director is also a fan of this movie); several women are killed in nasty ways, but only after their breasts are revealed for the viewer's enjoyment; and the surprising ending sees the invisible killer evading capture after blowing a guy's head off with a shotgun!

I have no doubt that many people will loathe this film, berating it as unfunny, sexist garbage; those with a love of the absurd and an appreciation of the demented, however, should find The Invisible Maniac to be irresistibly dumb fun from start to finish.

Why it isn't that bad!

[AlWhite · 7/10 · 16 September 1998]

This is a bad movie in the traditional sense, but taken for what it is meant to be it is quite good. Very funny and well made, although there are a few death scenes that are in bad taste, what with jiggling breasts as a girl suffocates and so on.

Where?

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 25 October 2022]

Director and writer Rif Coogan is really Adam Rifkin and this movie is goofy in a great way. Dornwinkle (Noel Peters) is a scientist that specializes in molecular reconstruction. As a kid, his mother was told that he has the potential for madness but if she raises him correctly, it'll be OK. Instead, she raises him to have a major issue about women because sex is wrong. Of course, that goes horribly and he kills four people moments into the movie when his fellow scientists make fun of his latest experiment. He escapes and hides out as a substitute high school physics teacher with the name of Dr. Kevin Smith.

Between the students harassing him and the principal trying to seduce him, Dornwinkle explodes in a rage, drowning people in fish tanks, throwing a radio into the shower to kill another and even using a sandwich as a murder weapon. A janitor ends up getting his invisibility secret and the two have a unseen person battle for the ages. Also: as you can imagine, nearly non-stop nudity.

The Invisible Maniac also had a major role for Shannon Wilsey, better known as the adult star Savannah. She was debating going mainstream, but she was upset at the film's premiere, unsure whether the audience was laughing with or at her. She decided to go full time into pornography after that. She was also in Sorority House Massacre II the same year as this, along with co-star Melissa Moore.