• Directed by Bruce Malmuth
• Written by Stanford Sherman
• Starring
  • Steve Guttenberg
  • Jeffrey Tambor
  • Art Hindle
  • Morgan Hart
  • Lisa Langlois
• Produced by Frank Mancuso Jr.

You know, I gotta be more careful to pick a broader category when I do these theme months. I’m roughly halfway through my Invisibility Video Binge, and I’m getting headsplitting deja vu from everything I see.

Yup, invisibility would be good any time now. Aaaaaaany time…

At least this movie doesn’t fail so obviously in its implicit goals as some others. The Invisible Maniac tried to be funny and sexy, and failed on both counts. Hollow Man wanted to be deep and exciting, and instead turned out shallow (or dare I say “hollow”?) and predictable. This flick, presumably, was trying to be mildly amusing (hey, you don’t hire Steve Guttenberg for madcap zaniness, bro) and slightly sexy, and on those terms, it did okay.

Guttenberg is Sam Cooper, an aide in the state department, whose assignment is shepherding the “second class” ambassadors — those representing countries we really don’t feel the need to impress, and who thus get the less-classy banquet hall with peanut barrels, economy-sized gallon jars of mustard, and chicken giblets as the main course. Yup, life sucks in Washington — but things should look up today, because today Sam’s getting married!

On the other hand, the girl he’s getting married to is Amanda (Morgan Hart), an ice queen who’s going to be extremely pissed that his work is making him late for his own wedding. (In case you missed her attitude, they played up the bitchy eye makeup real well.) But Sam’s oblivious to her obvious snipyness, despite the gentle admonitions of his best friend Ted (Art Hindle), who’s trying to get him to the wedding on time, and despite the fact that Amanda’s got a younger sister, Cindy (Lisa Langlois), who’s really cute and an awful lot nicer.

This is exactly the kind of tableau you do not want to present on your wedding day.

Their trip to the wedding is further interrupted by a car chase, as some bad guys chase a lone good guy who’s stolen a small metal sphere from the bad guys. In fact, it looks a hell of a lot like a Pokeball; maybe the bad guys simply gotta catch’em all. Once the station wagon pursuing the lone good guy crashes Sam’s car, he and Ted catch a ride with Russian consul Boris Potemkin (the always entertaining Jeffrey Tambor), finally making it to the wedding. But while Ted’s out getting Sam’s tuxedo repaired and cleaned (‘cuz of the car crash, you know), the pokeball kind of floats into Sam’s hotel room, and a disembodied voice tells him to lock the other door! Too late, alas, for Sam gets hit in the head by the other door when the bad guys storm in — and when he wakes up, it’s just him and the almost-corpse of a naked man. (And did I mention that Sam is dressed in nothing but his oh-so-endearing heart boxers?) The man reaches under the couch to where the pokeball had rolled and hands it to Sam, with the cryptic instruction: “Get this to Runkleman…” [croak]

Of course, when the police burst in, there’s Sam with his hand on the knives in the dead man’s back, so naturally they start shooting at him. What follows is the “amusing” chase, because, see, Sam is still dressed in his heart boxers. He does what anyone would do: Finds a room service waiter just his size, knocks him out, and escapes in his clothes.

The next day, Amanda won’t talk to him, but Cindy will (clue in, Sam), and together they take apart the ball to discover several vials of blue fluid. Naturally, Sam gets some on his finger, and accidentally ingests it along with his donut… Yes, the long-awaited moment has come: Steve Guttenberg has vanished!

“Oh, Sam… Your legs are so smooth and silky…”

And since the bad guys then burst in again, we’re treated to another chase in those heart boxers, the variation this time being that Sam is invisible. Eventually he escapes with Cindy to her workplace, which just happens to be a girl’s school. Well, how else did you think we were going to get the inevitable “invisible man in the women’s shower” scene in here? (In his defense, Sam was “innocently” looking for a towel to mop up a spill of product placement beverage.)

And now the quest is on, to find this “Runkleman.” But the badguys (under the direction of a mysterious invisible man themselves) want the pokeball, as do the Russians (remember our good friend Boris?), as well as Sam’s own employer, the State Department. In fact, the State Department goes so far as to want Sam dead, just so that no one will be able to reconstruct the formula from the residues in his tissues.

(There’s actually a fairly mature political scheme here for a 1983 movie: the State Department is working with the Russians to destroy the formula, because its presence, especially in the wrong hands, would be “destabilizing.”)

…And there’s the obligatory soft drink product placement.

As you can well imagine, along the way, Sam discovers he really loves Cindy, not Amanda. Said discovery leads to some of the more, um, entertaining footage here, as Cindy french-kisses an invisible man. Plus lots more chases, lots more wondering “who’s on whose side,” and far more exposure for Steve Guttenberg’s naked butt than I ever wanted to pass before my eyes.

While not terribly memorable by any means, The Man Who Wasn’t There is certainly a harmless flick; nothing here will cause the permanent damage of The Invisible Maniac, or even the extreme emotional reactions of Hollow Man. So why doesn’t it show up more often, instead of practically vanishing off the radar? Probably because it’s got kind of schizophrenic production values. It looks for all the world like a TV-movie (conflicting sources tell me it both was and wasn’t made for TV), and a not particularly high-end one. On the other hand, the fairly plentiful nudity in scenes that are fairly integral to the plot keeps it from being edited for and shown on broadcast TV, where it’s “charms” would most likely be appreciated. Then of course there’s the fact that the words “Starring Steve Guttenberg” just don’t have the pull they once did…

It’s an invisibility movie! What did you expect?

Sources also confirm that this was originally made in 3-D; however, unlike most of the trendy 3-D flicks made in that brief period of insanity in the early ’80s, this one is not replete with those shots framed specifically to make the audience say, “Ooh! 3-D!” (I’m thinking specifically of the popcorn in Friday the 13th Part 3.) Unfortunately, that reserve, so admirable in this one aspect, works against the movie in all other facets — very literally, nothing really jumps out at you.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 4
• breasts: 14
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 5
  • Ron Canada (“Barker”) played “Martin Benbeck” in the TNG episode “The Masterpiece Societ,” “Ch’Pok” in the DS9 episode “Rules of Engagement,” and “Fesek” in the Voyager episode “Juggernaut”
  • Charlie Brill (Rostoloni) was “Arne Darvin” in the classic episode “The Trouble with Tribbles,” and then reprised the role in the DS9 episode “Trials and Tribble-ations”
  • Michael Ensign (the Assistant Secretary) was “Security Minister Krola” in the TNG episode “First Contact,” “Ambassador Lojal” in the DS9 episode “The Forsaken,” and the Bard in the Voyager episode “False Profits”
  • Joseph Ruskin (Ambassador Hassan Khaffri) played “Galt” in the classic episode “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” “Tumek” in the DS9 episodes “The House of Quark” and “Looking for par’Mach in All the Wrong Places,” “Gul Rusol” in the DS9 episode “Improbable Cause,” the Vulcan master in the Voyager episode “Gravity,” and “Son’a Officer #3″ in Star Trek: Insurrection
  • Miguel Ferrer (the waiter that Sam stripped) played the first Officer of the Excelsior in Star Trek 3