Trama

In 1930s, a psychotic drifter who's after the mystery woman who covered his whole body in illustrations that foresee distant future shows three of them (The Veldt, The Long Rain and The Last Night of the World) to a mesmerized traveler.

The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury, a collection of eighteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin, visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body. The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast space of stars and blackness, the sight of gray dust settling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere, the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father's clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets.—Stig Ohara

Just as the original book is an anthology of science fiction stories, the Illustrated Man movie has a framing device to connect the fragmented story vignettes that are told. A young hobo falls in with an experienced traveler who at times frightens and entices him. The senior hobo(Rod Stieger) is covered from head to toe by tattoo illustrations that both enrich and curse him. He warns the young man not to stare too closely at them for too long, as they seem to come alive and portray tales. Each one in turn plays out a science fiction tale, a morality play, some bitter, some sweet, some perplexing. The movie reuses the same three principal actors in every story vignette, making it a bizarre, confusing task to try to re-identify each as their role changes from tale to tale. There is no connecting thread here, save for the continuing framing story of the young man becoming entranced by the illustrations. The older hobo claims he is searching for the woman who tattooed him to this extent, but it is unclear if she is real, a phantom, or an invention of his somewhat disturbed mind. By the time we get the entire tale of how the tattoos came to be, Rod has become romantically involved with the female tattoo artist. There is some suggestion that she has made a mark upon his soul by living with him for so long. But suddenly, she is gone, vanished, and he is forever searching for his lost love, his muse, his devil woman who has cursed him to live like this and thrown him to the hard, cruel world. Shocked and driven to the point of madness himself, the young man attempts to crush the old hobo's skull with a rock, and then flees himself, having now become the target of the old hobo's pursuit. There is no resolution to this, only an endless chase that continues...—Kirk G

A young man is introduced to the hobo life by an odd, completely tattooed man. The tattoos seem to come alive and can drive a man mad. The old hobo pursues both the woman who tattooed him in his dreams and the young man who attempts to kill him.—Kirk G

In this Sci-Fi anthology based on short stories by famous Sci-Fi and horror author Ray Bradbury, a man meets a strange woman and ends up having his whole body covered in tattoos or illustrations, as he calls them. He meets a curious traveler and agrees to explain to him the meaning behind three of there illustration, which all happen to tell about the future. The first story is called "The Veldt" and follows a couple who's worried over the fact that their kids are spending all their time in an African savanna created by their incredibly realistic home virtual reality simulator. When they take action to get the kids back to reality, the kids fight back. In "The Long Rain", a team of astronauts crash-lands on Venus, a planet now completely covered with jungles thanks to heavy rain that's constantly falling throughout the entire year. Can they navigate the endless jungle and reach safety before they fall pray to madness and exhaustion? In "The Last Night of the World", a couple learns that the world will end in a day and decides to carry on with their daily routine anyway.