El hombre tatuado

This is a set of chilling tales that come to life on the body of the title character. They are the vehicle. They express his pain and his despair. Once he is tattooed, he loses control of the effect of the stories. They are the stories. The one that has stayed with me the longest is the day after the end of the world tale, which has the saddest of conclusions. Some have even said this is a sick story. What would we do to prevent pain? What would we do to show our love? How could we go on with what we have done? These questions float over this episode. Ray Bradbury loves to take fantasy/scifi above the typical and integrate it with romance (not romantic love). He must have absorbed every ounce of his surroundings during his childhood. Here, Rod Steiger brings these tales to life and makes us think.

Rod Steiger is 'Carl', the titular character whose dermal illustrations come to life and tell three of Ray Bradbury's fanciful science-fiction short stories ('The Veldt', 'The Long Rain', 'The Last Night of the World'). Between the stories, Carl recounts to Willie, another drifter (Robert Drivas) how he came to be illustrated and why he wants to kill the artist (Claire Bloom). The vignettes (which also star Steiger and Bloom) are typical Bradbury: poetic fantasy with a thin veneer of science. The 'look' of the future in the first somewhat cryptic story is very dated and there isn't really much to the third story. The second tale, in which stranded astronauts try to survive on a planet of incessant, torrential rain is one of my favorites of Bradbury's short stories and (IMO) by far best of the three presented in this film. Bradbury is one of my favourite science fiction writers, but much of the appeal of his stories comes from his poetically descriptive and evocative style, which does not translate well to film ('The Martian Chronicles" (1980) being another example of a failed attempt to render his vision). The interludes with overbearing Carl bullying Willie, his captive audience, are not particularly interesting and Steiger especially is given to overacting. The cryptic backstory about the mysterious illustrator from the future goes nowhere, again reflecting the difficulty in translating Bradbury's fanciful prose to film, a more explicit medium.

Since most of this film consists of three independent tales it is not unlike watching The Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits on television, except that the source material is the very best possible, and Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom are two of the finest actors conceivable. And although this fragmentation causes the movie to lose the impact that a single feature length story might have had, all the tales, including the connecting story of the illustrated man himself, are bleak, despairing tales that have a cumulative quality. And that's what makes this movie so appealing and unusual. It has depth in directions that aren't often explored anymore and it does it with a simple elegance that you can't achieve with over-saturated special effects. "The Illustrated Man" isn't a masterpiece, or even great, but it is a film that is worth seeing. And in one instance it manages to improve on Bradbury. In his book he creates, then tosses away, the phrase "skin illustrations" with little effect. But a moment of Rod Steiger's rage found only in the movie will have you forever respecting those two words.

OK, too wild..I was about 7 when I saw this movie in the UK. I have thought over the years it was just an odd dream I had but there it was, on t.v. late one night. Totally freaked me out. Steiger is a major under rated actor to this generation. (umm it was 30 years ago I first saw the movie. You do the math) No wonder I thought it was a dream...a veratiable kalidascope of images. the kids with the lion. That house. It is well worth watching if only to see why you shouldn't do drugs. The 60's LSD influence is very strong here i think. All these years I was fascinated by tattoos and now I know why. Its the sort of film you never forget but cant clearly recall. There's no telling what it did to my subconscious.

'The Illustrated Man' shows how good a writer Ray Bradbury was, not to mention how his head was full of fascinating ideas. It shows this because the film is incredibly dated today, from the acting styles to the visions of the future we witness. And yet I remained engrossed throughout, because beneath the anachronisms and barmy notions lie the same powerful film that resonated with me as a child.

A lot of the film has little to do with the title character, although Rod Steiger's menacing performance will never let you forget the man with all-over body tattoos that come to life if you stare too hard. Also, Steiger himself has multiple roles throughout, and he delivers them with a mix of the theatrical bellow and long-faced stoicism of the period, but they still have their impact. Meanwhile of greater interest are the short stories each tattoo reveals. Like Bradbury's 'The Martian Chronicles', this film is a collection of tales woven around a central premise. We view his fears about where human society is heading, thanks to the all-pervading intrusion of technology into our lives.

I'm reminded of a Poe line - "without music or an intriguing idea, colour becomes pallor, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless". What becomes of the human soul when the machines take over? Add the all-embracing pallor and single-chrome fashion of a typical 1960s vision of the future, and you have a very bleak picture indeed. Yet that's how people saw things then (our guesses on things to come will look just as ridiculous soon enough), and the central theme, given how far we've progressed technologically in the interim, cannot be any less relevant. I'm glad our modern perspective yearns for more colour though - never mind technology killing our souls - the achromatic architecture would make anyone suicidal enough already.

Sojourns into futurity do of course suggest sci-fi trappings. Even putting aside the fact that predictions of the future quickly become dated, Ray Bradbury was never scientifically accurate at the time he wrote his stories. In 'The Martian Chronicles' for example, it is possible to breathe on Mars, water flows through canals, and a few blasts from a rocket's engines can terraform the atmosphere. 'The Illustrated Man' takes the same liberties with reality. Yet to dismiss it because of nonsensical scientific premises is to miss the point. The settings are not more than fabulous window dressing - fantasy masquerading as sci-fi. It is the exploration of the human condition in each tale that Bradbury is concerned with, and they are timeless.

As such, while time has not been entirely kind to this screen adaption of 'The Illustrated Man', its emotional core remains intact. The Bradbury flair for the weird and the wonderful is untarnished, and his thoughts still clear. You just need to take a good long look at a rainbow afterwards.