L'uomo dagli occhi a raggi X

The sad thing about the film X is that it was 40 years ahead of its time. Roger Corman should have done this or even redone this film in the age of computer graphics. Maybe at a major studio perhaps.

But a major studio would never have taken a chance on a film like this. A science fiction movie without any horrific monsters or buckets of blood and gore, the moguls would reason who would want to see that? X could only be done at American-International Pictures and be done only with someone of the imagination of Roger Corman.

Ray Milland as Dr. James Xavier is a research scientist doing work in the field of vision. Dr. Frankenstein only wanted to bring life back from the dead. Milland wants to improve vision so that we see with the eye of God.

He develops a serum based on hormones and enzymes and you apply to the eyes. Milland sees things more clearly, but as was said in a film some thirty years after X, he can't handle the truth.

After accidentally killing a colleague friend in Harold J. Stone, Milland goes underground still continuing his experiments and working first at a carnival and then at a diagnostic/healer under the tutelage of Don Rickles. All the while colleague Diana Van Der Vlis is looking for him because guilty or not of the homicide of their friend Stone, Van Der Vlis believes in Milland and his work.

The climax of this film which takes place in a tent revival meeting is a sudden death one and unforgettable. Let's just say there are no good choices or fates left for Milland. And he's been given a clarity far beyond what any of these people in that tent can comprehend.

Don Rickles will surprise many with his performance as this bottom feeding carnival hustler at how good he is. Actually he's not wrong in what he sees as a practical solution for all concerned, hiding Milland from the authorities, making money, and allowing him to continue his research. But no proper doctor wants a partner like Rickles. It's like Colin Clive teaming up with Dwight Frye. Also in a small role at the end of the film is John Dierkes as the small time evangelist with the tent show. He's also quite good.

X does ask some interesting questions, much like the original Frankenstein movie. This film really deserves a remake.

Here is Corman at almost his best. Ray Milland was as good an actor as Vincent Price, and this story isn't trapped in the Poe mode of rotting flesh and dilapidated mansions. It's more in the manner of Corman's The Trip, which was made a few years later. Dr. Xavier discovers something that he can use to see through solid objects, but its effect is cumulative, and by the end of the movie he's seeing all the way to the core of reality.

Of course, he has to go on the run, and must abandon his medical career. We see him in a carnival, reading peoples' thoughts, and later teaming up with his x girlfriend and going to Vegas and seeing through the cards and winning big, and finally, escaping from the police, and as he drives through the Nevada desert, we see that he can't see a thing. Abandoning his Lincoln Continental, he stumbles into a tent revival meeting. The preacher, played by Royal Dano(?)is telling his followers to throw Satan out. Filmed by Floyd Crosby, with beautiful special effects, this is a real piece of 60's film-making by one of the masters.

A very thoughtful, engrossing, flawed film from superhuman director/producer Roger Corman. Yep, it has some problems, most primarily dealing with a limited budget. But what it lacks in dollars it has in heart and its ability to make you think about what we are missing out seeing with our vision. I am not sure that much, or even any, scientific creedence can be given to the idea behind the experiments of Dr. Xavier James and his search to see beyond what normal vision allows. Ray Milland gives a fine performance as the obsessed man out to continue his experiments even if they involve using himself as the human guinea pig. Some of the scenes and dialogue are a bit hokey by today's standards but most fit the film very nicely. The scene with Milland at a party is a real hoot and great comedic relief. I also loved the end to the film but thought it could have been plucked out a little longer. The effects are very sparse and the only ones I really thought were any good were the ones used to highlight Milland's eyes through the film. The film boasts a fine cast of stalwart sci-fi/Corman people such as Morris Ankrum, Dick Miller, Jonathan Haze, and Barboura Morris, as well as a young(and obviously talented) Don Rickles. Definitely try to see your way to seeing this film.

... in that a doctor makes a great discovery -in this case a formula that allows people to "see through" objects, starts out trying to do good, becomes his own guinea pig, becomes obsessed, becomes bitter because others do not see the importance of his discovery, and in the end just makes a bunch of stupid decisions. Oh, and the formula is cumulative and yet the doctor keeps taking it!

This film would be completely unmemorable without Ray Milland as the title character - Dr. Xavier. Like with his other horror films, independent producer/director Roger Corman smartly uses a lead from the golden age of Hollywood - in this case Milland - and builds a simple story that still strikes at the essence of fear in human beings.

There are a quite a few goofy and outright dumb things going on.When Xavier goes on the run because of a tragic accident, he ... decides to work as a "seer" in a carnival?? Isn't that one of the first places the police might come looking for him? In his quest for money to look for a "cure" for his situation, he decides to go to Vegas. And win a bunch of money in just one casino. And get a loud and obnoxious attitude about it. Maybe the most tragic thing about Xavier's situation is that he is inflicted with the company of Don Rickles during the mid part of the film.

The one fun and light hearted moment of the film is when Xavier is invited to a swinging 60s party and because of his unique condition sees naked people everywhere. Roger Corman will need to wait a few more years into the 60s before he can feature actual naked people. But I digress.

The special effects are laughable in the 21st century, but Milland's distinguished and empathetic presence makes this work. And it goes after the question - If you can see through EVERYTHING, what exactly DO you see?

To this writer, the film is Roger Corman's best entry into sci-fi. Many of his 50s efforts hold a certain campy charm, with their low-budget effects - and this film is similar in that regard. It does not dwell on the effects, in fact some of them are rather poor. What it does have in its favor is a tight screenplay that gets into the story quickly, as will the viewer - and it's engrossing enough and the characters interesting enough that one stays involved through the episodic story.

What it has most in its favor is an excellent performance from Ray Milland, then in his last days being top-billed, and he milks it for all that it's worth. In some scenes Corman goes for a direct close-up and Milland's facial reactions indicate that he took the the role in a small-budget/tight schedule film with all the enthusiasm that he did in one of his roles for Alfred Hitchcock ("Dial M For Murder") or Fritz Lang ("Ministry of Fear"). Smooth, refined, but a man of immediate action if necessary, Milland's Dr. Xavier is not your usual mad scientist. As with Claude Rains in "The Invisible Man" or Al Hedison in "The Fly" he's the scientist who made the mistake of being his own subject.

Occasionally Corman goes for the cheap gag (the party sequence, where Xavier examines the guests sans attire - but inoffensive in a typical 60s approach), but the carnival scenes and the basement healer scenes show a maturity to Corman's direction, and these scenes are greatly helped by the performance of Don Rickles. He's as sleazy as one can get and admits that if he had the power, he would use it to see "all the undressed women my poor eyes can stand" and you believe it. A scene where Milland confronts other carnival workers who are speculating on his "power" shows the doctor to be both introspective and world weary at the same time. At this point even he does not know what to do with his ability, but Rickles' suggestion of setting up a site to "heal" others leads to the film's most revealing and almost poetic sequence. Xavier's original intention was to help the ill, but his implication in an accidental murder led him to seek refuge in the carnival Richard Kimble-style.

Diana Van Der Vlis does well with her underwritten role in which at one point she's rather quickly dropped, and then resurfaces rather conveniently later in the story - to no great effect. This was only her second feature film, though she had done a number of TV guest shots. Although half Milland's age, she seems more mature than her 28 years and they make a believable pair. A bonus is the appearance of a number of veterans in brief roles - John Hoyt, Harold J. Stone, John Dierkes and Morris Ankrum, as well as Corman stalwart Dick Miller. Miller shares his scenes with Jonathan Haze, whom it appears was getting the cheapest rate Corman could pay as he has no lines at all. He was rather bitter about this as he revealed in an interview years later.

Floyd Crosby's cinematography belies the small budget - only $300,000 and a shooting schedule of about three weeks. According to Corman they did rehearse a bit more than usual - and in the finished product it shows. He claims he even went as high as four takes, which may not exactly put him in William Wyler or Stanley Kubrick territory, but it's a far cry from what he'd do in the 50s. Les Baxter contributes what may be my favorite of his scores, fully complimentary to the action on screen without overwhelming it.

There's a bit of controversy over the ending - some attribute an extra line of dialog that never appeared in any print that I've seen, but it is still one of the most surprising endings of any sci-fi film since "The Incredible Shrinking Man." That it won the top prize at the Trieste Science Fiction Film Festival would be enough for one to be curious enough to see it even this many years later - that it has held up so well over 40 years points to that award's validity.