Cardboard Science: I'm Looking Through You

Year: 1963
Director: Roger Corman
Cast: Ray Milland, Diana Van der Vlis, Harold J. Stone
Run Time: 1 hour 19 minutes

Happy October, everybody! It's time for the 12th Annual Great Switcheroo with Hunter Allen of Kinemalogue. For those who are new here, it's the time of year when I assign Hunter three 1980s slashers from my Census Bloodbath project to review. Keep an eye out for those. In exchange, he assigns me three of his Cardboard Science titles, which are science fiction movies from the 1950s (well, mostly the 1950s - his timeline is not quite so strict as mine).

Notice that I did say three movies! For the past couple years, I've only had the bandwidth to do one title in October, but this time I was able to jump pack into the pool with both feet and return to the traditional trio of reviews, which I'll be publishing throughout the month! Thankfully, that pool has been nice and warm and comfortable, because this year, Hunter has been especially nice by assigning three titles with huge names of the genre attached. 

We're gonna kick off with one of the biggest. You see, X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes was directed by the late, great Roger Corman. Corman is the perfect lynchpin for any year's Switcheroo, because - in addition to helming titles under the Cardboard Science purview like It Conquered the World - he went on to produce a number of Census Bloodbath movies as well, including Stripped to Kill, The Slumber Party Massacre, Sorority House Massacre, and Mountaintop Motel Massacre. 

What can I say, the man loved a massacre.

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes follows Dr. James Xavier (Oscar winner Ray Milland; you know, the guy from Frogs!), who experiments with eye drops that will allow him to see a broader spectrum of light than any person has ever seen before. Dr. Sam Brant (Harold J. Stone) has grave misgivings about this, but helps him anyway. Dr. Diane Fairfax (Diana Van der Vlis), who represents the foundation that is funding Xavier's research, has less grave misgivings, but mostly because she has the hots for him.

Anyway, his experiment gives him X-Ray vision, but only for temporary periods. However, his continued use of the drops leads to permanent, compounded intensity of his X-Ray vision, to the point that he can see through the fabric of the universe into the Lovecraftian madness at its center. Things don't go all that well for him. 

Oh, and along the way he works at a carnival briefly because... well, why not, I guess.

So, I do love a time capsule, and X certainly provides on that front. Even though it's a fairly tried-and-true sci-fi horror story about a scientist's hubris destroying his life that boasts a screenplay that could have been written a good 10 years earlier, its aesthetic trappings allow you to carbon date it to the exact second it was shot, which is one of the great things about many Roger Corman movies.

Largely, this is evidenced in the overall look of the movie, which is cozy and colorful, with great big splashes of that burgundy red that we used to have in such abundance back when movies had saturated color schemes. But there are some sequences that are totally far out, including the big purple spiral swirling behind the opening credits and the hyper-mod party where everyone does that absurdly gyratey 1960s dance that everyone seemed to innately know how to do back then, where you swing your little T-Rex arms around too rapidly for the human eye to process.

Unfortunately, in spite of these manifold 1960s delights, there really just is no getting around that story. It starts off fine, at least. It cuts right to the chase, which I appreciate, to the point that Ray Milland is giving himself X-Ray vision by the time we hit the 12 minute mark. And about 3 of those minutes were credits.

However, once it gets cracking, the pacing immediately goes slack and the movie just sort of meanders around for an hour and change until it's had enough of itself. It has no direction whatsoever, and I wish it had just chosen a path. If it was hornier, it would have been camp fun. If it made the lead into more of a Bond villain, it would have been camp fun. If it was more cosmic, it might have been legitimately great.

More of this, please and thank you.

However, it just kind of floats around like a detached retina. There are several clear attempts to mold the story into some genre or other, but they never stick. It's a romance sometimes, and a sci-fi movie other times. Then it's a horror movie and eventually even an action movie. Like, it literally ends on a car chase.

It's perhaps at its best when it's a horror movie, because that's the register that Ray Milland's plummy, perfect performance is channeled in the most exciting way. I could watch him waxing poetic about the skeleton of a city or his unwanted ability to see through his own eyelids all day. If it was purely a character study giving Milland free reign, it might have been an all-out masterpiece.

It's just too distracted to ever really get there. Yes, some of the moments that the movie vomits up on screen are quite good. I do like when the movie gets cute with his X-Ray vision (particularly in a scene where he's being given an eye test, or the part where he sees everybody at the party dancing naked). And he briefly has a fabulous scene partner in Don Rickles as a crooked carnival barker (Rickles laces a bit of poison around his showman's charisma that is quite compelling).

But ultimately, the sum of X's parts swings the wrong direction, especially because some of those parts are, say, the scene where Xavier is diagnosing a sick little girl by X-Ray visioning through her clothes and only then through her skin. And then his colleague comes in and comments about how pretty the little girl is and Xavier agrees and we're meant to be heartwarmed or something. Let's just say that not everything about a time capsule is worth the effort of digging it up.

Oh, also, I unequivocally hate the way his X-ray powers actually look onscreen. The shots that are filmed in what I've dubbed "eyeball-vision" are surrounded by this blood red frame that's meant to mimic the shape of an eye. Never mind the issue that you don't see your own eye sockets when you're looking out of them. You've got to let a genre movie do its thing. But it's just an ugly visual, and we get so damn much of it. Boo.

Anyway, it's so good to be back! Long live Cardboard Science!

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

*So in the scene where he can see everybody at the party dancing naked, including being able to see through their shoes, how come everybody's feet are touching the floor instead of floating a couple centimeters above- you know what, nevermind.
*I would also like to take issue with Xavier's "X-Ray vision" while driving into Vegas, which is literally the same collage of neon signs that any movie with a Vegas sequence does, but seen through a distorted filter.
*I've been really trying not to nitpick a silly Roger Corman movie, I promise, but it's baffling how Xavier is able to see the blackjack cards using his X-Ray vision. It would canonically just show him the back of the next card in the deck. Make it make sense!

The morality of the past, in the future!:

*The scene where Ray Milland lights a cigarette using a Bunsen burner might be the most 1960s thing I've ever seen, and I'm including that party sequence.
*When Dr. Xavier pushes Sam out the window in a fit of pique (happens to the best of us), Dr. Fairfax urges him to escape, lest he be accused of murder. She, however, stays put in the room where a man was just murdered, because I guess the police would never suspect a woman of having the upper body strength to pull off such a crime.
*As he begins his winning streak in Vegas, Xavier hands Fairfax a coin and she protests "I don't gamble!" as if it would somehow be a moral failing to put his coin into the machine so he can try and win some money. Some people need to take a chill pill.

Sensawunda:

*I shall not embarrass myself by revealing how long it took me to notice that Dr. Xavier's name begins with... an X!
*By far the best scene in the movie is when Roger Corman stalwart Dick Miller and his Little Shop of Horrors co-star Jonathan Haze show up to heckle Dr. Xavier when he's working at the carnival.
*The movie starts on a 37-second still frame of a bloody eyeball with music playing behind it, which was actually effectively unsettling, but mostly because I was worried I had broken my TV.

TL;DR: X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is a charming movie, but it's ultimately pretty empty.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1541

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture 

2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

2020: The Colossus of New York (1958) It Came from Outer Space (1953) Rodan (1956)

2021: Robot Monster (1953) Queen of Outer Space (1958) The Cyclops (1957)

2022: Tarantula (1955) The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

2023: Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
2024: Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

2025: X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963) The Spider (1958) The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

2020: Night School (1981) The Fan (1981) Madhouse (1981)

2021: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

2022: Hell Night (1981) Return to Horror High (1987) Cutting Class (1989)

2023: Blood Rage (1987)

2024: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

2025: Superstition (1982) The Carpenter (1988) Visiting Hours (1982)

Pond Scum

Year: 1972

Director: George McCowan

Cast: Ray Milland, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Every holiday I try to watch a horror movie with some thematic connection to the celebration. This is plenty easy when Christmas rolls around, but although horror films do cover a wide array of occasions (from New Year's Evil to Bloody Birthday to Prom Night), there is a pronounced lack of coverage for Independence Day. Sure, there's the late 90's Lustig film Uncle Sam, but I've already seen that. So my pick for this year's Fourth of July was a more tangential film - American Gothic. 

Little did I know I could have picked Frogs. Sergio would not have been happy with my decision (whatever, he sleeps through all my movies anyway), but it does fit the holiday. Taking place on a Floridian island during the Fourth of July, the 1972 nature-run-amok film Frogs promises loads of amphibian fun. 

It does not deliver.

There is more going on in this still than in the movie itself.

First off, there is a shockingly pronounced lack of frogs in this film. Oh sure, there's plenty of random stock footage shots of frogs hanging out that jam themselves into the film every 20 seconds or so like that one friend at a sleepover who won't shut up when it's 5 AM and you're all trying to sleep. But the primary malevolent force in the film is a grab bag of indigenous (and an assortment of geographically dubious) insects and reptiles.

But I have plenty of grievances to air about that, we can hear those later. First, the plot. Rich patriarch Jason Crockett (Ray Milland) is having his annual birthday party/Fourth of July/family reunion event at his island mansion. The entire family has gathered to celebrate the occasion. They are soon joined by Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott, who could probably have called this a skeleton in his closet were it not for The Golden Compass), an ecological reporter who is investigating the pollution around the area.

As is wont to happen in these types of films, the family is soon beset by a siege of wild animals, presumably exacting revenge for tainting their ecosystem. It's really a great set-up: A large family providing a massive pool of victims, a chintzy premise that promises B-movie fun, and a lead actor that has since risen to stardom.

From a canoe to a corral. 'Tis the circle of life.

If only the film weren't so unearthly dull. Content to be a crappy soap opera for the bulk of its run time, Frogs spends what feels like the course of several hours establishing its characters' relationships and interpersonal dramas. This would normally be a great achievement, but with characters so wanly interchangeable (a good vision test - attempt to differentiate between the three nearly identical balding WASPy brothers) and scenes so static (characters are arranged in dreary tableaux rather than "blocked" in any way), it's enough to make you want to pull out your own eyelashes in a desperate attempt to wish the film away.

And just when the animals start ramping up to wreak their havoc, Frogs undoes itself even more. Of course the kill scenes were never going to be good works of cinema, but they are too sedate to really earn the attentions of any but the most avid B-film watchers. If it's not fun to watch even in an ironic way, your killer frog movie missed out on a major step of the process.

There's a great scene where lizards use their knowledge of chemistry to manufacture a poison gas, but beyond that glint of kookiness, there's not much bite. People mostly just stumble through the forest and shoot themselves in the foot (in one case, quite literally). Let me ask you a question. If you saw a rattlesnake in a clearing, would your first move be to fall directly toward it?

If your answer was no, you are not a character in this film. Congratulations. You have a brain stem.

There are plenty of scenes that, on paper, sound like dynamite viewing. There's a photo shoot with a Foxy Brown-style girlfriend. Frogs somehow take out the phone line then fix it and make a menacing call to the house. Sam Elliott rips his shirt off at the drop of a hat. A man in a wheelchair throws himself into a pile of frogs and dies just cuz it seemed like the thing to do at the time. But there's a supreme lack of effort involved that imbues every scene with a slack lethargy and prevents the more fun plot points from being truly accessible as such.

Although if I could access this outfit I would.

It is of interest as a time capsule of the singular decade of the 70's and one of the first known ecological horror films (a supremely underpopulated genre, the most recent of which is Barry Levinson's found footage gem The Bay), but the shoddy production values sink it into the muck.

Many of the achingly overpresent stock footage shots of various reptiles are blurry with water on the lens, or have the feel of some hapless tourist being jostled while trying to get a shot of the local fauna. The music sounds like the dying wheezes of a kazoo, and more scenes are spent talking about schedules and dividends than screaming in terror.

Also the frogs do absolutely nothing until the last two minutes of the movie and that is unforgivable. Sure, commit whatever reptilian shenanigans you must, but don't sell me a title and not see it through. I'm pretty sure that's one of the Seven Deadly sins.

At least Frogs has the kind of important theme that one can expect from a sharp B-movie, proving that it's at least a little smarter than the average bear, but this is the grizzly sort of bear, not the koala. I'd rather run screaming into the woods than wrap my arms around it.

TL;DR: Frogs is tedious, but it has a good environmental theme and a couple decent B-movie frills.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1027