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.
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.
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.
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
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)
2024: Attack of the Puppet People (1958)
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)
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