None so blind as he who can see too much? (Film only) (X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (DVD))

Member Name: thereddragon

Product:	X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (DVD)
Date:	28/04/09 (183 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ray Milland, intelligent and gripping story, surprising ending

Disadvantages: None

Starring:

Ray Milland as Dr. James Xavier
Diana Van der Vlis as Dr. Diane Fairfax
Harold J. Stone as Dr. Sam Brant
Don Rickles as Crane

This 1963 Sci-Fi film starts out seeming fun and light-hearted, but then makes a serious about-face as our hapless hero becomes more and more embroiled in some pretty hefty problems. It stars great classic dramatic actor Ray Milland, star of quality Golden Age blockbusters 'The Lost Weekend' (1945) and 'Dial M for Murder' (1954). But he sadly must have lost his box office draw in older age, turning to oddball offerings such as this one and, in what must have been the lowest point of his career, the 1972 'The Thing With Two Heads' in which he played a white head grafted onto the body of Afro-American football player Roosevelt Grier (it was probably not one of the highlights of Rosey's career either).

Here he plays Dr James Xavier, a scientist carrying out research into improving vision beyond what the normal naked eye can see. In his lab, he explains to his colleague, Dr Diane Fairfax, that he is 'developing a way to sensitise the human eye so that it sees radiation up to and including gamma rays'. He demonstrates his new compound to her, on a lab monkey who then becomes able to see through things. When, despite these results, his employers refuse to grant him the funds to carry out trials on this novel procedure on humans, he decides to try it on himself.

After taking the eyedrops, he can immediately see that a button is missing under his colleague Dr Brandt's tie, and is elated at how this ability could benefit medical science by allowing doctors to see inside patients and to immediately be able to diagnose their ailments. When the effects begin to wear off, he doses himself again so that he can conduct some more tests. However, having tasted the ability to possess such supernatural vision, he becomes 'addicted' and continues dosing himself daily despite the objections of his colleagues who start to become concerned for his safety. His employers express disapproval of what he's doing and insist that he stop, but of course the good Doctor pays them no heed.

A fun sequence follows in which Dr Fairfax invites him to a dance. He has just dosed up again, and it kicks in while he's dancing with a girl. Suddenly, he can see all of the dancers in the room stark naked. We get 'treated' to the sight of naked hairy male legs and chests as well as various female bits (demure ones, as this is a family-rated film!) while Dr Xavier looks around with a highly amused grin. 'You like the way I dance?' the girl asks him. 'Oh, it's fine, it's just fine!' Dr Xavier enthuses, beaming at her and looking her up and down. Dr Fairfax cuts in, and Dr Xavier starts going on about how attractive she is. 'One drink really makes a difference with you,' she laughs. 'Well, you could say I'm seeing you for the first time,' Dr Xavier says meaningfully, 'and that's a most interesting birth mark you have above the third rib on your left side.' Dr Fairfax gets his drift and is horrified. 'You can SEE me!' 'But remember, I AM a doctor,' Dr Xavier reassures her.

However, the fun soon ends when, through an unfortunate accident, Dr Xavier ends up in serious trouble and is forced to go on the run. He flees with just the clothes on his back and his 'x-ray vision' concoction. To hide his identity, he has to resort to dubious means of earning a living and hanging out with some very unsavoury individuals. He is still taking the x-ray vision drops, and the chemical is having a cumulative effect that compounds his problems much, much further.

Directed by the infamous Roger Corman, this is one of his more intelligent and less goofy films (aside from the dance sequence!). Despite the luridness of the title and the subject matter, the story is surprisingly well-written, intriguing and quite intelligent. There are many interesting and sometimes movingly deep philosophical musings on the consequences of being able to see more than Man was meant to see.

This is quite a decent movie with good quality actors, especially on the parts of Milland, Diana van der Vlis as Dr Fairfax, Harold J Stone as Dr Brandt, and comedian Don Rickles as one of the dodgy characters Dr Xavier later becomes involved with. Milland, being the top notch actor that he was, comes across with convincing authority as a brilliant and respected scientist, and we really feel for him as he tries to keep at least some of his dignity after being forced to live off the grid and in poverty. Don Rickles is at his obnoxious best - for those who aren't familiar with him, he is an American comedian who has made a long comedy career of playing an in-your-face insulting and offensive character who takes the mickey out of everyone.

And, being a Roger Corman film, we also get treated to a small part from Dick Miller, one of Corman's stable of regular actors, who starred as nerdy would-be sculptor Walter Paisley in 1959 horror film 'A Bucket of Blood' and appeared in 1960's 'Little Shop of Horrors' as well as nearly every other Corman film. Happily, he's still going and recently appeared in 2007 weird cult film 'Trail of the Screaming Forehead'.

Special effects are reasonably good for 1963, with frequent switchovers to the first-person view as we see what Dr Xavier sees while his vision goes through ever-stranger permutations throughout the film. Unlike many low-budget films of the early 60s, this one is in colour and really needed to be in order to give us an effective insight into what Dr Xavier sees. The musical score is a good sixties avant-garde jazz with an increasingly cacophonic style as Dr Xavier's life gets increasingly problematic.

The run length is only an hour and fifteen minutes, but seems far longer, and I mean that in a good way, because there is so much packed into it. To me that's a feature of a good film - tightly edited with no fluff or padding.

All in all, it's very worth a watch, with a gripping story that will have you wondering how Dr Xavier will find a way out of his dilemma, and really feeling sympathy for him and his plight.

Just be warned, though, that this film has one of the bizarrest and most disturbing endings I've ever seen - the first time I saw it, as a child, I had to cover my eyes, and it still makes me cringe!

Also on ciao.co.uk as thereddragon.

Summary: A good Sci-Fi with some classy actors and an intelligent story