X! The Man with the X-Ray Eys (1963)

When Dr. Sam Brandt can’t find anything ophthalmologically wrong with his friend and colleague, Dr. James Xavier, he’s curious as to why someone with perfect 20 / 20 vision wanted another check-up so soon after his last appointment only a few months prior -- unless it has something to do with his patient’s experiments in ocular capacity.

Seems Dr. Xavier (Milland) has made it his life's work to increase the power and range of the human eye, which currently, Xavier bemoans, only reacts to about 10% of the electromagnetic spectrum. But now he’s had a clinical breakthrough in a chemical treatment to remedy these shortcomings.

Thus far, Xavier has only tested his Chemical X formula on his lab animals but feels the time has come for the next step and test the treatment on a human subject. For this honor, Xavier has volunteered himself. And his reasoning on this aren’t so much altruistic but egotistical, essentially making sure he’s the first one to see what no other person on Earth has ever seen before.

This would explain his obsession on the condition of his eyes; to make sure they’re in perfect working order before he starts altering them. And after getting the full pitch on what his friend might see, despite Xavier’s confidence, Brandt (Stone) preaches caution while moving forward, saying only the gods can see everything. But his friend only smiles, saying he’s about to catch up on the omnipotent.

With a clean bill of health on his eyes, Xavier returns to his lab at the hospital, where he also has privileges as a surgeon. And that’s one of the main goals of these experiments; hoping it will open a whole new window into medical diagnostics and surgery. I mean, imagine if an oncologist or a cardiologist no longer needed X-rays but could use their own eyes as a portable cat-scan or MRI?

You see (no pun intended), Xavier has already imagined this, and is sure he can make it a reality. But this will require time and money and sweat in the lab; and to accomplish this Xavier must constantly jump through hoops for Dr. Diane Fairfax (Van der Vlis), who is the chief financial liaison for the foundation bankrolling all the medical research at the hospital.

It seems they’re a little concerned about all the money Xavier has spent thus far with nary a report on any progress. With that, Xavier says a report won’t be necessary and offers a practical demonstration instead.

Now, this demonstration involves a fairly elaborate set-up. The gist of it is Xavier has a cute little monkey who has been conditioned to flip the switch on a corresponding colored light bulb to match the color of paper he shows the primate; white, red, and blue. And once he demonstrates this to Fairfax, Xavier then doses the monkey’s eyes with Chemical X, places the stacked colored pieces of paper in front of his test subject and then waits.

Soon enough, the monkey lights up the white bulb, then the red, and finally the blue. With the added X-enhancement, the monkey was able to see through the layers and perceive all three colors at once to Fairfax’s utter astonishment.

However, while apparently successful, the test subject suddenly keels over. A necropsy shows the animal died of heart failure due to a massive ‘full system shock.’ But Xavier does not see this as any kind of red flag. No. He believes the primate merely lacked the mental capacity to properly process what it was perceiving and feels the more advanced human brain can handle it -- whatever “it” may be.

And so, after much heated debate, Xavier finally manages to bully both Brandt and Fairfax into assisting him with the initial trial: one single drop of Chemical-X into each eye of the patient. Then, after a brief period of adjustment while the drug takes full effect, Xavier can suddenly read a closed manuscript and spot a missing button hidden by Brandt’s tie.

With this success, Xavier presses on and tries two drops in each eye. This time, however, he promptly passes out as his brain and nervous system cannot cope with the sudden massive influx of sensory data.

Xavier remains unconscious for two whole days. Meanwhile, as he recovers, Fairfax and Brandt must present his findings to the foundation’s board in Xavier’s absence, who are not all that impressed, feeling the whole test might’ve been a staged hoax. And seeing no real practicality for seeing through walls or people’s clothes, aside from a lewd thrill, the board votes to cut all funding and shut down Xavier’s lab immediately.

When a recovered Xavier gets the bad news, he’s understandably upset. Doubly so when his efforts to convince the hospital to further fund him also ends in failure. Undaunted, he vows to continue with his experiments until his supply of Chemical X is exhausted. Meantime, Xavier discovers the effect of the drug may be cumulative as he could still clearly see while his eyes were bandaged over during his recovery, and now he can suddenly see through people’s clothes without taking another dose.

This leads to a fairly hilarious scene when Fairfax, who's obviously fallen for him, cons the socially awkward Xavier into attending a cocktail party / shindig at a colleague’s house with her. And as the others tear up the rug, Xavier bemusedly moves through the dancing crowd, ogling all the pretty naked women to his enhanced eyes. (Naked in a 1963 cinematic sense, mind you.)

After Fairfax asks him to dance, she sniffs out what he’s been doing when he compliments her on a birthmark near her left breast, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “Eyes are up here, asshole."

Anyhoo, Xavier has bigger and better plans for his new powers -- for lack of a better word, like peering inside a young patient’s body and discovering she’s been misdiagnosed by the chief surgeon, Dr. Willard Benson (Hoyt), who will operate in the morning -- a misdiagnosis that will most likely kill the patient on the operating table.

But Benson will not listen to Xavier’s second opinion, forcing his fellow surgeon to take drastic action, where he incapacitates Benson, slicing his hand open with a scalpel, and takes over the operation. But even though his diagnosis proves right and the patient is saved and expected to make a full recovery, Benson cannot let Xavier’s rash action go unaccounted for and plans to bring charges of malpractice -- and won’t stop until Xavier’s medical license is revoked.

And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, the side-effects of the drug, including intense migraine pain, and a sense of foreboding over what won’t quite come into focus yet, have an agitated Xavier on edge and on the verge of a mental breakdown. And as Fairfax and Brandt try to talk some sense into him, and to stop dosing himself, Xavier angrily lashes out and accidentally knocks Brandt through a plate glass window when he tried to sedate him, who then plummets several stories to his grisly death.

And while this definitely was an accident, after the incident during the surgery, where he already attacked one doctor, with everyone else already thinking he’s gone crazy, Fairfax fears no one will ever believe them. And so, she encourages Xavier to run because she doesn’t need any special eye-drops to see what will happen if he gets caught, arrested, charged with murder, and sent to the gas chamber…

In the summer of 1962, American International Pictures, despite the recent success of their burgeoning Edgar Allan Poe cycle, were still feeling the financial pinch from their near bankruptcy in the late 1950s. These dire straits put a definitive underline on the financial risk they took funding Roger Corman on House of Usher (1961) to the tune of $300,000 -- far and away the most they had ever spent on one feature. And when that proved a surprise hit, they immediately rolled on an ersatz sequel, The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), which could only muster a budget of $200,000 but would go on to make even more money than House of Usher.

Here, as AIP shored things up, feeling he was being cheated on his promised percentages on the first two films, Corman decided to make his own Poe picture for the Filmgroup -- the company he had started with his brother, Gene Corman.

“It just so happened that the folks at Pathe Labs wanted to start their own distribution outfit,” said Mark Thomas McGee (Fast and Furious: The Story of American International Pictures, 1984). “They figured a Poe / Corman movie would be a fine way to start. They offered to grubstake Corman on terms sweeter than AIP’s.”

Thus, Corman struck a deal with Pathe to make The Premature Burial (1962). Nearly everyone involved on the first two Poe pictures would return: Danny Haller on the production design, Marjorie Corso providing costumes, and Floyd Crosby on Camera. Noticeably absent was star Vincent Price and screenwriter Richard Matheson.

Ray Russell and Charles Beaumont would replace Matheson. Meanwhile, Corman had wanted Price to star in this latest vehicle but he had signed a lucrative exclusivity contract with AIP; and so, he settled for Ray Milland, whom Corman described in his autobiography, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime (1990), as “a sophisticated, debonair native Welshman, who still had a cultured trace of a ‘mid-Atlantic’ accent.’”

But as cameras were set to roll, Corman spotted Jim Nicholson and Samuel Arkoff, the founders of American International, wandering onto his set unannounced, and both were sporting Cheshire grins. Apparently feeling a little territorial, they had managed to strong-arm Pathe into selling them their interest in the picture. Initially, Pathe called their bluff, but when Arkoff threatened to take all of AIP’s lab work somewhere else to be processed, they caved.

 (L-R) James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff.

And so, that’s how The Premature Burial would become the third AIP Poe Picture. They would honor Corman’s percentages promised by Pathe. And Corman would kind of get his revenge by shooting portions of The Terror (1963) on leftover sets of yet another AIP Poe picture, The Raven (1963) -- an unusual and highly tumultuous production that we will be covering in the near future.

However, despite the fact that money was now coming in, it wasn’t coming in quite fast enough to offset these expanded budgets. And so, strapped for cash, The Haunted Palace (1963) was put on hiatus, freeing up Corman, who was ready to shake the cobwebs of these Gothic melodramas out of his system for a bit. Thus, Corman headed to Europe with a small crew to chase around the touring Grand Prix and film it for The Young Racers (1963), which was based on a script by Robert Campbell concerning bullfighters that Corman took some White-Out to. (And if I have to explain what White-Out is, let's just say, GET OFF MY LAWN!)

Campbell had written Teenage Caveman (1958) and Machine Gun Kelly (1958) for Corman, and would write The Masque of the Red Death (1964), which is probably my favorite of the Poe films. And while shooting in Ireland on The Young Racers, he challenged two of his underlings, Francis Coppolla and Menachem Golan, of Cannon Films infamy, to whip up an idea for a second feature to film while there. Coppola won, and the results were Dementia 13 (1963). (Yet another wild and wacky production tale for another day.)

Upon his return to California, Corman took a meeting with Nicholson. Turns out they still didn’t have enough money for the next Poe picture yet but did have enough for a smaller feature. And always the idea man, Nicholson had another highly exploitative title in search of a picture -- X! The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963).

The Kansas City Star (October 6, 1963).

“Titles were very important to AIP,” said Corman for the commentary track on MGM’s Midnite Movie release of X! The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. “Nicholson was a former theater owner and he knew how important the title was -- particularly in low budget films. And some of his titles were pretty wild. Occasionally, I thought he went one step beyond what was logical -- though logic rarely played a part here.”

Over the next few days, they kicked around ideas for a plot, which included versions of a jazz musician having a bad acid trip after a tainted drug reaction or a lowlife who gains his powers by accident, who then uses his new found ocular skills to commit crimes. But those all felt like dead ends to Corman, plot wise, who then finally came up with a more reasonable solution:

“My first idea was to make him a saxophone player in a jazz group who is taking a lot of drugs, said Corman (MGM, 2001). “ I got about halfway through writing the original story and I thought this story isn’t going to go anywhere. I better throw this away. And I went with a more appropriate, though not quite as exciting a concept, but I think it makes a little more sense.”

Thus, thinking the concept hewed best if it wasn’t an accident at all but the end result of an experiment by some research scientist gone awry, these visual enhancements would keep increasing in strength until the climax, where the protagonist would go through a mystical experience when his eyes pierce the center of the universe and he essentially looks upon God. Will his mind be able to take it? Or, like Icarus, would this action cause his doom? Audiences would have to buy a ticket to find out.

And it was these philosophical implications and notions on what he would later refer to as a “low-budget Greek Tragedy” that Corman handed over to Robert Dillon and Ray Russell to hammer out a shooting script.

“Dillon and Russell were an excellent writing team,” said Corman (MGM, 2001). “Dillon had a fair amount of experience as a screenwriter, and Russell had been the fiction editor of Playboy Magazine and had just come to Hollywood. He was a friend of Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, who were friends of mine and had worked with me on several films. They recommended Ray particularly because he was interested in Science Fiction.”

Corman liked this match due to Russell’s fresh enthusiasm and Dillon’s veteran experience. Dillon had written City of Fear (1959), a nifty little police procedural / manhunt, where a prison escapee doesn’t realize what he thinks is a stash of heroin is actually a highly radioactive material. He would also write a juvenile spy spoof, 13 Frightened Girls (1963), for William Castle, and Muscle Beach Party and Bikini Beach (both 1964) for Bill Asher, which proved another financial windfall for AIP. He would also write two excellent neo-noirs in the 1970s -- Prime Cut (1972) and 99 and 44/100% Dead! (1974).

Russell, meanwhile, had written Mr. Sardonicus (1961), one of Castle’s gimmick pictures, where audiences got to (fraudulently) vote on the fate of the villain, and Zotz! (1962), the merry huckster’s attempt at a comedy. He would also write The Horror of it All (1964), a musical vehicle for Pat Boone; Chamber of Horrors (1966), which introduced audiences to the Fear Flasher and the Horror Horn, so they could avert their eyes when things got too spooky; and he ended his career with the grisly supernatural slasher film The Incubus (1981), where the possessed killer *ahem* raped his victims to death.

But when it came time to actually film their finished script for The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, their director started getting cold feet and nearly pulled the plug, feeling the script didn’t have the bite he’d expected and feared the production just didn’t have the budget to pull off the “X-Effect” properly.

“After developing the script, I told AIP that on a fifteen day schedule, with a budget of $200,000, I thought the special effects were too big and that they should abandon the project,” said Corman (MGM, 2001). “Whenever I had tried to do big special effects on a low budget, the cheapness always showed through, and I just didn’t want to do it again.”

 Behind the scenes on Corman's The Day the World Ended (1955).

Corman wasn’t even going to charge them for the work he had already put into the picture. However, “AIP was very pleased with the script and felt we could pull it off.”

Since the beginning of his career in cheap genre films, Corman always counted on the 'suspension of disbelief' from his audience, who were drawn in by the lurid titles and fantastic poster art; and these audiences would go along with the picture that went with them, even though they seldom lived up to the hype, if they could detect a genuine effort to give them what they paid for no matter how threadbare and shoddy the product turned out to be.

Behind the scenes of Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957).

Said Corman (MGM, 2001), “The willing suspension of disbelief is, I think, essential in this type of picture. The audience comes to see a movie because of the outlandish title -- X! The Man with the X-Ray Eyes -- and expects a picture about that. And they’re willing to buy into the story, at least in my theory, if you give them a reasonable enough explanation. It might not be foolproof, but they are willing to suspend their disbelief. If you can give them enough of a rationale for the story, they will go along with you providing you are logical once you’ve set up that origination.”

Credit to art director Haller and John Howard on the visual effects for doing the best they could under their limited circumstances. And so, while ‘Spectarama’ only consisted of some solarized negatives, a few optical in-camera tricks, some tastefully filmed nudity, and a half-dozen articulated skeletons, which all worked well enough, Corman would rely heavily on the human elements of the story to tell his tale.

Now, the majority of the budget went to star Ray Milland, who is rock solid and adds a lot of gravitas as the tormented James Xavier, whose reaction to what he sees in the ethereal is what really gives the film any weight.

This is not some mad scientist, but someone willing to take the next step for the betterment of mankind. Only it turns out mankind wasn’t quite ready for this next step just yet as Xavier, now a fugitive, who left everything behind except his supply of Chemical X, is hiding out in plain sight at the sideshow of some seedy seaside carnival.

See, Xavier has taken on the guise of Mentallo and has billed himself as a psychic, using his powers to read the contents of pocketed wallets and personal belongings to wow his audience. This, he hopes, will keep the tickets selling until he can raise enough money to continue his experiments -- not to enhance the effects of Chemical-X, but to find an antidote, as Xavier must now wear lead-lined goggles to dampen his sense-overload lest he go mad.

The irony of this is not lost on Xavier. He had wanted to see the light, and now all he wants is a few relieving moments of darkness.

Meantime, his partner, a carny huckster named Crane (Rickles), unable to figure out how the elaborate ruse is pulled off so accurately -- and believe me, this guy knows all of them, is beginning to suspect Mr. Mentallo possesses some sort of bona fide supernatural power. 

And when there’s a terrible accident at the carnival, Crane watches as Xavier breaks character and tends to the severely wounded woman and “sees” she has fractured ribs and a shattered leg.

With that, Crane hatches a plan to really start raking in the dough, setting up his partner in a rundown basement apartment somewhere in the city, where he starts a whisper campaign saying the tenant is a psychic healer, who can diagnose what ails you for a fee disguised as a free will donation.

But this successful scam comes to a crashing halt with the arrival of Dr. Fairfax, who is once more practicing medicine after being fired by the board of trustees after the incident with Dr. Brandt. Seems she was curious to meet the miracle man who had diagnosed several of her patients with startling accuracy, and had a hunch it might be Xavier.

Turns out Crane had also found out Xavier’s true identity and warns he will rat him out to the cops if he bails on their fleecing operation. But Xavier calls his bluff and leaves with Fairfax anyway. And as they flee the scene, he catches her up on how far the Chemical X treatments have taken him by revealing he sees “a city unborn, flesh dissolved in an acid of light, a city of the dead” as people appear to him as nothing more than skeletons now. And the only way to stop this is if the two can develop the elusive antidote; and for that they will still need money.

On that front, Xavier hits upon an idea -- an idea so simple he curses himself for not exploiting it sooner. And that’s why he and Fairfax wind up in Las Vegas, where Xavier uses his power to find a slot machine ready to pay out. He then uses these winnings as his stake at a blackjack table, where his ability to see what cards are coming next soon has $20,000 worth of chips piled up next to him.

Alas, this incredible win streak also draws the attention of the casino’s pit-boss, who feels Xavier is cheating but can find no proof. And while Fairfax thinks they should cash out and leave while the getting is good, Xavier foolishly refuses to leave and keeps on playing until he’s basically cut-off. 

And when the pit-boss won’t let them leave the casino, sure they’ve been swindled somehow, with the police on the way, Xavier panics. He tosses his winnings into the air, which causes a riot to recover all the money and allows him to escape during the confusion.

But in the resulting scrum, Xavier loses track of both Fairfax and his special goggles. And after a merry chase his altered perception is so overwhelming he soon loses control of the car and totals it in a ditch.

Then, as he blindly wanders around the desert, Xavier is soon drawn toward a commotion that turns out to be a raucous revival meeting held in a tent, which he stumbles into just as the other rabid parishioners head to the front to admit their sins and gets caught up in the rush to be saved.

All the while, Xavier’s eyes are piercing the final veil and seeing things not meant to be seen. When he confesses this to the assembly, the preacher quotes the bible, Matthew, Chapter Five, Verse 29, sayeth the Lord, “If your eye offends thee, pluck it out.” And as the Pentecostal crowd joins in on the fiery chant of “pluck it out” the maddened Xavier does just that.

In Danse Macabre (1981), his non-fiction treatise on the horror genre in print, radio and film, and how they influenced contemporary fears and social anxieties, author Stephen King wrote, "I am no apologist for bad filmmaking, but once you've spent twenty years or so going to horror movies, searching for diamonds in the dreck of the B-pics ... You begin to seek the patterns and appreciate them when you find them; and you begin to get a taste for really shitty movies."

I think we can all relate to that a little bit, can’t we, Fellow Programs? Anyhoo, in the same invaluable tome, King started a stubborn rumor about X! The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, swearing the version he saw didn’t end with Xavier plucking his eyes out as the frame freezes on the glaring red holes where his eyes used to be. 

Said King, “Once the process begins, there is no slowing it down. Milland’s eyes begin to undergo a physical change, first becoming thickly bloodshot and then taking on a queer yellow cast. It is at this point that we begin to feel rather nervous -- perhaps we sense the gross-out coming, and in a very real sense it’s already arrived.”

Then, as we reach the climax for the pluckin’, “At last Milland can stand it no longer. He drives his car to a deserted spot (that bright Presence hanging before his eyes all the time) and whips off his shades to reveal eyes which have gone an utter, glistening black. He pauses for a moment … and then rips his own eyes out. Corman freezes the frame on those staring, bloody sockets. But I have heard rumors -- they may or may not be true -- that the final line of dialogue was cut from the film as too horrifying. If true, it was the only possible capper for what has already happened. According to the rumor, Milland screams: ‘I can still see!’”

Now, the film at one point did have a five-minute prologue showcasing the five human senses, which is included on that MGM Midnite Movie DVD as a special feature. This really added nothing except run time, comes off as a really boring grade school educational short, and was subsequently cut from all further releases after its initial theatrical run.

And while the alternate ending rumor has persisted going on some 40 years now, according to Corman, this final declaration never happened -- though it sure sounded like a wonderful idea and might’ve salvaged the film for him.

“I feel it was an opportunity that was slightly missed,” Corman told McGee (1984). “I felt we were not going to be able to photograph what Xavier could see, and that the audience would be cheated. The picture turned out reasonably well, but I think, when finished, it did suffer from that. The effects just weren’t there.” 

According to the Van Nuys News (March 22, 1963), production began on X! The Man with the X-Ray Eyes on March 5, 1963, and was shot at the old Republic Studio. And passing for the Las Vegas casino was Corman’s old stomping grounds at The Sportsman’s Lodge in Studio City.

The Los Angeles Times (December 12, 1963).

When it was released, it was paired up with varied pictures, including Bikini Beach, Hercules and the Captive Women (alias Ercole alla conquista di Atlantide, 1961), and Dementia 13. And despite the usual AIP bluster and schlocky hyperbole in the promotional materials, reviews were mostly positive. 

“The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is a better than usual science fiction film -- in fact, a rather absorbing one,” said Herb Michelson (The Oakland Tribune, October 31, 1963). “Aside from a few moments of inane dialogue, the chiller is soundly sustaining entertainment, even for those of us who aren’t UFO spotters or buffs of the occult. Although Milland gets star billing, it’s the camera and technical work that actually walks away with the laurels. Through some special effects filter process, the audience sees things -- except the cuties -- as a man with X-ray eyes sees them. The color is often kaleidoscopic and entrancing and deserving of some cinematic honor when award time comes along.” 

The Grand Island Independent (September, 1964).

Mike McGrady agreed, saying (Newsday, October 24, 1963) , “The normal inhabitants of science fiction thrillers -- eyes that crawl, great blobs of ever-expanding protoplasm, creatures rising from bottomless lagoons, giant lizards with radioactive breath, assorted Beings and Things out to inherit the Earth -- have clearly been blueprinted with the aim of repelling any moviegoer who has reached the age of maturity. X! The Man with the X-Ray Eyes will probably suffer a similar fate. The poor title, the misleading advertising, the popular preconceptions will lead to two not-disconnected results: the city papers will automatically assign their second-string critics and thoughtful filmgoers will slot it right next to Godzilla on the old must-miss list. A double-injustice. For, in the world of Extraordinary Things, X! May well be the best of the lot.”

But not all the reviews were positive. “Like most science fiction movies, The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is anti-science. Its hero gets into trouble precisely because he is a scientist, and because he follows that shady profession too far in his evil desire to gather forbidden data. The problems of the physician in this new film begin when he happens upon a chemical which has a curious effect,” said Ray Duncan (Independent Star-News, December 8, 1963). 

“The immense possibilities of this chemical are at once apparent, especially for peeping toms,” Duncan continued. “And unfortunately, the movie pauses to explore that aspect, with some maudlin scenes in which the long-suffering Milland is made to lick his lips in enjoyment over the fact that his new X-ray chemical is helping him see through female clothing. The camera archly allows the audience to share this aberration, at least up to a point. All this should be no great novelty for a physician, but the movie insists that it is. Science fiction bows to burlesque for a time, spoiling whatever unity and flow the tale possesses. An improbable movie should at least be improbable in one key.” 

In hindsight, Corman states he felt X! The Man with the X-Ray Eyes was a good film that could’ve been great; and its failures, he added, can be blamed on the FX failing to deliver the goods.

“To show a man seeing through a building I photographed buildings that were in various stages of construction, on the basis he could see through the cement -- which was a reasonable cheat -- but it was still a cheat,” said Corman (MGM, 2001). “It never really did come together because of all the special-effects compromises.” As for those ‘tasteful' nude shots, “The restrictions on nudity in 1963 were very simple. There was simply no nudity.”

You also get the sense during his commentary that Corman would’ve rather stuck with the musician on drugs angle but felt he wouldn’t be able to get that past the censors in 1963 the way he did for The Trip (1967) four years later. For what is Xavier’s experiment, really, if not a bad acid trip? This was the era of MK-Ultra, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and their tripped-out school bus after all.

Said Corman (MGM, 2001), “One of the problems I would’ve faced in 1963 is that while I would’ve been allowed by the Motion Picture Association to get their seal of approval with a picture about drugs, providing it was totally negative in regard to drugs. And I wasn’t certain I wanted to do it that way and this was one of the main reasons we switched to a doctor.”

Make no mistake, Xavier was trying to alter his perceptions. Remember earlier in the film, when Brandt warned Chemical X might not be affecting his eyes at all but changing his brain chemistry and causing nothing but hallucinations and day terrors? And why does he keep dosing when he knows it's driving him insane. Is what he seeing real? Or is it just his narcotic-induced perception of what is real? Was Corman trying to sneak something past the censors here? Maybe. Maybe not.

For as Xavier continues dosing on X, he definitely starts seeing people as "living, breathing dissections" and buildings as skeletons of steel "dissolved in the acid of light." So, yes, his vision has truly been altered -- as if those Magic X-Ray Specs you saw advertised in comics as a kid actually worked.

And in Dillon and Russell’s script, they take things even further than that as a lot of their dialogue explaining what Xavier is seeing was left unfilmed or on the editing room floor, which toned down these visions considerably due to those budget constraints and no idea how to pull them off technically.

As an example, when we reach the climax, and Xavier is confessing to the preacher, the script elaborates on the Lovecraftian horrors he’s seeing, "There are great darknesses, as far off as time itself,” says Xavier. “And they are coming, coming to destroy all our world. Larger than the stars -- than galaxies of stars, they're coming!"

Sounds pretty cool to me. And ambitious. Too ambitious, turns out. And that’s too bad. Still, the film managed to win the Silver Spaceship for Best Picture at the first International Festival of Science Fiction Film in Trieste, Italy, beating out some stiff competition from all over the world, including the Soviet produced Amphibian Man (alias Chelovek-amfibiya, 1962).

And I think that’s one of the reasons Corman was always promising a remake of X! The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, especially in this digital-effects age, to finally fulfill the script’s lofty ambitions.

All well and good, sure, but he’s also got to find someone who'll don those painful contact lenses and replace Ray Milland, a self-proclaimed fan of Science Fiction, who, when looking back on his career, always singled out Don Birnam in Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend (1945) and Dr. Xavier as his two favorite film roles. 

(L-R) Roger Corman, Don Rickles and Diana Van der Vlis.

Corman and Milland got along very well while filming The Premature Burial, and he concocted the script for X! to suit him personally. Said Corman, “When I sent him this script he was very enthusiastic and liked the idea very much. He found it to be one of the most interesting scripts he’d ever read.”

We’ll also give a shout-out to Diana Van der Vlis, a Canadian born actress, who most folks will recognize as Dr. Nell Veaulac from the long running Soap Opera, Ryan's Hope (1975-1989). And to Don Rickles, a regular in AIP’s Beach Party (1962) franchise -- Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, and Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) as Jack Fanny, Big Drag and Big Drop, respectively, who really pulls off the lecherous carny, who never met a dollar he couldn’t bilk out of some rube.

And finally, I wanna talk about that bloody eyeball which appears during the opening credits and winds up floating in a bubbling beaker with its trailing nerve ganglia -- like some obscene fish. Is that supposed to be one of Xavier’s plucked out eyeballs? That someone has saved for further study? Has it become sentient? Meaning this whole tale is told as a flashback of some sentient eyeball floating around in a Chemical X solution?

Has anyone else noticed this? Has anyone else pondered this? Or do I really need to lay-off the Electric Kool-Aid, too -- if you know what I mean, and as a wise man once said, I think you do -- no matter how you look at it.

Originally published on October 29, 2018, at Micro-Brewed Reviews.

X! The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963) Alta Vista Productions :: American International / EP: James H. Nicholson, Samuel Z. Arkoff / P: Roger Corman / D: Roger Corman / W: Robert Dillon, Ray Russell / C: Floyd Crosby / E: Anthony Carras / M: Les Baxter / S: Ray Milland, Diana Van der Vlis, Don Rickles, Harold J. Stone, John Hoyt