X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)

 

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)

 

Roger Corman Directed his first film in 1955 when he was a mere lad of 29 and, in fact, Directed three films that same year. Then four films the year after. And eight the year after that. He’d wouldn’t really start to slow down until after 1964 and even slowing down, switching to Producing more than Directing, he still Directed all the way up to 1990, and didn’t retire completely until 2021, only three years before his death.

 

Corman’s films were almost always profitable but also almost never respected, despite a generally high-level of craftmanship and unusual imagination for quick, cheap, B-movie, fair. He worked with a reliable stable of talent both in-front and behind that camera, trained a remarkably large number of Hollywood’s soon-to-be Greats, but was utterly dismissed by the Critical community until his first Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, “The House of Usher” (1960, also his first color film), but even after that, he really didn’t get much respect until more than a decade thereafter when he was rich and powerful but, ironically, the films he was Producing were declining in quality.

 

Starting with “The House of …” he Directed eight Poe films in five years, and that was in the context of a total of nineteen Directorial credits in the same time-frame, and the extremity of his output boggles my imagination. Though all the Poe films were done on the cheap, the Poes still represented a significant budgetary increase over everything he’d made before, while those extra-eleven films were still in the bargain basement.

 

The SF/Horror film, “X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes” was one of those extra eleven, perhaps even a Poverty-Row outing, maybe as low as $100,000, definitely less than $280,000, and much, maybe most, of that money apparently went to Lead Actor Ray Midland’s salary. The studio, AIP, was desperate for a Marquee name and Millard was available for a fraction of what he could command only ten years, he was an Oscar Winner and then a Super Star. That year’s biggest box-office film, “Cleopatra,” cost $31.1 million to make, and Corman’s own two Poes that year were “The Raven,” $350,000, and “The Haunted Palace,” which I can’t find the numbers on but would’ve been roughly the same. Despite the squeeze, “X-The Man …” is perhaps the Masterpiece of Corman’s long career.

 

This is a Mad Scientist story that starts out as surprisingly slow-burn for a Corman film because the story needed solid context-through-exposition before the Mayhem erupted. But I mean slow-burn for Corman, it really quite quickly paced, a monkey dies of fright in the first five-minutes, but the first human death takes until almost the half-hour. The film was originally longer, with a prologue explaining the science before the story began, that didn’t make it until the finally cut.

 

Dr. James Xavier (that’s Milland) doesn’t start out Mad, just a bit Arrogant, because after laboring so long is finally showing some results, his funding is being cut. He’s trying to increase the range of human vision (thus the title) and there the film shows a devotion to Experimental Process that was rare in SF films.

 

(From my reading, the Experiments are Scientifically Flawed as the monkeys were shown cards and able to read the reverse sides because there could now see into the Electromagnetic (EM) Spectrum. That couldn’t work because their new eyesight shouldn’t penetrate the white paint on one side, most paints blocks EM Radiation, so no special sight, or see through the paint on both sides, so everything is invisible making the test results impossible. Am I being too picky here?)

 

With his funding is cut off, and knowing he’s far short of justifying Human Testing to any other donor because his monkeys keep dying, Dr. James Experiments on himself.

 

Initially, his new Powers are a delight to him. There’s a very funny scene where he goes to a cocktail party and he can see all the guests completely naked. The film remained appropriate for its era’s Censorship, but Dr. James’ shit-eating grin tells you all you need to know.

 

Then problems emerge. A combination of Professional Jealousy and Legitimate Concern by colleagues Dr Willard Benson (John Hoyt), Dr Diane Fairfax (Diana van der Vlis), and Dr. Sam Brant (Harold J. Stone) escalate. James close friend, Dr. Sam, warns him that somethings belong to “the Gods.” James replies, "Well, I'm closing in on the Gods." Soon there’s an impulsive confrontation leading to Dr. Sam’s, accidental death.

 

Facing possible Murder-Charges for a Crime committed by accident, James goes on the run, but continues to dose himself, abandoning the last remaining Experimental Protocols. He supports himself with marginal jobs wherein he can exploit his powers for tiny amounts of money, but he’s become Addicted to his own Vision-and-Mind Altering Drug.

 

We are now in the Misanthropic heart of the film, watching a good man destroyed by his own Ambition, wandering a cruel world that is full of those who would viciously exploit his increasing Weakness and Power because the Power mean more profit them than he.

 

All the performances are solid, but two really stand out. Most important, of course, was the fallen Super-Star Milland. His Oscar was for “Lost Weekend” (1945), a film that addressed Alcoholism with rare honesty, and unfortunately, he was, himself, an Alcoholic, and here, again, he plays a man sinking into Addiction. He’d do a string of films with Corman and/or the Studio, AIP, and no matter how terrible the film was, he retained his given gifts of gravitas and pathos. Milland captures the arc of Dr. James, incrementally losing his Humanity as the cruelties mount, the desperation increases, the hold of the Addition tightens, and his visions become progressively more unbearable. He wholly committed, believable, and sympathetic to the audience even as he takes wild risks that they know will lead to disaster, and the audience keeps rooting for him even as his character darkens and finally the climax leaves him raving. Yes, in outline it is a typical Mad Scientist film, but Milland turned it into perhaps the most personalized of any within the sub-Genre.

 

The surprise pleasure was Don Rickels as the magnificently sleazy Crane, Dr. James main Exploiter, seamlessly switching back between oily support and more sincere menace. Rickels started his generations-long-career and an “Insult Comic” and that is what his is best known for, but in film his first success was as a Dramatic Actor in “Run Silent, Run Deep” (1958) and by the time this film was made, that was still where he was, his film-persona strikingly at odds with his more successful stage-persona. (He’d become even more famous when he finally started getting Comedy roles the very next year, again with AIP).

 

Then there’s the string of sequences that close the film, where Dr. James first exploits his Powers for his own profit for the first time by going to a Las Vegas and Breaking the Bank at a Casino, but things quickly spiral out-of-control, and he finds himself in a Revivalist Tent. Perhaps because he’s pushed his limits, the Power expands beyond what he can tolerate, he sees things the Man Should Never Be Allowed to See and what results needs to be compared to the work of Author H.P. Lovecraft (HPL).

 

In 1963, HPL was an obscure Writer except for the most avid SF,F&H fans, but today is now as well-known as Poe; and Director Corman deserves some of the credit for HPL’s resurrection. That same year, Corman made the very first film based on an HPL story, though the dead Author got no credit as AIP chose to claim was actually based on a Poe; I’m referring to the fore-mentioned, “The Haunted Palace” (based on HPL’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (originally published 1941)). I’d say this unrelated tale was by far the fuller tackling of HPL’s key Theme, Cosmic Horror. Corman also did so with superior Characterization than HPL ever offered. The closing images, though badly inhibited by budget restraints, the closing images are stunning.

 

Wrote Critic Richard Scheib, “Mad scientist films invariably fall into the model represented by the myth of Icarus – the seeker after knowledge who flew too close to the sun and fell to his doom – in that their quests after forbidden knowledge unleash catastrophe and disaster. No mad scientist film seems to echo this myth as consciously as ‘X – The Man with X-Ray Eyes.’ No mad scientist film ever had the grandiosity of having a character see into the very centre of the universe.”

 

Novelist Stephen King is a huge fan of Corman’s, and of this film specifically. In his first Non-Fiction book, “Dance Macabre” (1981), he wrote about rumors of an unused, alternate, ending, with Dr. James screaming, "I can still see!" Corman insists that ending doesn’t exist, and did so with both amusement and regret. “Stephen King saw the picture and wrote a different ending, and I thought, 'His ending is better than mine.'"

 

The script was Written by Ray Russell and Robert Dillon, based on Corman’s own outline. Corman has very few Screenwriting credits, but intimately involved in the Writing of most of his films. During this era, he’d often produce a ten-page outline and then hand it over to people now recognized as the most gifted Writers in SF,F&H. As Corman originally envisioned it, the protagonist wasn’t to be a Scientist, but a Jazz Musician cruelly experimented on; that change seems to have been all-for-the-good. But the Jazz elements were retained in Les Baxter’s dynamic score.

 

Much praise must also be given to the Cinematographer Floyd Crosby and mostly uncredited FX team, both remarkably excellent as the film was made painfully cheaply. The cheapness is generally only obvious with the shabbiness of the sets.

 

Regarding Crosby, he was a Cinematography Legend, working frequently with Corman from his earliest days, present for most of his Poes, but his credits also included already-then-honored Classics like “High Noon” (1952); he was also the father of a Musician you may have heard of named David Crosby. Here he brought both wide-screen and lush color, things denied to Corman a mere five-years earlier.

 

The capturing of Dr. James’ Altered Perception had no precedent in USA commercial cinema and was economically achieved with dancing skeletons, colored lights, filming on construction sites in order visualize see-through-buildings (Dr. James, riding in a car, observes, “a city that is newborn, hanging as metal skeletons, signs without support”). The only credited FX man was John Howard, the inventor of the Spectarama process, which created many of the film’s strangest effects; it was invented in 1960, looked great, but was never much used, granting this cheap film a visual novelty that more expensive productions lacked. Howard is obscure enough that his bio on the internet is contradictory: He either died before the film went into production, so his credit was really an honorarium, or left FX behind, moved into Directing, and his career continued for decades more, mostly British TV.

 

The Art Director, Daniel Haller, a frequent Corman collaborator, must’ve been in charge of the practical effects.

 

Corman’s Craftmanship is obvious early on with a POV shot of Dr. James waking up in a hospital bed, looking at his colleagues standing around him, but when the camera cuts to his face and we see he still has bandages over his eyes.

 

In its unexcepted mind-bending-ness, I’d argue this film anticipated “2001: A Space Odessey” which was not only mega-budgeted, but had a luxurious schedule for pre-, actual, and post-production schedules, while “X: The Man …” was shot in in only three weeks. When Corman (mostly) abandoned SF,F&H he made a name for himself in Psychedelic movies, and he clearly learned the how-to here.

 

When originally released, it was double-billed with Francis Ford Coppola's first feature, “Dementia 13.”

 

Trailer:

X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES (1963) Official Trailer