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X-RAY_EYES

                                                  December 17, 2012

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

A strange one, even by Roger Corman
standards, I would say...  a scientific
experiment gone astray leaves a man
with "X-Ray Eyes" -- clearly the
inspiration here is those magazine ads              Do I need to explain this?
for "x-ray specs", but instead of teen              In this era, comic books and
titilation, what you get is a rather                such were full of advertisements
slow, grim, story about a haggard man               for insane, impossible products
who has these stranges attacks where he             sold at a ridiculously low price
sees through everything, he sees too                in the hopes of conning the
far and what he sees is a giant eye                 soda-pop money out of the hands
staring back at him.  The eye of god?               of the young and stupid.
His own gaze looping around the curve
of the universe?                                        Just in case you thought
                                                        capitalist sleaze was an
                                                        invention of Ronald Reagan.
   In the wrap-up, he stumbles
   into a fire-and-brimstone
   Chautauqua tent, where the
   preacher rants: "If thine
   eye offend thee, pluck it out!"









                          "Not as cut-and-dried as most
                          low-budget science-fiction
                          thrillers; some novel ideas help to
                          sustain interest in thie one, though
                          eventually it goes the tired old         That's a point,
                          moralizing route, and scientific         but then,
                          'transgression' results in doom."        complaining
                                                                   about moralizing
                          Pauline Kael, p. 852,                    can get old and
                          "5001 Nights at the Movies"              tired too.




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