Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

tntquality This has a spoiler for the end of the film...this is written for the fans of the movie who want to know the last part that was cut. If you have NOT seen this movie, please stop reading and watch this. It is up on YouTube in the right ratio 1:85 in five parts. The full length versions are zoomed in. Or better yet, buy it! I saw this movie in the movie theater when I was ten and it really haunted me. When I was able to rent it (on 16mm film, when you could rent a movie for about $25 for the weekend), it was the same version. BUT--on TV, and in later rental prints (I rented it in the late 70's/80's to run at college), the ending was different. And here it is: After the preacher says to PLUCK THEM OUT, Ray Milland bends over to do this and then he picks his head up, when you see the black holes where his eyes were. Then he SCREAMS "I CAN STILL SEE....I CAN STILL SEE!" and then it cuts to black. Well, in all these later versions (including the rental 16mm prints), you can CLEARLY SEE the CUT where a SPLICE is made to remove this last sentence. It's right where he lifts his head and you see the holes and it freezes...and cuts to black... that's where that last sentence was cut...the most incredibly chilling line of all!

dougdoepke I love it when the Doc's (Milland) x-ray eyes peel through the fancy clothes at the party. Of course, the camera doesn't show more than bare backs and legs, but my imagination ran wild with the rest. Right away, I was wishing I had the see-through power, that is, until I thought about sleep. In fact, closing your eyes wouldn't help— you'd still be seeing what's above. Nothing it seems would work; you'd still literally see through it all. So, would sleep ever come. Anyway, I decided not to try any eye experiments, nude parties or no.Despite my half-facetious remarks, this is a serious sci-fi, several cuts above Corman's usual drive-in fare. Oscar-winner Milland delivers an ace performance that almost makes things believable. However, the psychedelic light shows almost gave me a headache. That along with the cheezy music didn't help. Still, the text amounts to a good little morality play. After all, consider the possibilities that open up to this heightened perception. That's the doc's dilemma. At first he wants to use it to help diagnose medical problems. That's understandable since he was a respected medical research doctor until funding ceased. But then slickster Crane (Rickles) talks him into charging fees for his x-ray diagnoses, most of which the promoter gets. Now on something of a confused moral slide, the Doc goes to Vegas where he stands to clean up, even though his x-ray vision is becoming unpredictable. In short, his former blessing is becoming a curse. That may account for the final part, which otherwise seems an odd and abrupt intrusion. Still, it was good seeing the craggy Old Testament figure, John Dierkes doing his thing, in blazing Technicolor.All in all, the movie's a fairly imaginative slice of sci-fi, with a fine central performance, and a comely Diana Van Der Vlis as the Doc's confidant.

AaronCapenBanner Ray Milland plays Dr. James Xavier, who is an eyesight specialist who has developed an experimental eye-drop he believes will revolutionize the eye care field, benefiting mankind. Unfortunately, his funding is cut off, so he experiments on himself, with disastrous consequences. Though it gives him X-Ray vision at first, which he puts to amusing use, it later overwhelms his senses. After he accidentally kills a colleague, he is forced to flee, and takes refuge in a carnival run by a shady man(Don Rickles, well cast) who first exploits the good doctor, then later turns him in to the police. With help from another colleague, he escapes, but his condition worsens until he enters a revivalist church where...Wont reveal more, except that it provides a memorable, and chilling end to this occasionally wobbly film, which doesn't quite have the budget or ambition to make full use of its premise, instead of becoming another version of "The Fugitive" TV series! Regardless, Milland is good, and film still overall effective, especially with that ending...

poe426 Roger Corman has opened more doors for more filmmakers than I can recall; here, he opens the doors of perception (metaphorically speaking). "I'm closing in on the gods," Xavier boasts early on in the movie. When a monkey given the "X" eyedrops dies (apparently of fright), X decides it's time to experiment on himself (of course). "It's like a splitting of the world," he marvels: "More light than I've ever seen..." There's a neat POV shot in which his eyes are BANDAGED while he looks at and talks to someone else. "I like the way you look," a young woman tells him... just before the party they're at becomes, for him, a peep show. When his x-ray vision becomes too acute to control, he says of one woman: "She appears a perfect, breathing dissection." It's a gruesome observation, but the fx of the time didn't really allow for a viewer's peek at same. The "X effect" throughout is relatively simple, visually (it looks like a 3D image does without the glasses), but the gold and, finally, black contact lenses ARE effective. Milland's performance here is as tight as in THE LOST WEEKEND. Kudos to Corman.