"X" - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes - American International Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
August 14th, notes an experiment designated X. Experimental subject myself, James Xavier.

(00:10):
X, the most fantastic experiment you have ever taken part in, presents Ray Meland in his most challenging role since his Academy Award winning last weekend.
X, the man with the X-ray eyes, tries to help the most desperate in our society and enjoys all the delights of secretly studying sexology.

(00:36):
Harry? No, it's just my eyes.
A doctor with a power to see what others cannot believe. He could overcome the unknown, save lives, and invade the glamour gambling casinos of Las Vegas and defy the goddess of chance.

(01:01):
X, the man with the X-ray eyes.
We're not talking about actors. We mean a real monster. I brought her back. She'll live and I'll get her another buddy.
I know that's gonna catch me, but don't let anyone see me like that face doctor!
Biologically speaking, it's a primary importance that man should want to meet.

(01:22):
Hey, that's right! You don't get all your kicks from surfing, do you?
We want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man.
And we want to get loaded.
You think you're gonna make a slave of the world? I'll see you in half first!
The American International Podcast
Are you ready?

(01:45):
We're listening to the American International Podcast with the American International Podcasters. I'm Jeff Markin.
I'm Cheryl Lightfoot.
And today we're going to look deep inside “X” - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes from 1963.
“X” - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes was directed by Roger Carmen.
From a Screenplay by Robert Dylan and Ray Russell from a Story by Ray Russell and produced by Roger Carmen for Altavista Productions.

(02:07):
X, as is the actual on-screen title, stars Ray Milan, the stactor James Xavier, Diane Vandervillis, as Dr. Diane Fairfax, Harold J. Stone, as Dr. Sam Brant, John Hwyte, as Dr. Willard Benson, Dan Rickles, as Crane, and those are all the credited actors.
But uncredited, we have Morris Anchrom as Mr. Bohead, Lori Summers as Parti Dancer, Dick Miller as John Trask, the Heckler, Jonathan Hayes as the unnamed Heckler, John Deerx as Preacher, Catherine Hart as Mrs. Mart, Vickie Lee as Young Patient, Barbara Morris as Nurse, and Harvey Jacobson as Casino Boss.

(02:44):
X opens with the shot of an eye, a lingering eye, an eyeball to be exact.
It's the first of four eyeballs that we're going to get a close-up of before the movie even starts. And the second is a shot of a bloody eyeball floating in a beaker with all its viscera attached.
This dissolves into a purple swirl and the American International Pictures logo appears.

(03:06):
It's one of those hypnosis swirls that spins around and around until you will do anything that someone asks you to do.
The titles for James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff present, Ray Milland, Diane van der vlis, Harold J. Stone, John Hoyt, and Don Rickles in X, an Alta Vista Production.
Then me get a close-up of Dr. James Xavier getting an eye exam. So always see her as two big eyes, so that's the third and fourth eye.

(03:29):
He's being examined by Dr. Sam Brant, who tells Dr. Xavier that his eyes are fine, and he should know this because he just had them checked recently.
We should mention that Dr. Sam Brant is a friend and colleague of Dr. Xavier's. And Dr. Brant deduces that he's there for a reason related to his current research, and that he plans to experiment on himself.
Bingo! Dr. Xavier says that man is virtually blind and that there are several wavelengths invisible to him.

(03:53):
Sam reminds him that he does only have two eyes though, but Xavier needs to see more than his limited visual spectrum, allowed by her unenhanced visual orbs.
He says he's blind to all but one-tenth of the visual universe. Brant says only the gods see everything, and Xavier says he's closing in on the gods.
Scientists got complex, it's all tracking. Now we find ourselves in Dr. Xavier's office, where Xavier is showing X-rays to another colleague, Dr. Diane Fairfax.

(04:18):
He gripes about the inadequacy of this diagnostic tool.
Xavier starts squizzing Fairfax on his work. She says she's read his report, but do you understand it? Xavier asks?
He's developing a way to desensitize the human eye so that it sees radiation up to and including the gamma rays and the mason wind.
Yeah, we looked up mason wind and we couldn't find anything, but we did find mason particles and waves. But that's not what this grip says.

(04:41):
Dr. Fairfax says that she gets it, but that's not the real issue. The problem is that Dr. Xavier is burning through a bunch of foundation cash without much to show for it.
And it's been nine months since he's filed any report. He then offers her a demonstration right now in his laboratory, so they go in there.
In the lab, Xavier grabs a monkey from a cage and has Dr. Fairfax hold it while he inserts eyedrops into the monkey's eyes.

(05:03):
The monkey is placed in a cage with colored lights attached, white, red and blue, and there are colored boards that match those lights.
It puts the white card in front of the blue and red ones and slides it into the cage.
He explains that the monkey has been trained to pull the lever corresponding to the light of the color of the board that he sees, so he immediately pulls the white lever.
But then he pulls the blue lever and then the red lever demonstrating that he can see not only the white card, but the red and blue cards behind it or that he just likes to pull levers.

(05:30):
Well, it doesn't really matter because while Dr. Fairfax is being amazed at this demonstration, the monkey kills over and dies.
I want to talk a little bit about some of the shots in this scene. We haven't really discussed in photographers much in this podcast, but the cinematographer for this film is Floyd Crosby.
He did a lot of stuff for AIP, nearly years, a lot of stuff for Corman in particular. He was the director of a time before Fast and the Furious, Reform School Girl, House of Usher, Sergeant Deadhead, Fireball 500, among many others.

(05:54):
But because this is just a boring laboratory scene, he does so much to make it interesting with the framing.
The cage in the foreground is used to frame the participants, doctors, Xavier and Fairfax.
There are shots through the cage. There's a shot where Fairfax is framed by the three lights that the monkey is turning on. And there's just some really interesting things going on here.

(06:16):
This movie relies on visuals to tell the story more than probably any other tool.
Later in the laboratory, Dr. Xavier lights a smoke for himself and Fairfax from a Bunsen burner.
And they smoke right there in the laboratory with the other monkeys.
Xavier explains that the monkey just couldn't comprehend what he was seeing and thus decided to die as a coping mechanism. Dr. Fairfax seems to buy this.

(06:37):
She tells Xavier that they could put formalities aside and he can call her Diane. And he offers to buy her a cup of coffee from the vending machine.
I thought they were going to go out, but no, they just went upstairs so they rooftop lounge and he gets a cup of coffee for each of them from the machine.
I can smell it from here and it smells bitter.
They discuss how Fairfax gives away a million dollars of foundation money before breakfast every day and she's someone who cares and will support the, quote, untraveled paths of science.

(07:03):
She tells them how she gave up her own pursuit of science just to work for the foundation and she took the position because she felt it needed someone who could see the potential scientific advances that were out there.
And thus she wants to know what the benefit to humanity X-ray vision will bring.
Xavier mentions that the X-ray vision will make doctors much more effective at diagnoses than primitive X-ray machines.
Xavier also deduces that the foundation is needing answers from him and Diane confirms that they went to meet with him the day after tomorrow.

(07:29):
Xavier says that he'll do them one better than that. And then we cut to Dr. Sam Brant saying no it's too dangerous.
Dr. Brant is adamant that Dr. Xavier should not experiment on himself. At monkey died. It was a monkey. Not a man says Xavier. Oh Sam, Sam, I need you. And this is enough to easily sway Dr. Brant.
I think Dr. Brant is right here though. I have never seen a movie in which a scientist experimented on himself that went well. And I can't imagine that in actual scientific research that that is something they do.

(07:59):
Xavier's argument is that anyone else an animal wouldn't be able to report on what they're seeing. If they use an inmate like Dr. Brant suggested they wouldn't have the scientific link go to talk about what's going on.
Only he the great and powerful Dr. James Xavier would know how to explain what's going on and know what the results mean.
Fine says Dr. Brant. When do you want to do it? Sometimes later in the laboratory, Dr. Xavier is logging his work into a tape recorder as Dr. Brant putters around in the background preparing scientific things.

(08:28):
Well, I think he's getting the eye drops ready. Yes, Xavier if he has a preference, which I to do first and Xavier says the one in the middle.
Brant sighs and does Xavier is right. I because because that's the one closest to him.
He has a taste before he does this so he seems really nervous about what's about to happen and he does dose both eyes not just the one. Maybe should have just done the one just in case.
But Xavier doesn't care about just in case. Xavier covers his eyes and looks around. He sees a whole spectrum of light. He closes his eyes for a moment and opens them again. Everything's normal, he says.

(08:58):
But Dr. Xavier finds that he can read the page beneath a blank cover sheet in a file and he uses his x-ray eyes to penetrate Sam's lab coat. He's missing a button. It works.
He's got a little bit of a sense of the size that this is so cool that he has to try more. Yeah, one layer isn't enough. He wants to see all the way through Sam or at least under his clothes.
Brant tells them they should wait that they should do test first, but Xavier is through with a scientific method.

(09:21):
He puts the drops into his own eyes and Sprant won't help him. Then he shuts out the light. The light.
Now we shift to a totally different scene. Dr. Fairfax or Diana's were allowed to color now. Shuts off the tape that they were recording during that experiment.
She's playing this for the foundation members. Sam is also there speaking on Dr. Xavier's behalf. He's been in the hospital unconscious since the experiment.
Unbelievably, Sam is trying to argue for the board to continue with this experiment. Believeably, the board is skeptical.

(09:48):
And flies into a defensive Xavier. He can't speak, but his work speaks for him. And someone else is just going to try to get credit for this breakthrough if they don't.
They declare that monetary compensation for Xavier's work will cease immediately.
Dr. Brandt and Diane go to break the bad news to Xavier.

(10:11):
But it's not bad news to Xavier. He's going to show them. He'll show them all.
We see them from Xavier's perspective with an iris frame around them.
I'm glad you have the lingo for this. I don't know if that's the lingo, but that's how I would describe it, I guess.
It's like when they show people looking through a telescope and you just see the circle in the center.
Dr. Brandt tells Xavier that they will be able to remove the bandages from his eyes tomorrow.

(10:32):
Bandages? We don't need no stick in bandages. I hardly notice them, says Xavier.
And now we're with Dr. Willard Benson. He's visiting Xavier in his laboratory, which is being dismantled.
Benson tells Xavier that a return to doctoring is the right prescription.
Xavier suggests that the hospital can maybe pony up some money, but Dr. Benson shuts that down right away.
And Dr. Benson offers Xavier a job. Dr. Benson is a surgeon and he says that Xavier can assist him.

(10:57):
Benson tells him that he's left the patient's report on his desk and asks that Xavier take a gander at it before he shows up tomorrow with the slice of the patient.
And he's supposed to go look in on the patient as well, it's a little girl.
So the next shot is him visiting the patient in the ward.
A nurse gets up from her desk to show Xavier to the patient's bed.
It's Barbara Morris, another Roger Carmen favorite.
The nurse, not the patient.
The patient is a little girl, like I said. Xavier goes to look at her and of course uses his magic eyeball powers to look inside her.

(11:23):
And of course he discovers something that Dr. Benson and his primitive X-rays missed. The diagnosis is wrong. He yells.
The girl wakes up. Dr. your eyes. Go back to sleep, Xavier tells her.
Dr. Benson comes in and joins Xavier at the girl's bedside.
Xavier tells him that he should reconsider the surgery. It's not a stenosis. It's a tumor.
And like the Nazis and Raiders of the Lost Ark, he'll be digging in the wrong place.

(11:46):
But Benson's a doctor and doctors don't like to be second guest.
Xavier tries to insist but Benson holds firm. Xavier will assist him and Benson will do the surgery as planned.
And then he stomps off.
The nurse gets a call that someone is waiting for Xavier on the hall.
And this nurse's sweater has four arms.
I know. We rebound this about three times just to check she's got her arms and sleeves.

(12:08):
And then over her shoulder it's draped and there are other sleeves hanging off the sweater.
I think the most logical explanation is she's really cold and she's wearing two sweaters.
No, it doesn't look like two sweaters.
It doesn't look like that at all. But if she's wearing one and has one draped over her shoulders, that's got to be what it is, right?
Well, one is a three quarter length sleeve and one is a full sleeve.
But they all seem attached to the same gray sweater.

(12:29):
So they just give you choices with this article of clothing.
I guess. It have two tiny little sleeves hanging off.
We could use the short ones and then tie the longer ones around your neck like a scarf.
Yeah, I guess.
So Xavier goes out to the hall to find Diana waiting for him.
He seems a little off and she realizes he's still using his magic eye drops.
But anyway, she's come to take into a party to loosen him up and ease his stress.

(12:50):
And she takes him to a party where a bunch of very white people are dancing very whitely.
A lovely young girl invites Xavier to dance with her.
Actually, she kind of demands it.
Xavier hits the floor with her and he's easily the worst dancer ever.
Everyone's doing the twist, but honestly, I don't know that they've ever seen dancing before.
No hips are being moved. Just arms flapped back and forth.
While fainting the twist, he grabs his head.

(13:13):
Headache, the girl asks. Now everyone at the party appears naked to him.
He seems very amused by this.
We only see people by their naked backs and their unclad legs.
We're not seeing any naughty bits here.
And we see people standing flat footed on the floor as they dance.
And apparently nobody has any shoes on because those would lift your feet off the floor a tiny bit.
But we can't afford that effect.

(13:34):
Diana comes back to retrieve him and asks for her own dance.
He tells her she's beautiful and it's like he's seen her for the first time.
She grins as he continues. And that's an interesting birthmark way above your third rib.
How did you know that? She turns around and she realizes that he can see her, all of her.
He comes as she has an attractive backbone.
But she demonstrates no spine at this unconscionable breach of workplace etiquette.

(13:55):
She drags them off before he blabs to everyone else about the condition of their private parts.
Now we're back in the old empty lab.
Xavier is there alone and he's apparently stashed away some of his extraps there.
He takes them and heads over to surgery to scrub in.
But stops to ogle a nurse who appears naked to him on the way.
And then when he goes to scrub in, he's next to Benson and another doctor, probably a need to test.

(14:17):
And he sees them naked too.
Diana and Dr. Brand are around too. They'll be observing.
Diana asks Dr. Brand to come because she has a bad feeling.
We don't know how or why Diana's there.
During the surgery, Dr. Xavier assaults Benson when he won't allow him to dictate the type of surgery he wants.
Xavier takes a scalpel and slashes Benson's hand through the glove and it starts to bleed.

(14:39):
So now Xavier is in charge and he can do whatever he wants.
He assures everyone he can see everything perfectly in the accurately performs the surgery.
And then puts Benson in his place.
You see Dr. Benson, no stenosis, and has the patient sent to post-op.
He says he had no choice but to take over. Benson tells Xavier that the news will have traveled through the hospital by now, perhaps even to the papers.
How does that work?

(15:00):
How does something get to a newspaper before the surgery is even over?
Dr. Benson concurs that Xavier probably saved the patient's life, but what Xavier did was nonetheless unethical and he will be tried for malp practice.
Dr. Benson storms off and Diana and Dr. Brand decide to get Xavier out of there quickly.
Now we're back in Brand's office where he's testing Xavier's vision.
He shows off by reading the eye chart under the eye chart in Sam's office.

(15:23):
Oh, James, clocks a disappointed Sam.
Looking at Brand and Xavier sees only veins in organs and looking at Diane, he sees a perfect breathing dissection.
Diane wants to figure out some way to control this.
Brand vows that even without the foundation's money, they can help reverse the effect, but that's exactly what Xavier does not want.
He starts blow-vading about seeing what no man has ever seen and all the mysteries of creation blah, blah, blah.

(15:47):
Meanwhile Dr. Brand is preparing a hypo.
Brand is concerned that the drops might be having an effect on Xavier's brain as well as his eyes.
After all, the eyes are the entryway to the brain.
And the soul.
The attempts to give Xavier that sedative, telling him to pull up his sleeve, Xavier instead reacts violently and pushes Brand toward the window.
The window crashes and Brand flies out and falls to his death just as a woman comes around the corner.

(16:09):
She screams, "I want to say this is another part that's just really effectively shot because it's so quick.
There's a shot of Brand going through the window. There's a shot of him falling.
There's another shot of him falling and you see the ground, but you don't see him hit it.
But just then the woman comes around the corner and then it cuts just as she screams.
And we're back up in the window with Diane looking out.
Diane looks down and says, "You've killed him."

(16:30):
Xavier tries to act like he had no choice, but Diane says that he better get away.
She says, "They'll think you're insane. He is."
Be your sirens on Diane looks down.
Jim, you've got to get away. They'll blame you no matter what we say.
But once she turns around to see Xavier, he's already liked it.
As Xavier flees, we see via montage that the story has already hit the papers.
He's not even down the stairwell yet.

(16:52):
Already there's four headlines. Physician murdered and Dr. Killer flees.
I now are with Dr. Xavier, who has taken refuge in the last place you'd expect.
A carnival side show.
A Barker is touting the world's greatest fortune teller and Dick Miller and Jonathan Hayes come over to heckle him.

(17:15):
The Barker's name is Crane and he's hyping up his amazing mind reader, Mentalo.
He's a man with a miraculous mind.
And then we go inside the tent where Xavier looking ridiculous in an orange kimono with gold appliqués zodiac signs
and a scarf around his head with a giant cartoon eyeball in the center of it.
He's also still wearing his suit underneath the robe. We can see his tie.
He's still a man of science through and through, even though he's wearing a costume that's straight out of party city.

(17:38):
Crane has members of the audience right down their questions and he collects them.
Dick Miller says he knows how this trick is done.
And then Crane gives the questions one at a time to Mantalo.
He holds him to his forehead, reads them back to the audience and makes a funny quip.
And funny is in quotation marks there.
When he gets to Dick Miller's card, it says that Mantalo is a phony.
So Xavier volunteers personal information about him, including his name, which isn't Dick Miller, it's actually John Trask.

(18:03):
And he's from Phoenix, like us.
He also gives his age, his social security number, and the fact that he carries around a letter from a girl that he deserted, but still loves him.
Shut up, snarls Dick Miller, who angrily leaves, has Jonathan Hayes joyfully scampers off after him.
Now we're back in Dr. Xavier's dressing room. Crane presses Xavier to give up his trick.
It's not a trick, says Xavier.
Ah, come on, says Crane.

(18:25):
Even here for a month and no one's caught on.
Crane wonders why someone with his talent is doing this small time hustle.
What do you want?
Yes, Xavier.
What Xavier wants is for Crane to leave.
Crane does so.
And Xavier sits down to record an update into his recorder.
He reports that his eye drops are nearly gone, but the effects are cumulative.
Crane has gone around to the window and is listening in.

(18:46):
Uh-oh.
And we should probably note that Xavier is wearing very thick sunglasses now.
Apparently, you can never take them off.
He also untied his tie, but it's still around his neck. That's important.
Man's a professional.
An hour with the other side show workers, it's after hours, and they're just having a cup of coffee.
They're gossiping about the newcomer.
Yeah, they're debating whether he's a creep or just a guy who keeps to himself.

(19:07):
And whether or not he's just a guy with a gimmick or if he has a real gift,
which is apparently what Crane believes.
Xavier comes over and inserts himself into the conversation.
Well, it is about him.
The consensus is that Mantello is a fake.
One of the Carney says that if he had that power, he'd make people do whatever he wants them to do or hurt them.
They don't.
Xavier says, "I thought you thought it was real.

(19:28):
If it was real, you wouldn't be here," says the Carney.
Maybe this is all he could be, says Xavier, mostly to himself, and then he walks away.
Crane suddenly appears before him.
"Hey, then, no mind.
I know what you got is real."
And sinister, less backstrum music plays.
Well, Crane's being very sinister here, so that fits.
Xavier asks Crane what he would like to see if he had the power.
"All the undressed women in my eyes could stand," says Crane.

(19:51):
"What about you?"
"First money," says Xavier.
He looks at Crane's skull through his thick head, and continues.
And then I'd like to be able to open my eyes again.
"Sometimes later, the next day, perhaps? We hear noise. There's been a terrible accident.
A woman has fallen from, I don't know, a ride, I guess?"
"I said, a girl is thrown from the tilt of the world."
"I thought she'd be fell off the Ferris wheel."

(20:13):
A crowd quickly gathers, and Dr. Xavier examines her with his X-ray vision.
He announces that she has a broken leg and two fracture ribs.
"How do you know?" asks the Carney.
Xavier doesn't answer, but says they must move her carefully.
Crane comes over with a couple of sticks for splints, and announces that the doctor is on his way.
Xavier tells Crane that she also has two broken ribs.
"He has the power, the power to see inside," says the Carney.

(20:35):
"Shut up," says Xavier.
He goes up to Lee, but Crane follows him.
Crane tells him he knows his gift of sight is real.
And what this came in for both of them is money.
More money that he can make working as a side show freak.
Xavier objects, but Crane says that they'll set up a place in the city.
Word will get around. They won't charge a penny.
Xavier asks how that's going to make them any money.
But Crane smiles and says they will take donations.

(20:58):
Everyone gives what they can. He says, "Greening evenly."
Crane shows Xavier the crappy apartment he found in the city.
It's dirty and trashy, but it'll do.
Xavier agrees that this arrangement provided Crane promised never to enter these rooms under any circumstances.
And Crane agrees.
That night, Xavier applies some of his eyedrops before going to sleep.
That was a big mistake because he sees through his eyelids, through the ceiling, out into the void, and he screams.

(21:22):
Now Xavier is all set up with a desk, and Crane brings in his first patient.
It's a timid old lady who's concerned that she has the cancer.
Xavier sees through her and diagnosis her with old and says her pain will be gone soon, hinting that she's going to die soon.
The old lady calls him a good man and leaves.
Crane keeps referring to Xavier as a healer, but Xavier isn't a healer.
You can only look and tell what he sees. But that's enough, says Crane.

(21:45):
Crane says that the old woman will spread the word, and in a week the place will be packed with sick people.
Xavier looks disgusted at this.
Later, Xavier is once again talking into his tape recorder.
He says the new compound results are unpredictable. Sometimes you can see very deeply, and sometimes you can barely see through one layer.
He sounds profoundly depressed here.
As he's saying this, Crane interrupts him.
Against express orders.

(22:07):
Crane says there's a crowd of people there to see him, so he'd better get down to business.
One by one, Xavier diagnoses the patient, says Crane collects their money.
It's a dollar here, a dollar there, and all looks pretty depressing.
Then we see Diane drive up. She pushes past the crowd of sickies.
She has no appointment, but she barges in anyway.
She starts to go into the back room, but Crane stops her.
I'm his friend, she explains. I never see you here before.

(22:29):
I've never been here before, she says.
And over Crane's objection, she jumps the line and sits herself right in front of Xavier.
But he doesn't see who she is. He's just looking through her to her guts.
Yes, why she's here. She's too healthy to need a doctor.
She says she came to see him. Diane, he asks.
She explains that she left the foundation, and she set up her own practice again.
Patients kept coming in, knowing exactly what was wrong with them,

(22:50):
and telling of the man who had diagnosed them. And it took her an entire month to track Xavier down.
Xavier says that he didn't want to see her, but Diane does not take the hint.
He starts complaining about how he sees too much.
Everyone above him pressing down on him, and he'd give anything, anything to have the dark.
Well, anything but give up putting the drops of serum in his eyes.
Diane tells him that he's got to get away from there.
To go somewhere where it's safe, Crane appears in the doorway.

(23:13):
He's not going to let Montallo go. That's his meal ticket.
Besides, Crane has something on him.
He knows that he's actually Dr. James Xavier, and he's wanted for murder.
But he's willing to keep that part quiet.
Provided Xavier continues to rake in the dough for him.
Xavier pushes past him and pecs his case with his eye drops supplies.
Crane's still trying to block him, but Rameland is a lot bigger than Don Rickles.

(23:35):
And he scoots past him and goes outside to Diane's car.
Rain yells out for the benefit of the waiting clientele.
He ain't no healer. He ain't. He just looks inside you, tells you what's wrong.
Then you die.
They get into the car and Diane is driving.
Xavier is looking out the window, politically describing the skeletons of the skyscraper he's passing.
Thanks to Spectorama, we see that too.
He tells her he needs to get away to go someplace where he can learn to control this.

(23:59):
And will she come with him? She says yes.
I have to go to Mexico.
But that will take money.
And Xavier realizes there's a place across the desert where there's more money than he can ever need.
And he's probably the only man that can get it and get away with it.
So where do you think they're going, Jeff?
Vegas, baby.
[laughs]
[music]
Xavier and Diane go into a casino.

(24:25):
Xavier leaves Diane briefly to apply more drops to his eyes.
When he returns, she accuses him of taking the drug again.
I had to, says Xavier.
The effect was wearing off.
Are you all right? She asks.
But what I have to do?
Yes.
They go over to look at some slot machines, but Xavier doesn't like what he sees.
Yes, but finally he spots one that he says is about to pay off.
A side note that is not possible.

(24:46):
Every spin is unique to itself.
But Xavier tells us that in two spins that this one will pay off.
Diane, who's not a gambler, sits down and puts money in the slot machine.
And of course, after two spins, hits the jackpot.
They take their winnings and move over to the blackjack tables.
Xavier sits down and loses the first hand.
Then he moves to another seat and begins a winning streak.
After a while, the pitposs is taken over dealing.
When Xavier wins again, the pitposs declares the table closed.

(25:09):
So Xavier moves over to another table.
He keeps winning, which is suspicious enough.
But then he starts telling everyone at the table how to bet, which is monumentally stupid.
Now the pitposs is calling in security.
Diane says they should be leaving.
He's up over $20,000.
Diane goes to cash out.
As the pitposs tries to question Xavier, just to make sure his winning was on the level.

(25:31):
The pitposs grabs him and Xavier pulls away.
His glasses fall from his head, revealing his golden eyes and black whites.
They're really painful looking contact lenses.
And now Xavier has no choice but to create a distraction by throwing all his cash in the air
so he can bolt before the sheriff arrives.
So a pointless wasted trip that could have been very financially successful for them
had Xavier been able to keep his mouth shut.

(25:52):
Xavier gets into the car and drives off.
He's driving down the desert roads and a helicopter is chasing him.
He is going so fast and we see that he can't see anything.
This seems so stupid and dangerous and also goes on for a really long time.
Not too long because he crashes his car rolling off the side of the road.
I always see his spectra vision just swirling around indicating that the car is flipping.

(26:14):
And for some reason the helicopter disappears.
Well, it'll come back.
I was going to say for some reason the car doesn't explode.
I don't understand movie car explosion rules.
We've seen movies where a car just gets glanced by another one and it immediately emulates.
And now this one is rolled down a cliff and it's fine.
What are the rules?
How does that work?
It's not physics.
Xavier removes himself from the car stumbles around over some train tracks unable to see what he needs to see to get around.

(26:39):
He climbs over a barbed wire fence and follows the sounds of people singing hallelujah.
And then we see that the cop chopper is now right behind him and it's about to land.
Xavier staggers into the tent and listens for a bit and no one seems to notice him or at least not react to this weirdo lurking in the back.
And then the preacher commands the congregation to come forward to save their souls.
Xavier is first in line.

(27:01):
Are you a sinner?
The preacher asks, do you wish to be saved?
Xavier says, no, I come to tell you what I see.
Diana enters the tent with two policemen.
They hang back.
Xavier starts ranting about seeing the eye in the center of the universe and the preacher screams that he sees sin and the devil.
Xavier rips off his glasses and exposes his now totally black eyeballs.
Well, there's a little red around the edge of the contact lens.

(27:23):
They look so obchi.
The preacher tells Xavier that the Bible tells them what to do under these circumstances.
He prescribes a little Matthew chapter five.
If Diana offends the pluck it out, the crowd really gets behind this and starts scanning.
Pluck it out.
Pluck it out.
So he does.
He ducks out of frame and when he stands up again, there are red gory holes where his eyes used to be.
Well, that's what we're meant to think.

(27:44):
And one second later, the movie proper fades to black.
This is supposed to be representing his loss of sight altogether, but it really should be longer to have that kind of effect because almost immediately,
where you're finding ourselves watching a montage of Spectorama Xavier vision over the credits.
For everyone involved with the film who wasn't part of the cast because most of them don't receive credit at all.
And that's the end.
You're listening to the American International podcast where we're discussing X,

(28:15):
the man with the X-ray eyes from 1963.
According to Mark Thomas McGee's faster and furious yearbook, which we use a lot in this podcast,
just before starting pre-production on X,
Carmen decided he wanted to A.I.P. to pay him the profit participation proceeds he was due for a dozen or so pictures that he had already produced for American International.
He sent a letter to Sam Arkov, itemizing the delinquent payments and added that he,

(28:37):
quote, "Hope that this foot dragging wouldn't cause him to lose his creative steam during the pre-production of X."
A letter worked and the account was quickly settled.
In 2017, Carmen spoke with uprocks at the first annual Overlook film festival
before a screening of X, the man with the X-ray eyes, and said that the idea for the film was his.
And my first idea would be a scientist, but I thought that's too obvious a way to go.

(29:00):
So I decided to do it about a jazz musician who had taken too much drugs
and I get into about four or five pages and I thought, you know, I don't like this idea.
And so I threw the whole thing out and went back with a scientist, which was the original idea.
In another interview, published in Roger Carmen, Best of the Cheap Acts by Mark Thomas McGee,
Carmen said that the idea for a picture about a man who could see through objects came from Jim Nicholson,

(29:21):
quote, "And then the development of the basic idea was mine and Ray Russell's.
I almost didn't do the picture for two reasons.
One, I felt the script had not turned out as well as I expected and two.
The more I got into it, the more I felt that we were going to be heavily dependent on special effects.
I felt that we were not going to be able to photograph what Xavier could see
and that the audience would be cheated."
In June of 1962, variety noted that American International had allocated a budget of two to $3 million for X

(29:46):
and three other films resulting in average costs of $500,000 to $750,000 for each.
Carmen said in a later interview that he only spent around $300,000.
Carmen said in the interview, published in McGee's book, that X was shot in three weeks on a medium low budget.
The Valley News reported in February of 1963 that AIP's production schedule would, quote,
"Hit an all-time high during the next two months, when no less than three productions would begin to roll,

(30:10):
starring such top box office names as Ray Meland, Vincent Price, and Frankie Avalon."
The Los Angeles Times published an article noting that professional Mike Lubb and Salted Don Riggles
had been cast alongside Ray Meland for X, the man with the X-ray eyes in February of 1963.
The working title for the film was just X, though a March 1963 column written by Earl Wilson noted that X,

(30:32):
the man with the X-ray eyes, was the former title, and X is the title that comes up on the screen.
But all the promotional paraphernalia says X, the man with the X-ray eyes.
So we can call it either one, then.
A production chart published in the March 13, 1963 edition of Variety noted that principal photography on X,
the man with the X-ray eyes had begun on March 4, an item released in February indicated the film

(30:53):
would be shot at a Republic Studios.
The film also took place outside the Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles and in Las Vegas.
The final chase involving Ray Meland's erratic driving took place on Solid Ed Canyon Road between the cities of Santa Clarita and Acton in California,
the same place that the movie "Dual" was filmed.
To create the effect of being able to see through a building,
Cormorant filmed the Department of Water and Power General Office Building in downtown Los Angeles while it was under construction.

(31:17):
He shot footage of the building in various stages of construction and then showed it in reverse order to create the illusion of Xavier's seeing through the outer layers of the building to the inside.
The finished building picture is not the same structure though.
Cormorant had to shoot a different building because the water and power building did not get completed until 1965.
According to the AIP Pressbook for X, a full-scale casino was set up for the casino scene,

(31:38):
and gambling personnel were trained by professional experts.
And, quote, "a further note of realism was added by using 200 real silver dollars and thousands of dollars worth of chips
in close-ups of the gaming tables and slot machines."
It did look kind of fake, didn't you think? Look, casino?
Yes.
The hospital scenes were shot with a well-known Los Angeles hospital resident surgeon and a nurse to supervise the obtaining and installation of all equipment.

(31:59):
Producers also had a surgeon coach Ray Milan and other cast on how to mimic surgical procedures and use the surgical tools accurately.
The Pressbook further notes that the carnival scenes were filmed with real carnival equipment, posters and performers,
and exteriors were shot at a real carnival midway.
The man with the X-ray eyes was stage actress Diana Vandervillis' first film role.
Vandervillis made her Broadway debut in the happiest millionaire with Walter Pigeon.

(32:23):
A film was shot in something called "Spectorama," according to the AIP Pressbook,
which said that the core of the effects problem of X was to effectively depict Milan's rapidly increasing X-ray vision from his point of view.
The solution was found by film editor Anthony Carous and special effects expert Butler Glouder Inc.
Spectorama is an entirely new film-optical process, which in effect changes the whole point of view of the audience.

(32:44):
Through a patented arrangement of prisms, light images are bent and color-changed with the resulting distortions appearing to be impressionist paintings in motion.
X, the man with the X-ray eyes was released on September 18, 1963.
However, in July 1963, before its official US release, the film was screened at the International Festival of Science Fiction Film in Trieste Italy, where it won a Silver Spaceship Award.

(33:06):
X tied for second place with a Soviet film called "The Program."
AIP Pressbook recommended theater owners cover the windshields and windows of an automobile in Black Muslim,
dress a driver in black costume, including black hood and gloves, and cover it in teaser banners with slogans like "X can see into the beyond," promoting the movie.
In theory, the driver would be able to see out, but no one would be able to see inside the car.

(33:28):
After getting DJs to promote their mystery driver, the driver of the Black Clad car would tool around town, giving passers-by the chance to appear inside the car, and guess the identity of the driver.
After the DJs give listeners clues to his identity, of course, because just could be some random person.
And though that sounds like a crazy emotion, he found one place where the mystery driver's stunt was carried out, sort of.
A Sears Robux store in Fort Lauderdale ran an ad in the newspaper, promoting both the appearance of Lori Summers, the party dancer from X, who was coming to sign autographs, and also the following.

(33:57):
Mr. X rides blindfolded. Here at Sears Tuesday evening, Mr. X, the man with the X-ray eyes will ride the Sears All-State Motor Scooter all around and through our parking lot blindfolded.
Sounds seriously dangerous.
Lori Summers did a number of appearances to promote the film. In an interview with the Miami Herald, Lori said that appearing with Ray Milan gave her, quote, "an opportunity to learn from a professional."
She said, "Ray, he's the greatest. He makes everything so much fun, just working with him."

(34:22):
A.I.P. also suggested theater owners could set up a telescope in front of the building, aim it at the top of a nearby building, and allow people to look through the eyepiece.
On the building would be a large X, and everyone would be invited to look into the mystery of X.
Taglines for X, the man with the X-ray eyes include, a daring experiment which will enable me to venture into the unknown.
He strips souls as bare as bodies.

(34:45):
He had the power to see through flesh, through cards, through walls, through buildings, through clothes, to the end of the universe.
Suddenly, he had the most powerful eyes in the world, gambling he couldn't lose in Las Vegas.
Women, did they have the right to know what he could see? Science. He could see the center of the earth and to the end of the universe.
Not really. Some of these taglines are a bit overdone.

(35:06):
Kingsley Amos would have calmed for the London Observer after seeing X at the International Science Film Festival in Trieste, and said some of the expected kinds of badness were richly represented at the film festival.
No giant praying mantises are such, but an abundance of vulgarity and sheer naked ineptitude. X, the man with the X-ray eyes scored high on both counts, with poor Ray Milan giving as much as he has to a theme that nibbled feebly at comic possibilities before plunging into repulsiveness.

(35:32):
The New York Times reviewer said of X, "Up to the midpoint, this fantasy melodrama is surprisingly level-headed and persuasive in its restraint and succinct dialogue."
As written by Robert Dylan and Ray Russell, the concept is original and the tone is thoughtful, so most persuasively is Mr. Milan. Initially the picture is on firm ground as a concerned colleague, Harold J. Stone, warns his friend that the supernatural belongs to the gods.

(35:53):
While I'm closing in on the gods retores Mr. Milan, unfortunately the picture creens rather theatrically underscored by spooky music in some shrill angel voices.
The LA Times reviewer wrote, "Corman has a pretty fair gimmick in the idea of a serum which allows the doctor to see the patient's inner is with on a machine, but the action that follows runs a routine gamut.
While I never expected to see Ray Milan starring in such a picture, he gives it the old college try for earnestness."

(36:18):
Our office magazines reviewer said that X was far above the usual run of science fiction films, "Corman" who produced and directed, made the most of an unusual screenplay by Dylan and Russell, and gave the picture credibility in the open laboratory scenes by casting Stone, Hoi and Vanderfellis as research scientists.
Review went on to say that there's only one episode in which Milan's X-ray vision causes him to see through the clothes of a group of twisting dancers at a cocktail party which will cause hilarity.

(36:41):
The rest is Stark drama, which winds up in a horrifying tragic moment.
The Catholic Legion of Deicency rated the film as Class A2, morally unobjectionable for adults in adolescence.
"Corman himself said," the picture turned out reasonably well, I think, but I think when finished, the effects just weren't there. We did the best we could.
It's been rumored that the original ending of the film was left off the final print.

(37:03):
Supposedly after Xavier gouges his eyes out, he looks into the camera with his bloody sockets and cries out, "I can still see."
Corman then opted to clip that off the ending we see, where the film freezes on Xavier's bloody sockets for a second, then fades to credits.
Corman has denied the existence of that ending, but told Aprax, "It's interesting. Stephen King saw the picture and wrote a different ending, and I thought his ending is better than mine."

(37:24):
The film originally had a five minute prologue about the human senses. This prologue was supposedly removed from all post theatrical prints of the film, and may have been removed from some of the theatrical release prints.
This reduced the running time to 79 minutes. The footage can be found on the second-side Blu-ray, and we watched it, and it's pretty boring.
I believe it's also on the Kino Lorber Blu-ray, which is currently on a print.

(37:45):
A Gold-key comic book adaptation of X was released in September of 1963 to promote the film, and Eunice Sudek adapted the film's script for a novelization that came out on the film's release.
Publisher Lancer Books offered the book for 21 cents each. The comic book was available for only 12 cents.
Tim Burton developed a script for a remake of the film with Raya Bryant-Gulliboff, but it went unproduced.

(38:06):
X was referenced in two different songs. On their 1981 album, Mask, British Band-Bowhouse mentioned the movie in the song X-ray Eyes.
Also, on their 1998 album, Heaven forbid, Blue Oyster Cult has a tune called The Man With the X-ray Eyes.
It seems critical response to X was more or less middling. How did you feel about it? More or less middling. I recognize that there are very good things about this movie.

(38:37):
The acting for one is really good, Ray Beland. I think it was a really good choice to carry this movie, because he has that gravitas.
It's something that could be very silly in the wrong hands, but he takes it very seriously, and so we as the audience take it more seriously.
However, a lot of the stuff that happens is kind of ridiculous. When Dr. Sam Brandt, which was another well-acted role, tries to give him the hypo, he just asks him to roll up his sleeve.

(38:59):
He doesn't force it on him or anything, and then the next thing that happens is Xavier stiff-arms him through the window, which is surprisingly frangible, and he flies out of it.
He didn't have to react like that. He went all Hulk smash on him for no reason. So I think it gets a little silly. That end the scene where he's in the casino, and he starts telling other people don't bet, don't bet, because he sees the cards.
Well, how it's part is this guy really, because he could have gotten away with it easily.

(39:24):
Well, I think what I was supposed to show is that Dr. Brandt is correct in that this is having an effect on Xavier's brain as well as his eyesight.
Yeah, but he doesn't demonstrate good judgment before he puts the drops in, because he puts the drops in his own eyes. So he's got a lot of hubris, and he pays dearly for that. I guess that's the point.
It does seem kind of strange that he keeps complaining about what this is doing to him, but he keeps on applying more eyedrops all the time.

(39:49):
Well, part of that you can explain away by saying that this is how he makes money. So he has no choice. Once he's killed Sam Brandt, he can't go back to Dr.ing.
He can't become a professor X or anything. He's only got this under the radar gig that he can do, whether it's at the side show or in the black market medicine business.
So yeah, he needs money to live, and that's his only option, I guess. You can't just get a regular job or drive himself to Mexico and start taking up something there.

(40:14):
Part of it verges on the understandable, but it fears into not making sense.
I think that just all comes from him going insane. And if that I drop some selves aren't driving him insane, then what he sees definitely is.
Yeah, and that is probably the best part of this movie. I enjoyed the effects. Now, obviously they're from 1963. They're not going to really wow anybody today, but I think for the time.

(40:37):
I think that it was well represented. I think they're very effective. You mentioned the cinematography before. And yeah, this isn't really good looking movie.
When they're showing things from Xavier's perspective, and it's not the spectra vision, I described it as an iris frame. It's kind of like a gold circle around just normal vision.
So that could vision is narrowed to a single point almost. It's not a single point, but it's just one person space or one thing at a time as Ali can see.

(41:03):
And I think that's the effective way of showing that he's seeing things a little differently because from most of the examples, they're naked people standing in front of him.
But that shows that it's through his vision that they're actually clothed for everyone else.
And that's not really that lascivious. It's silly. Like the one review said, the scene was the only one that was played for laughs.
Or I guess there is more than one, but that was just the only part that they were having a joke on us. Everything else was played pretty seriously.

(41:30):
There's a lot of bad things happening.
Yeah, and as such, that scene does take up a good part of the trailer as well.
Well, of course, how are you going to get butts and seats? You know, Shandayka people guys got extreme vision.
And if it was Don Rickles as the lead, all he would do is look at naked women. He said as much.
Do you think that the other ending that Stephen King wrote about in his book would have been more effective?

(41:51):
I think it would have been a good ending, but I don't think it was needed. I think it's fine just the way it is.
I think maybe they should have lingered on that last shot a little more.
I think it should have lingered on the blackness that followed it.
Maybe after he tears his eyes out and looks at the camera, that is half a second. And then it fades to black.
Well, I don't think you want to have it on that long because it doesn't look that great.
It doesn't look that great, but let's say it did look great. You'd want to keep it up for a little bit.

(42:14):
Just long enough to make an impression. Whereas you're kind of left wondering, wait, what did I see?
We watched it several times so we saw it over and over again.
But if you're in the theater and you didn't have a chance to go back, you'd probably be sitting there like, wait, what happened?
I think if they just lingered on the black for maybe three seconds instead of the half second that they do, it would drive in the point that he finally sees the darkness that he's been longing to see.

(42:36):
Yeah, that would be effective as well. I think they should have done both what I said and what you said.
I heard that Ray Milan was Corman's first choice for this role. And they worked together previously in the premature burial.
And when his agent offered him the script, Milan said he wanted to do it. But apparently the agent had only offered it to him, assuming that he would say no.
But he surprised him, I guess, and didn't say no.

(42:58):
Well, this is Ray Milan of 1963. So this was still a bit of a coup. This was the guy who won the Oscar for the last weekend.
This was not yet the Ray Milan who would appear in frogs and the thing with two heads.
You think he's foreshadowing that it's a journey.
No, I think he does a really good job with the role. I just think like I always do that certain things could have been tightened up.
There's a lot of fill in this movie. The last half hour when we take notes, we sometimes spend a lot of time setting up the establishing facts of the story, the characters, etc.

(43:27):
But the last half hour went like that. We barely wrote anything. There's the gambling scene. There's a car chase and there's the end scene.
And that's it. That's half an hour of screen time that's taken up by all that. So it goes really fast. This isn't a long movie, but it did start to feel a little long then.
They could have tightened it up and made it even shorter and then put on those extra few seconds at the end that we were demanding.

(43:50):
If this film is directed at a teen audience, I think that the party scene is probably the main point of the film, which doesn't even need to be in the story at all.
But it's there because what's the first thing a person is going to do if they get extra vision. They're going to check out other people, but that's probably going to get boring really quick.
I guess if you have any kind of morality to you, you'll know better than to do that, especially your colleagues at work.

(44:11):
Well, he apparently did because all he did was look at people's legs and shoulders.
Yeah, he was avoiding the naughty bits, but he also told Dr. Fairfax that he could see her naked. And that is surprising. And it's also surprising that she didn't punch him.
She's rather flattered by the whole thing. One of the reviews that I didn't fully quote said that Diana Vanderblus handles the romantic scenes with Melandwell.

(44:33):
And I didn't really see it as a romance, maybe a flirtation, but maybe they're hinting that there was more to their relationship than being professionals.
She did take him out to a party, so they were at least friends.
Well, that's what I got out of it that they were driving towards something I mean, he bought her bending machine coffee.
He spent 35 cents on her, but that might just be because it's a film and they kind of forced relationships into every movie.

(44:54):
But they didn't end it that way. She's taking care of him. She's doing stuff for him that he can't do for himself.
She's kind of taking on a mothering role trying to save him from himself.
Right, but she doesn't have to take that role.
No, he asks her and she says yes. So it's not because she wants to mother him. She actually cares about this guy for some weird reason.
Well, I know, but I'm just saying that what she actually ends up doing isn't romantic. She's just care-taking.

(45:17):
But that's because she has feelings, but he doesn't have feelings for her apparently because he just leaves her with the cops coming and runs off.
And he is not one who should be driving at that point. He's got black contact lenses off.
That part was scary watching him.
Karine around didn't mention it, but he almost causes several accidents when he comes near other cars.
Yeah, red pickup truck gets thrown off the road and the guy gets sound shakes just fist at him.

(45:41):
It's surprising that he didn't crash earlier because we see his vision. It's very limited.
But it's a pretty straight road.
No, it isn't. There's curves. We see the curves. There's mountains. There's drop-offs.
Here he has to definitely. I kind of wonder how deep we're supposed to look at this movie.
It's about X-ray eyes.
Is it supposed to be preaching something? Is it making a statement?

(46:04):
I don't think so. If it is, it's this statement that comes up in a lot of these movies about the scientific hubris.
Where the scientist is so convinced of the power of his science and the power of himself to withstand anything.
That he will go against the scientific method. He'll go against advice.
He'll go against all established procedures and test on himself, which is so dumb. But he does it anyways.

(46:27):
Despite having mostly negative results. But that's kind of the theme. Don't be so arrogant.
But that's what brings about what might be one of the funniest parts of the movie when Xavier is meeting with Dr. Brand.
And Dr. Brand is saying, "You shouldn't use yourself as a guinea pig." That monkey died. And Xavier's logical reply is, "Well, that was a monkey. I'm a man. It's all different."

(46:48):
He thought the monkey's brain couldn't comprehend what was going on. Or as he's a more evolved animal who has the power to think it through.
I don't know if that's true. That's just him guessing. He didn't know what was going to happen to him.
And it did affect him. Like you said, there were ill effects, whether they were directly related to the serum or because of what he was doing to himself.
And that's why they couldn't just get a lab as a sort of a prison inmate or somebody to do it because they have the brains of a monkey in his eyes.

(47:13):
And that's an ethical nightmare just picking prison inmates for these kinds of experiments. That is not right either. He's not saving any lives here.
He's just exploring a theory that he has.
Is there any real benefit to this besides exorying little girls and finding that they don't have stenosis, they have tumors? What is the actual benefit of this?

(47:34):
You can see bad dancers naked. That's not really a benefit. That's maybe a perk, but it doesn't benefit humanity to be able to do that.
I don't know. I think developing a machine that could do that would be much more beneficial than being able to do it as a person.
Yeah. You still can't prove it to anybody. Like you couldn't prove it to Dr. Benson that she had a tumor. He said, take my word for it. And Dr. Benson, which I think was smart even though he was wrong, was like, no, we're going to go with what the X-ray shows.

(48:01):
Honestly, I think it was just his own ego that he was working for.
Yeah. I'm sure there's some reason why we can't see all these different wavelengths of light.
Even if there isn't a reason, the fact is that we can't. And that seems to be a good thing. Do we really want to see ultraviolet rays infrared? Do we really want every last particle that's coming from the sun?
In our retinas? Do we need that? I don't think so. I think that we have selective vision because it benefits us.

(48:27):
I think you're probably right. There really isn't any benefit to doing this to oneself. Again, if you have a machine that can do it, then it's not permanent.
If this is your vision, this is your vision now and you're stuck with it. But you don't want to have that all the time because that's not how our world works.
You handicap yourself. You're not able to get around. You shouldn't be driving. That's for sure. Even getting in the elevator would be fraught because you'd see everything above you and everything below you.

(48:52):
How do you know you're on your floor? The door looks the same open or closed. It's just dumb.
You mentioned wondering how Dr. Xavier wound up working at the carnival.
I said it was the most unexpected place you'd think to find him.
And I would disagree because where do you go when you want to hide but just still need to make a living? You run away and join the circus.
Sure. Seeing it for the first time, it was kind of surprising that this is his new career.

(49:16):
He was wearing suits and lab coats up to this point and he's still wearing the suit. He's wearing that hideous yellow robe over it.
And he's got a blindfold over his eyes with a one big eye printed in the middle of it.
I think it was good for the movie and it introduced us to the character of Crane, which I think was one of the best, if not the best character in the movie.
Not that I liked him. I know Don Rikles as a comedian, the insult comic.

(49:40):
And seeing him do an acting job here, well, okay, we did see him in Muscle Beach Party. He sucked in that. Sorry. I hated that movie.
But here I thought he was great. He was so sinister, so powerful that I was very taken with his performance.
Well, we have I think three more Don Rikles movies in the AAP catalog to watch in their all beach movies.
Like the next three after Muscle Beach parties and all of those.

(50:03):
Oh no. Same character. I don't believe so. That tracks.
But as much as I disliked him there, I liked him here. I thought it was powerful.
Well, I think it was an important part of the story because if somebody has a power, there's always going to be somebody there to exploit it.
And exploit you once the power wasn't paying off. He turned to personal blackmail. You know what he's doing.

(50:24):
So, Cheryl, how would you equate all this to a rating using our AAP scale where A is awesome, I use intermediate and P is pathetic.
As usual, I'm kind of falling between A and I and I don't know which way to go. I want to say A because I think this is an important movie.
There are some things that I don't like about it, but I think I'm going to go with A because given the limitations they had with special effects, I think they did a fantastic job.

(50:47):
Like I said, the acting was really good. I mentioned Remeland and Don Rikles specifically, but I thought that everyone did a good job.
They even hired Dick Miller and Jonathan Hayes to be the hecklers and that was really fun. And the story was very moving. It had a silly moment with the naked dancers.
Even though the story didn't really have a good point, I thought it was well played out and I enjoyed that.

(51:10):
So, I'm going to go with ‘A.' What do you think?
I agree. I think one of the best things this film has going for it is the unique cinematography and the effects.
Yeah, they were limited for 1963 to what they had, but I think what they did was very effective. It's primarily just dissolves, but it gets the point across it works.
They're skillfully done.
And as for that party scene, I'm going to come back to that one too. I think that even if the dancing wasn't so awkward, it would play out so much better.

(51:39):
But it's just really bad dancing and then to have them take their clothes off on top of it or underneath it or however you want to put that.
It makes awkwardness even more awkward. It is cringey, but I'm going to get this one an ‘A’ too, for a lot of the same reasons.
It is an important film in the AIP catalog. It's been said it's probably one of the more personal stories that Korman ever put out there, excluding the intruder, not AIP, but a very good movie.

(52:03):
And the acting is way above par Ray Meland has this fantastic job. Diana van der Vlis is good. John Hoyt, who we will see very soon in attack of the puppet people.
Oh, wow. Yeah, that's right. Don Rickles, of course. And my as we'll give Harold J. Stone as Sam Brant and his credit too, because those are the only five people who were actually credited in this film.
That was weird.
That was kind of strange. And I wonder if that was partially because of the original prologue that to have everybody's name listed.

(52:28):
I'm just trying to think of any logical reason not to list a few more names. They had the five names before the title and nothing at the end.
Yeah. And there's a substantial amount of people that they left off the cast. They had lines. They weren't just under fives or background players. Dick Miller and Jonathan Hayes, for example, no credit for them. They're in all his movies.
I would expect the preacher to have a credit.

(52:49):
Yeah, there are carnival people. Barboura Morris. Yeah, Barboura Morris is that nurse. But whatever the reason I'm sure they had them and it doesn't detract from my rating, which is also a.
What if they just forgot Jeff? I'm embarrassed for them.
That could be too. For more information on “X” - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes and other AIP movies that we've covered go to our website AIP pod dot com.

(53:12):
There you can find paraphernalia like movie posters, trailers, lobby cards, information on where to see the movies. A contact form so you can get in touch with us and tell us what you thought about something that we said or didn't say or check out our store.
It's aippod.com.
So on that note, we'll be closing our eyes on “X” - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. This is the American International podcast and I'm Jeff Markin.

(53:33):
I'm Cheryl Lightfoot and we'll meet you at the drive in.
Follow the American International podcast on Instagram and letterbox @aip_pod and on Facebook at facebook.com/AmericanInternationalPodcast.
The American International Podcast is produced and edited by Jeff Markin.
The man whose mind is distorted by hatred and Cheryl Lightfoot.

(53:57):
A girl hungry for too many things.
The American International podcast is part of the Pop Culture Entertainment Network.
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