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

  Classes officially ended this week but I'm still working off the backlog of movies I saw during the semester.  This was one of my favorites from my Film class and not so coincidentally, I'm also doing my final paper on it.

Dr. Xavier (Ray Milland) is eager to move to human trials of his experimental eye drops that allow the user to see more than just the visible spectrum.  However, The Establishment in the form of his friend, Dr. Brant (Harold J. Stone), and potential honey, Dr. Fairfax (Diana Van der Vils), caution him against continuing after the deaths of all his test subjects.  Undaunted, Dr. Xavier charges ahead and uses himself as a subject, gradually increasing the dosage until he can see through solid objects.  This does not bring him the acclaim he was looking for as a researcher.  Instead, he is ostracized and eventually commits manslaughter while lashing out.  He is forced to go on the run, hiding out in a two-bit carnival as their Mystic.  The carnival barker (Don Rickles) figures out that the doc is hiding something and extorts him into using his "gift" to shill old people out of their money.  That's how Dr. Fairfax finds him again, bringing with her all the bad luck and trouble Xavier thought he had escaped.

This is a Roger Corman movie, so you know it's going to be cheesy, melodramatic, and shot for cheap.  And it is.  But it's also a really fun B-movie that is just ripe for some MST3K-style commentary.  My paper discusses how the punishment of transhumanism (wanting to augment the human body beyond its current capabilities) is tied to the ideological status quo of the 1960s which was very invested in maintaining extant power structures.  I'll be contrasting it with Lucy, which embraces the concept of transhumanism and sees progress as unstoppable.  But you don't care about that.  If you can find this film, give it a shot after you've had a couple of shots.