Ray Milland was once one of the major stars in Hollywoodland, having received an Oscar for his tortured performance in THE LOST WEEKEND. Some great movies and the wonderful teleseries Markham followed, but in the early 60's a career slide began ever so softly. In 1962, Milland directed and starred in PANIC IN YEAR ZERO, one of the scant handful of movies to deal realistically with atomic war. It was a fine film, but genre fare typically meant an actor wasn't on top anymore. "X" came shortly after, and is seen by many fans as Milland's real last hurrah. The onscreen title is simply X, but the film is known as X - THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES. In it, Milland plays a scientist who seeks to unlock the spectrum of vision beyond the narrow band we use. He experiments on himself and, as the title indicates, he ends up with x-ray vision. At first, this is a marvelous development, but soon it begins to cause more problems than anything else. When a murder rap is slapped on him, our hero flees underground and ends up working at a carnival sideshow. Before long, he's hitting Vegas to scrounge up some funds for further research when his cover is blown... Director Roger Corman serves up one of his more ambitious efforts here. Both cynical and earnest, the film is inventive, gripping, and sports one of Milland's signature roles. Sadly, a decade later would see him playing the living head of a bigot surgeon grafted onto Rosie Greer's neck.
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