THE ILLUSTRATED MAN

I know a helluva lot more about both film and the works of Ray Bradbury today, in 2018 at the age of sixty-two, than I did at the age of thirteen in 1969. That's when I first saw THE ILLUSTRATED MAN at the State (now Stateside) Theater in downtown Austin. Didn't much care for the film at the time and when I watched it again yesterday for the first time in forty-nine years, I discovered that the film was even worse than I remembered it. 

It's not just bad. It's a fresh, hot, steaming turd of a horrible movie. 

Rod Steiger, who never met a piece of scenery he couldn't chew into oblivion, stars as the title character, a man whose proper name is actually the rather prosaic Carl. His body is covered in tattoos (except for his head and face and a blank spot on his back). But don't dare call them "tattoos". Carl is explicit that they should be referred to as "skin illustrations". The illustrations were placed upon Carl's body by Felicia (Claire Bloom), a woman who may or may not have come from the future and who may or may not be a witch (or both).

Carl meets a young drifter, Willie (Robert Drivas), on the road and tells him the story of how he acquired the "skin illustrations". They are pictures that come alive if you look at them too long and hard and come alive they do when Willie does just that. The illustrations morph into three stories, THE VELDT, THE LONG RAIN and THE LAST NIGHT OF THE WORLD. Funny thing about these stories. Carl and Felicia appear in each one and in each one they're characters named Carl and Felicia. There's no attempt to differentiate these story characters from the "real" Carl and Felicia. It's a clumsy bit of story telling that serves only to confuse an already bewildering narrative. 

The stories, are of course, adaptations of short stories found in Ray Bradbury's collection THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, first published in 1951. I read that book at the time of the film's release and re-read it a few years ago at the time of Bradbury's death. Bradbury's never been my favorite writer but I do admire his prose and all of the stories adapted in the film version were much better served on paper than celluloid. The futuristic settings are all uniformly tired and cliched looking, all sterile white plastic and billowing white tents for dwellings, and unisex, one-piece clothing for costumes.

 While it's a failure on the part of the production designer. the real failure here lies in the screenplay by Howard B. Kreitsek and the leaden, unimaginative direction by genre hack Jack Smight. Neither men bring an ounce of Bradbury's poetic imagery and lyrical prose to life. They're literally tone deaf when it comes to evoking the slightest scintilla of a sense of wonder, of breathless imagination that this material so desperately cries out for. Prior to ILLUSTRATED MAN, Bradbury's work was much better served on film in such fare as BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953), IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) and FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966).

But the worst offender here is Steiger. His performance is as hammy and over the top as you would expect from this actor who could never play a part at a level of ten when eleven was available and so much better. While watching the film I wondered if director Smight gave Steiger any direction at all, if he even bothered to shape a performance and an honest-to-gosh character out of Steiger and the material or if Steiger just said, "Jack, I've got this, let me do it my way." I imagine it was the latter and given what was probably a limited budget and schedule, Smight knew better than to lock horns with his star. After all, Warner Brothers hired Steiger for the role so the powers that be must have wanted what he could bring to the screen.

After the three stories have played out, Willie looks into the blank spot on Carl's back and sees his own death (strangulation by Carl) depicted. Willie picks up a rather large rock and repeatedly bashes Carl's head in. Willie lights out across the countryside with Carl's dog, Peck in pursuit. Then, amazingly, Carl rises from his beating, one side of his face horribly disfigured by the attack and begins to lumber along the road after Willie. The end.

Wait, what?

Yep, the movie simply ends on a freeze frame of a deserted dirt road. Did Willie get away? Did Carl catch and kill him as foretold in the blank spot? Who knows? Who cares? The 103 minutes of this turkey are done.

I cannot recommend THE ILLUSTRATED MAN to anyone, not even die hard Bradbury fans who want to see the legendary master's work brought to life on the screen. Read one of his books, any of his books or watch any of the other films and television programs that have been produced over the years. But whatever you do, for God's sake, avoid this mess.