The cult horror movie that turns Stephen King’s stomach: “The most shuddery gross-out scenes”
For the past decade, horror maestro Stephen King’s opinions on the genre have entertained and educated the world through social media. However, he’s always been such a devotee of all things grim and ghoulish that, long before the internet was a thing, he published the nonfiction book Danse Macabre. In that tome, he pondered the influence of societal fears on the genre as it progressed through the years in film, television, literature, and comic books. Along the way, he even spotlighted a cult horror movie that featured scenes even the “King of Horror” could barely stomach – and that should make it a must-see for gorehounds everywhere.
In 1963, low-budget horror/sci-fi pioneer Roger Corman released X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes. The title sounds very much like something EC Comics would have published in the ’50s, and the story falls tidily in line with the kind of twist-heavy, macabre genre film that was common at the time. The film follows a scientist named Dr James Xavier, who invents a way to extend his range of vision with some newfangled eye drops. They allow him to view beyond the visible spectrum and into the realm of ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths, but he soon begins to catch glimpses of horrifying things no man was ever supposed to see.
Amusingly, Corman revealed to Uproxx in 2017 that he initially thought the idea of making Xavier a scientist was too clichéd. So, he reworked the outline to make the main character a jazz musician who had indulged in too many recreational drugs. However, he admitted, “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 the scientist.”
When the film was released as part of a double feature with Francis Ford Coppola’s Dementia 13, it was a decent-sized success for Corman. Over the years, though, it developed a cult following among horror and sci-fi fans, including some very famous ones. For instance, Tim Burton once toyed with the idea of remaking it and even developed a script with writer Bryan Goluboff, but the project failed to get a green light.
The other famous fan was, of course, King, who waxed lyrical about the film in Danse Macabre. He wrote that X-ray Eyes was “one of the most interesting and offbeat little horror movies ever made, and one that ends with one of the most shuddery gross-out scenes ever filmed.”
He believed it took a lot of influence from the work of legendary horror author HP Lovecraft, who wrote tales of human beings encountering evil on a cosmic scale they could scarcely comprehend. He argued, “It becomes a kind of Lovecraftian horror movie, but in a sense that is different—and somehow purer—than the sort of Lovecraftiness used in Alien“.
Fascinatingly, King revealed there had always been rumours surrounding the aforementioned “shuddery gross-out” ending and what was originally planned for it. It sees Dr Xavier tear out his own eyes at the suggestion of a pastor who tells him the horrors he has been seeing are “sin and the devil”. Pretty horrifying, right? Well, it could have been even more harrowing because King heard Corman’s original ending, which had Xavier howling, “I can still see!” even after removing his eyes.
This ending would undoubtedly have left an even bigger impression, but whether or not it’s actually true is murky. Some fans believe Corman said he filmed that ending when he came up with the line on the day of shooting, which is why it’s not in the script. However, in this scenario, he decided it wasn’t as good as the ending in the final cut.
However, Corman himself muddied these waters considerably when he admitted to Uproxx, “Stephen King saw the picture and wrote a different ending, and I thought, ‘His ending is better than mine.'”
