This completely accurate accusation of curmudgeonry was brought about by a discussion of tractors, and my comment that decades after all the GPS-equipped, computer-controlled, self-steering fiberglass-plastic-composite marvels of today are worthless, decaying junk, 100+-year-old Farmalls will still be chugging around what few family farms are strong enough to survive the conglomerate farming takeover. They may not be used for much more than mowing ditches and running power take-offs (it being sort of hard to pull and operate a 24-row CCS ProXP John Deere planter with a tractor unequipped with even the most basic of hydraulic plug-ins not to mention nowhere to attach the SeedStar monitoring system), but they are still an omnipresent force and the absolute definition of indestructible. And why are these ancient workhorses still so popular? Because of their simplicity. No computers, no fancy electronics, just internal combustion and steel. If you change the oil once in a while and clean out the air filter, they will never die because there is essentially nothing that can go wrong with them. These days, tractors have become like computers – obsolete the second you take them out of the box.

Hollywood has gone much the same way. Today’s stars are yesterday’s tabloid crotch-shot or rehab check-in before they’ve even begun to shine. Special effects that were revolutionary last summer have already been replaced with an even better digital cartoon. And sadly, gone are the days when doughy, crotchety old men could carry an entire movie. It’s not that their capability to do so has diminished. Hell, Christopher Lee and Ian McKellan (neither of which are particularly doughy, or even crotchety, but they are old) were almost the only watchable actors in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Cthulhu knows I wasn’t cheering for the fucking Hobbitses.

It’s just that audiences are fucking brain-dead, too busy text-messaging in the theater (and if you do that in a theater I am trying to watch a movie in, I shall slay you, yea verily) to pay attention to what’s going on up on that big glowy screen thing that keeps interrupting their calls. They can’t be bothered to listen to people actually delivering dialogue, so all they need is a hot young face to be doing something which conveys the point of the scene when they can be bothered to glance up from choosing a new ringtone (yes, you have a current Top 40 hip-hop song on your phone, you’re fucking cool as all hell, we get it).

So tonight’s movie is a blast from the past of the days when crotchety old men could still carry movies, and do it better than most of the youngsters who would usurp their throne in decades to come.

Dr. James Xavier is a scientist working on expanding the range of human vision. Dissatisfied with only being able to see a small fraction of the light spectrum, he develops drops to allow the eye to see all light. Hate to break it to you, doc, but they already have those. Anyone who has ever been to the eye doctor knows that horrible crap they use to dilate your eyes, requiring you to wear sunglasses for the rest of the day, except your eyes are so sensitive they don’t do any good and even the light coming through your closed eyelids gives you a splitting headache. Despite his test monkey dying of shock when treated with the drug, he decides to go ahead on and try it out on himself anyway.

After a brief adjustment period, he becomes able to see through layers of clothing and flesh, saving a little girl’s life by preventing her doctor from performing the wrong surgery on her. This being a Roger Corman movie, it is marred by one bad scene of komedy, where Dr. X goes to a party and sees through everyone’s clothes. Things don’t stay fun for long, though. The drug’s effects prove to be cumulative, so that every time he takes it, his powers of sight become more penetrating. He accidentally pushes his friend Dr. Brant out a window, and flees to the only career he can find which will ask no questions – a carnival sideshow fortune teller.

When an ambitious and sleazy barker (played fantastically by Don Rickles) discovers that his powers are real, he takes him into the city to become a “healer”. Tired of being on the lam and at the mercy of his greedy promoter, he flees to Vegas with Dr. Diane Fairfax to cheat a casino out of a load of money so he can head over the border to Mexico and set up a new laboratory to continue his work. Busted for counting cards, he is pursued into the desert by the police in a helicopter chase which would make Coleman Francis proud, and all the while his vision is becoming more and more powerful, seeing through the skeletons of buildings and mountains on the ground and into the farthest reaches of space above.

The chase ends at a tent revival, where he staggers to the front of the line of those waiting to be saved, telling the preacher that he can see the great eye at the center of creation watching them all, and then tears out his eyes.

For anyone who trashes Roger Corman and doesn’t understand why I like him, this movie is my main piece of evidence for the defense. X is a prime example of 50’s and 60’s low-budget science fiction, and easily one of the best. Of course, the drug is scientifically rubbish, its effects range from Dr. X being able to control them at will, to being spontaneously stronger or weaker, to growing stronger every time he takes the drug until he can see God and goes insane, and there are your typical gaps in logic big enough to park a tank between. But I don’t care about any of that stuff, because the movie is really, surprisingly good. The subject matter is treated with such seriousness (that one seeing-through-the-clothes bit notwithstanding) that you find yourself not really noticing, or at least not griping, about any of the continuity or logic problems.

Ray Milland puts in a fantastic performance as Dr. Xavier, and most of the supporting cast range from at least good enough to be believable to real scene-stealers (Don Rickles, I’m lookin’ at you). The effects, while fairly transparent and low-budget, serve their purpose admirably. Besides, the effects aren’t really what the movie is about. It’s about the character of Dr. Xavier and his journey into madness. When you have no money to dazzle the audience with, you have to rely on a solid (if rather un-scientific) script and decent actors to deliver it to make your movie, and that’s exactly the case here.

Clocking in at not even 80 minutes, it’s also another feather in the cap for Fistula’s argument that movies should have shorter run-times because so often they are padded with fifteen or twenty minutes’ worth of uninteresting crap just to get a 90- or 120-minute run-time. If you don’t have that much to say, don’t try saying it to the detriment of your movie. Just get in, do what needs to be done, and get out. Trust me, your audience will thank you for it.

I’d hate to think how much this movie would suck if it were made today. There would be a zillion computer-generated shots of the camera sinking into Xavier’s head to watch the drug do its work on his eyes and brain, and even more shots of buildings and people and cars being dismantled with Matrix-style 360 freeze-frame shots, and Dr. Xavier would be played by a young, handsome, and hopelessly vapid and uninteresting douche bag who couldn’t act his way out of a toothpaste commercial. There would be an obnoxious sidekick to deliver comic relief, and I doubt if the filmmakers would be able to show as much restraint as Roger Corman (there’s a phrase you’re not going to hear too often) in avoiding the easy way out and just having him look at naked women for the entire first act.

So if your attention span hasn’t been destroyed by super-fast editing and CGI effects, and you still have the capacity to be interested in characters instead of pretty faces, check it out. You’ll be damn happy you did.