******SKIN-ILLUSTRATED SPOILERS!******
With Oscar-winning lead actor Rod Steiger starring as the title character in movie based on a book from legendary writer Ray Bradbury, 1969’s adaptation of “The Illustrated Man” had a lot going for it. However, the devil is in the details, and “The Illustrated Man” is a devilishly difficult book to will into cinematic reality, given it’s an anthology, and was never intended to be a single, linear narrative (a issue encountered with the 1980 adaptation of Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles”).
With 18 very different stories in the book’s pages, screenwriters Ted Mann and Howard B. Kreitsek whittled it down to three (“The Veldt,” “The Long Rain,” “The Last Night of the World”) within a framing story of a vengeful ex-carny (Steiger) searching for the mysterious woman (Claire Bloom) who left him emblazoned with a body covered in skin art that is driving him mad. Along the way, he and his ugly dog join an unassuming young man (Robert Drivas) headed west for a job.
The final, 103-minute result is, at the very least, a curiosity for sci-fi/fantasy fans and for fans of Ray Bradbury (my favorite author, whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting twice). Let’s get our tattooing–no, ‘skin illustrating’ needles and dig in…
“The Illustrated Man” (1969)
During the Great Depression (mid-1930s), a young man named Willie (Robert Drivas) makes camp in the middle of nowhere, as he treks across country on foot for the promise of a job. His solitude and campsite are soon invaded by a belligerent older stranger named Carl (Rod Steiger), and his shrill ugly mutt, Peke.
Note: Fresh off his Oscar win for “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), Rod Steiger (1925-2002) often played villains or morally-murky antiheroes, like the shady, sleazy Victor Komarovsky in “Doctor Zhivago” (1965). As they used to tell actors, never show your peak early, and if I have any minor quibbles with Steiger’s performance, it’s that Steiger shows Carl’s peak a bit too early on.
Rummaging through Willie’s belongings and helping himself to food and coffee, Carl informs Willie he’s on a mission to kill the woman who left his entire body–even his nether reaches–covered in “skin illustrations!” Carl removes his coat to show Willie his densely tattooed body, and warns the young man that each “skin illustration” tells its own hypnotic story in the night…
Note: Steiger took on this vanity-free role where he’s seen completely nude in several scenes–with tattoo makeups covering his entire body, even his buttocks. That was a bold move for any 1969, let alone for a middle-aged, rotund actor like Steiger. The actor’s myriad body makeups were designed by James E. Reynolds and applied by Gordon Bau. Those tattoo makeups had to be repeatedly applied multiple times throughout filming, with ten hours for his upper torso and arms, as well another ten for his legs, buttocks and feet.
The story flashes back to a younger Carl, when he worked for a carnival. Carl happened upon a beautiful woman named Felicia who lived in a curiously remote house with a shingle hanging outside promising “Skin Illustrations.”
Note: It makes sense that Carl is a carnival worker, since many Ray Bradbury short stories, as well as his book “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (1962), were directly inspired by Bradbury’s fascination with carnivals. From an event of his I once attended, Bradbury said he attended a carnival as a boy in Illinois, where a soothsayer once gave him the best life advice ever, as he boldly exclaimed to the impressionable young Ray; “Live forever!”
Top/Bottom: Felicia (Claire Bloom) lures Carl into her home, wielding an almost supernatural hold over the simple man, beyond his attraction to her. In her seduction, he covers his entire body with tattoos (for brevity, I won’t continue wasting space calling them ‘skin illustrations’), including roses on the palms of his hand to remember her by. Sending him on his way, she soon vanishes without a trace, leaving an angry Carl feeling used and grotesque.
Note: Carl tells Willie that he believed Felicia was from the future, which might’ve explained how she tattooed Carl’s entire body so quickly and relatively painlessly, using some as-yet-unknown body art technique. Claire Bloom came to this film fresh off of the sci-fi film “Charly” (1968), an adaptation of Daniel Keyes’ “Flowers for Algernon,” where a developmentally-challenged janitor undergoes an experimental surgery that radically boosts his intellectual capacity. In the title role of that film, Cliff Robertson won the Best Actor Oscar, with Bloom playing the therapist with whom he falls in love.
Resting at night by the fire, Wille is transfixed by one of Carl’s tattoos, and feels one of their stories from the future emerging…
Note: Robert Drivas (1935-1986) did a lot of acting (and directing) on stage, as well as television, with credits including “Bonanza,” “Route 66,” “Marcus Welby” and “The Streets of San Francisco.” Sadly, Drivas succumbed to AIDS in 1986, though it was publicly reported as cancer, due to the wrongful social stigma once associated with the disease. Drivas was survived by his partner, the late playwright Terrance McNally (1938-2020) who wrote “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” As the passive-aggressive Willie, Drivas gives a nicely nuanced and understated performance. The character of Willie was an unmanned character in Bradbury’s short story known only as ‘the Narrator.’
“The Veldt”
We then see George (Steiger) and Lydia (Bloom) in an unspecified future in an automated home living a life of pure leisure. Their children, Peter and Wendy, spend most of their day in a virtual reality education chamber called “the Nursery,” which acts as both electronic babysitter and educator; relieving the parents of nearly all responsibility. With their children under care of the Nursery, the couple become lethargic–even expressing affection feels more like a chore than a desire.
Note: The first of three Bradbury short stories (from the book’s 18) selected for the film, “The Veldt” forecasts many technologies that have since come to pass, including smart-homes, video-conferencing, and AI-generated virtual reality.
Disturbed by the amount of time their children spend in the Nursery’s holographic represenatation wild, dangerous African veldt, George and Lydia consult child psychologist David (Drivas), who is disturbed by what the veldt imagery represents…
Note: This version is reasonably faithful to Bradbury’s short story of the same name, and it gives the movie’s lead trio the opportunity to play multiple roles, with Drivas aged with graying hair and wrinkles to play child psychologist David McLean.
On David’s advice, George and Lydia reassert their authority as parents. George tells Peter and Wendy he’s shutting the Nursery down. The children storm off sulking Later, we see George and Lydia return to the nursery alone, inspecting the African veldt for themselves. The virtual wild animals react to their presence…
John (Tim Weldon) and Anna (Christine Matchett) serve tea to a visiting David, as he conducts a wellness check on the family–only to learn that the Nursery’s holographic animals have devoured George and Lydia, who threatened the kids’ fantasy.
Note: This gruesome ending is quite dark and faithful to the short story, though it resists the impulse to show the wild animals actually eating Lydia and George, as I vaguely remember from reading the book many many years ago, borrowed from my school library. Hope I’m not misremembering that (?).
“The Long Rain”
The Colonel (Steiger), Simmons (Jason Evers), Pickard (Don Dubbins) and his familiar-looking lieutenant (Drivas) wander for days across the rain-soaked surface of Venus, seeking refuge in one of the ‘sun domes’ left on the planet by previous expeditions. Wandering in a circle back to their destroyed ship, the colonel murders a whining Simmons with a laser weapon, before a demoralized Pickard takes his own life. The unyielding, unsympathetic colonel and his dissenting lieutenant move on…
Note: This particular story is the closest parallel to the ongoing conflict between domineering Carl and the meek Willie, though the lieutenant stands up to his commanding officer with a bit more nerve than Willie. Actor Jason Evers (1922-2005), who plays Simmons (the name of Drivas’ character from the original story). Evers also appeared in the hilariously awful “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” (1962) as well as the original Star Trek episode “Wink of an Eye,” as ‘Rael’; the accelerated, invisible Scalosian who attempts to take over the Enterprise and use its crew as lab mice to find ways of reversing his hyper-metabolic condition. Evers would later appear in “Escape from the Planet of the Apes” (1971) as a sadistic zoo-keeper.
Rendered deaf and insane from the ceaseless, pounding rain, the lieutenant finally succumbs and destroys himself as well. The colonel carries on alone, only to find a sun dome right over the next ridge. Once inside, he takes in the warmth, as well as the unlikely, possibly hallucinatory presence of a seductive woman (Bloom) waiting for him.
Note: Save for minor changes, this segment is fairly close to the original Bradbury short, though names/ranks are changed, as well as the movie’s addition of a fantasy woman in the sun dome waiting for Steiger, which is in keeping with the lieutenant accusing the colonel of lying to the men about “whores” awaiting them in the sun dome. Of course, the planet Venus has no surface water, let alone ceaseless rains. In fact, the surface temperature of Venus is hotter than the hottest ovens on Earth, with an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide, at crushing pressures roughly 90 times that of Earth at sea level.
“The Last Night of the World”
In another future vision, an unnamed husband (Steiger) and his wife (Bloom) live in an idyllic house of soft fabrics and draperies with their two children, a boy (Weldon) and a girl (Matchett). The husband learn–through prophecies, visions and forecasts given by a ruling body–that the world is coming to an end that very night. The wife worries about how to tell the children. The husband says that perhaps they should be quietly euthanized at bedtime. When she strongly objects, he promises not to.
Note: This segment is the most radically changed from the book’s short story, which was a simpler, tranquil meditation on people facing the end of the world with resignation and dignity–not too unlike the final scenes of the Netflix movie “Don’t Look Up” (2021). However the movie takes a much darker turn…
That morning, the wife awakens to realize that the prophecy was wrong–the world did not end. When she realizes her husband isn’t in bed with her, she becomes alarmed. Entering the children’s room, she sees her horrified husband, crouched between the pale corpses of their children–having broken his promise.
Note: Carl’s ‘mercy killing’ of the children’ destroys the intent of the original short story, which was about facing the end of the world without fear and panic. Though I have to admit, Carl’s premature euthanasia of his children is a very bold choice, and in better keeping with the horror tone of the film.
Willie then gazes into the only bare patch on Carl’s back, and sees a vision of his own murder. As Carl lays sleeping, Willie summons his nerve and smashes his face with a rock. Thinking he may have killed Carl, Willie rushes off. We then see a wounded Carl stirring, his face bloodied and his eye swollen shut, lumbering after him. And that, folks, is the end of the movie…
Note: Seeing the ‘future man’ who looks like Carl murder his own children gives timid Willie the impetus he needs to take a more proactive stance against his dangerous campsite ‘guest’ and stop him from murdering Felicia. Unfortunately, all of that tension built up between Carl and Willie is undermined by this terribly weak final scene, with the two men simply running in pursuit of each other over the end credits. No resolution. I realize the framing story of the book’s framing device ends similarly (with the unnamed Narrator meekly running away after his vision of Carl strangling him), but this is a movie; and movies generally require a firmer ending. Books and movies are not the same. If one wants the book? It’s always there to read. Just saying…
The End.
Summing It Up
The “The Illustrated Man” movie was never going to be anyone’s mind’s-eye adaptation of Ray Bradbury‘s classic collection of short stories, since most of the short stories in the book were cut for brevity (and perhaps for lack of relevance) in this 103-minute anthology film. Arguably better stories in the collection were left out, while perhaps lesser entries were adapted instead.
On the plus side, there is palpable tension between Rod Steiger (1925-2002) as Carl and Willie, even if Steiger chews off a bit more scenery than he can swallow at times. And this came right after his Oscar win for “In the Heat of the Night” (1967). The battle of wills between wannabe murderer Carl and younger, mild-mannered Willie is downright radioactive in its intensity at times. However, given the movie’s ambiguous ending, that tension is left without resolution. Is Willie rushing to save Felicia? Will Carl kill him first? Who knows. It’s as if the characters simply exit the movie, like “Blazing Saddles.” Needless to say, Steiger is a commanding presence in every scene, though director Jack Smight (1925-2003) might’ve tried harder to reign him in a bit…
In the underrated role of passive-aggressive job-seeker Willie, Robert Drivas (1935-1986) is overwhelmed by the sheer aggression and presumption of his campsite ‘guest,’ but has difficulty summoning the courage to tell Carl (and his ugly dog) to get lost. Nevertheless, Drivas shines in his other two roles as the futuristic child psychologist David (“The Veldt”), and particularly as the broken, half-mad astronaut (“The Long Rain”), but we never get the cinematic satisfaction of seeing Willie save Felicia from Carl’s wrath. That is the difference between books and movies–in the book “JAWS,” the shark can simply sink to death from its injuries. In the movie, it has to explode. Despite beating Carl with a rock and running off to find Felicia, Willie is never given his cinematic ‘hero moment.’ He’s just kinda there.
Fresh off 1968’s “Charly” (an adaptation of Daniel Keyes’ “Flowers for Algernon”), Claire Bloom is radiant in her three roles as the bewitching Felicia, and two very different kinds of future-mothers (“The Veldt”/”The Last Night of the World”), though it’s with Felicia where she arguably shows the most dimension, as she lures enamored carny Carl into her home, like a moth into her flame–only to leave him wandering and simmering with anger. She has an ethereal quality that can project either vulnerability or danger with only the subtlest changes of expression and inflection. As Felicia, Bloom acts as a focal point–for Carl to kill, and Willie to save. However, the movie leaves that thread frustratingly hanging.
As intriguing as each of them are, the three vignettes created from Carl’s “skin illustrations” have no real bearing on his ruthless quest to destroy the ‘witch’ who left him a freak. The adapted screenplay by Ted Mann and Howard B. Kreitsek fails to get a handle on Bradbury’s book (an admittedly difficult one to adapt). And the lack of framing story resolution, as well as its thin relation to the three vignettes leaves this film among several curious, but vaguely underachieving Bradbury adaptations. Audiences unfamiliar with the book or Bradbury’s work may be left wondering what the hell did they just watch.
I could better see an HBO series of “The Illustrated Man,” retaining the framing story and all 18 of the book’s short stories told over several seasons–like a soft reboot of “The Ray Bradbury Theater” (1985-1992). However, much like the stories emanating from Carl’s skin illustrations, the film adaptation of “The Illustrated Man” comes to life in fits and starts, before it simply trudges off the screen.
Where to Watch
“The Illustrated Man” is available to stream for free (with ads) on YouTube, or ad-free with a subscription to YouTube Premium. The movie is also available to rent via Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV, and can be purchased on physical media (DVD/Blu-Ray) through Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble booksellers.
