X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

Roger Corman's pulpy yet gripping story about a man who wanted to see everything… or wished he hadn't.

Dr James Xavier develops a serum that unnaturally expands human vision. When his funding falls through, he decides to act as his own guinea pig – with astonishing results. He sees through clothes, through walls, and eventually even through flesh and bone. But the deeper he looks, the more reality fades away.

Roger Corman's cult classic X runs on cheap coloured gel effects and a ridiculously simple concept, yet it works perfectly. A timeless story about a man who thinks more knowledge leads to more wisdom, until he is confronted with the exact opposite. Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend) – well past his Oscar-winning heyday – throws himself wholeheartedly into Xavier's madness, and the final scene of X remains one of the most unsettling images in genre cinema. Sometimes it's simply better not to see everything.