Review of The Illustrated Man (1969) by Necro — 28 May 2011

I'm a fan of Ray Bradbury's writing. I even met the man himself during a meet and greet he was doing at a local library. Very fascinating and funny man. I still haven't seen any of his books adapted into films - this will be the first one.

Pretty much all the reviews and critics say of this movie that Rod Steiger's performance is the only thing holding this movie together, but to be honest it's him that puts me off the most. His performance is close to over-acting, in my opinion.

He just explodes at this poor Will guy about really trivial stuff. I have no clue why Will never just ran the hell away from this guy when they first met. His character, Carl, was instantly hated the moment he invaded on Will's space.

I didn't stop hating him throughout the whole movie. I understand that he brought all this misery down upon himself, through his own actions, and is lashing out through his own frustration. But he doesn't even let up at any time.

I was really hoping that the title character would be more similar to the tattooed man from "Something Wicked This Way Comes", Mr. Dark. I had always thought there was a correlation between these two characters.

But it did not seem to be so. That sort of compounded onto my frustration with the film. I was kind of bored throughout the whole thing, and I definitely would not watch it again. It's very dated, and it's shot so, and it's so cynical that I just could not get into it and become invested in the plot and characters.

Especially when the characters changed from story to story within the movie.