The Illustrated Man (1969)

Ray Bradbury was a significant part of my childhood so it was pretty early on that I saw The Illustrated Man knowing that it was from the collection of short stories of the same name.  I was quite familiar with them having at some point checked out the book, and most of his other collections, from the local library, and of course I would have seen it in edited form as part of some Saturday afternoon presentation on television.

I had no idea how much Bradbury himself hated this film and I often forget that the title character, played by Rod Steiger, is not a friendly storyteller like one would find in many anthology movies.  In fact, I had forgotten, or totally missed when I was younger, that all the characters save a couple of the soldiers in the segment "The Long Rain" are the same actors throughout.  I'm sure it helped keep the budget down.  While there is an unfortunate tendency on director Jack Smight's part to indulge in some narrative aspects that would have appealed to the popular counterculture of the time I think there is a tendency for critics to hate this film because Bradbury did despite the fact that the wraparound as well as two of the stories are realized well.  It does suffer from a muddy ending but, otherwise, isn't as terrible a failure as contemporary critics made it out to be. 

A former carnival worker named Carl (Steiger), who carries his dog in a sack, pushes his way into the company of a young traveler named Willie (Robert Drivas) who is making his way across the country.  Carl is covered head-to-toe in "skin illustrations" except for one portion on his back near his left shoulder.  He warns Willie that if he stares at them too long he will start to see the stories they have to tell and, if he looks into the blank portion, he will see his own future.  Carl recounts how he is on a quest to find the woman, Felicia (Claire Bloom), who gave him the illustrations, and how he intends to kill her when he finds her. 

Willie becomes curious despite the warning and finds himself witnessing the future tale of "The Veldt", in which a couple become concerned about an African savannah scene in their children's playroom.  The playroom allows the children to imagine scenes and enter them as if they were reality and, finding themselves at odds with their parents at almost every turn, plan to use it to their advantage.  Another illustration, that of a rocket, leads into "The Long Rain", in which the stranded crew of a spaceship that has crashed on a planet of constant rains tries to find a sundome, a shelter with artificial light, to await rescue.  Finally, a father returns home to announce that the world will be ending and that, to spare the children whatever humanity's fate will be, he has been directed to euthanize them.  Throughout Willie becomes affected by the visions and, at the end, cannot help looking into his own future. 

Carl himself suggests that Felicia is from the far future and has moved into it after cursing him with the illustrations.  It somewhat explains why Carl is the way he is, although he doesn't seem to have been much better prior to his encounter with Felicia, which hints at why she would have put the burden on him to begin with.  For his part Steiger is excellent in his multiple roles save the last as it seems Smight directed him to act like an automaton.  

The major problem lies in the fact that neither Jack Smight nor screenwriter Howard B. Kreitsek get the material.  Supposedly Rod Steiger, a fan of Bradbury and one of the author's chosen actors to play the part of the Illustrated Man, was involved in rewriting parts of the script to force it to be more like Bradbury's stories and to get rid of parts that he thought undercut the points Bradbury was trying to make.  Smight was an old-school, workmanlike director, and so the parts that are played more surreal don't quite work, while it is obvious that Steiger is the one putting some soul back into the film, though Bloom and Drivas both do well in their various roles.

My favorite segment will always be "The Long Rain".  Wisely no mention of Venus is made, as that was the planet in the original story, which was known to be a hellscape and not a swampy sister planet even in the early 1950s when the collection was published.  Instead, it remains unnamed, and the set design is wonderfully alien, with fungal plant growths that seem to grow suddenly to overtake anything that humans may build.  While "The Veldt" is perhaps one of the more famous Bradbury stories because of how many times it has been adapted for radio and television, "The Long Rain" is one of Bradbury's more effective pieces due to the fact that it is humans vainly trying to conquer a place they don't belong, and it shines through here.

Thus, though it is flawed and I would even say hindered by a rather old-fashioned view of the future, The Illustrated Man doesn't do a horrible job of bringing Bradbury's stories to life.  Without Steiger to right the ship it could have been a different story, but this isn't too bad for a low-budget science fiction movie from a time when mainstream Hollywood was trying to find its footing with a young audience who had grown tired of the more traditional films they were trying to make.  

The Illustrated Man (1969)

Time: 103 minutes

Starring: Rod Steiger, Robert Drivas, Claire Bloom

Director: Jack Smight