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The Illustrated Man (1969) starring Rod Steiger, Claire Bloom, Robert Drivas, and directed by Jack Smight. Based on the novel by Ray Bradbury.

©Warner Bros.

Grade: D-

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The Illustrated Man

A young man (Robert Drivas) traveling across the country encounters another traveler, a man (Rod Steiger) covered in “illustrations”. The two men sit and talk and ‘The Illustrated Man tells the story of his illustrations and that each one comes alive and has its own story.

With a master of fiction like Ray Bradbury having written the original story how bad could it be? Well, having said that I am sure you know where I am going next with this review. So I thought I would change it up and tell you what I did like. The story breaks off into several different futuristic sci-fi adventures all featuring the same group of actors. The stories are thought provoking, even with their quasi-futuristic clothes and same color home of the future, but lack anything to tie them all together. Yes, I liked one thing, that there were three different stories that hopefully were going to lead somewhere or anywhere. Unfortunately none of them ever did.

Now I have watched a lot of ‘Twilight Zones’ and read some Kurt Vonnegut Jr. So I was prepared for any “out there” crazy ending or moments that perhaps would tie these stories together. The “ah ha” moment if you will. I am still waiting for it.

The argument could be made that each story had an ending that was foretold or predicted. Yet, each character fought against it to change it, knowing that they could never really escape it. That might be a tad deep but I am stretching to find anything to make sense of this movie.

The scenes between Steiger and Drivas are uncomfortable. At first they are supposed to be uncomfortable as we get to know each character. As the story continued there was nothing brought to the table by these actors that let you in on who they were and what this was all about. I didn’t care about either one of them. Nor did I care about the different characters these two actors would portray in the three other stories. Each sci-fi story had an interesting premise but it was short and seemed incomplete. Probably a lot got lost in the transfer from written word to squeezing it into a four act film.

After looking up more about the book by Bradbury, I learned that there are actually 18 stories to the “Illustrated Man”. After reading a few of there descriptions I think I’ll give the book a shot. So I watched an hour and forty-three minute commercial that actually got me interested in reading the book. So I guess the movie can’t be all that bad… no wait it was.