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How sad is this?

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Perhaps I was just expecting too much a different movie. I simply expected a good old fashioned, straight-forward, science-fiction thriller and not a 'talking', art-house like movie with deeper meanings and metaphors to it all.What I simply did not liked about the movie was the fact that it explains far too little. It would had been nice if the focused more on the audience as well that didn't read the book by Ray Bradbury, which this movie got based on. Guess that everything in this movie makes sense to those that have read the entire novel but those who only have seen the movie are being left mostly in the dark. It's a very confusing movie, not just because of its strange and unique concept but also due to its very disjointed story-telling. Basically you have one main plot-line and then also some small stories in them as well, that get told in flashbacks. It just doesn't really make the movie feel as one whole and makes the whole narrative confusing to follow. Add to that the fact that this movie explains very little about what's going on and you have one confusing movie.But I just couldn't hate this movie either. I'll admit that I didn't liked the movie much at first but in its last few minutes some of the puzzle pieces fell to its place and I could appreciate the entire movie better for its style and approach.Yes, it's an unique movie for sure, that obviously isn't just for everybody. I was quite surprised that this was an American production, since normally these type of quirky and original movies come from Britain, around that time.It has a good visual approach to it all, which makes this movie somewhat of a science-fiction period piece, that at times is being set far in the future. It's visual style and atmosphere seem appropriate for the movie and the story that it tried to tell. Yes, you can definitely describe its visual style and approach as art-house like. But it's still really foremost its story and the way that it gets told which makes this movie definitely not an accessible one to just everyone. It's definitely a movie you have to read into deeper and think about, long after a scene has ended. There are numerous moments that you just have no idea what is going but do make some more sense a couple of minutes later, as the story progresses more.It doesn't make this movie a much pleasant or great one to watch, at least not for me. I didn't hate this movie and I don't mind these type of movies either but the entire way this movie got handled and told didn't wanted me to watch it again, anytime soon.6/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

It seems to me that the key to this movie is the mystery of the banked blazing passion of the character of Claire Bloom. It looks like sexual passion, but as the movie unfolds it reveals itself as raging agony.She inscribes scenes of terribly flawed men too willing to sacrifice others, scenes of terrible losses, scenes intended to make the viewer KNOW what rotten hopeless greedy self-centered vicious little apes we really are. This woman is a deeply civilized person who has suffered losses so terrible she is driven to travel in time and torment a surrogate for the man who caused them. She does it with exquisite controlled cruelty--the tattooing. The stories get closer to what really happened to her. She leaves in order to refrain from the culmination of her passion, which would be murder and not sex. She doesn't care that Steiger himself never hurt her because she knows now there are no innocents. And Rod Steiger is perfect--he FEELS like her innocent victim. All he wanted at the beginning was to be with this beautiful woman. It's just that she is incandescently bitter at humanity and he is human. He is no innocent, and by the time we meet him he knows it well. He knows every person who looks at his skin illustrations learns that s/he is no innocent, either, and then hates him. He is now as embittered and vengeful as the woman was, and that's her revenge on humanity.But then there's the stilted, awkward, vacuous non-performance of the other guy. It was as if they grabbed some carpenter's assistant to read through the script with Steiger because the real actor was passed out in his trailer. I thought Rod Steiger got more acting-back from the dog. (Many here seem to respect this actor--maybe in some other movie, but not this one.) This is what prevents it from being a masterpiece.

Saw this movie years ago late one night on telly when I was about 12 and watched again recently. Glad to say it stood up to expectation, a personal all time fave. Considering it was made in 1969 it was well ahead of its time. One of the few book adaptations that actually worked. The sets, props and characters were still impressive, even though the moog soundtrack gets a bit irritating at times, but it was the late 60's. A great dark and twisted way to present a selection of Bradbury stories which would be a big ask for any film maker to pull off without a lot of flack from the sci-fi purists. With todays movie technology would like to see a remake of this film, particularly the Long Rain and the Veld. Steiger was on top form in this film, who hated snakes and the woman who made his life a living hell...'When I fiiind her, I gonna keeeel her.'

To me, this is nearly the most underrated weird movie ever (and I say "weird movie" because it's hard to put into one of those subcategories). I've heard it said that audiences don't respond too well to most "anthology films" (though that's funny, because you always hear that audiences have such a bad attention span - I certainly do - and what kind of movie takes LESS of an attention span than THAT kind?). Of course, The Illustrated Man is an anthology film that doesn't even move in a straight line, like most others (Tales From The Crypt and so on). Instead of being three stories linked by one other, it's three stories linked by TWO others (Carl and Willie in the woods and Carl and Felicia in the house). So both of those things could go against it, though they shouldn't. (In some ways, it's almost the "2001" of that kind of movie, as far as being hard to "digest.") No one could make a tiny line sound incredibly significant like Rod Steiger, or be intimidating, or physically threatening, in such a BELIEVABLE way, and this film is full of those moments. And also, he goes from WARNING Robert Drivas about the illustrations, to ENJOYING the effect they're having on him. Drivas (in a helpless voice, because the pictures are "holding" him there) : What makes you think you can keep me here? / Steiger (smiling in an absolutely evil way) : What makes you think you can go? And of course, Claire Bloom was perfectly believable as the mysterious artist who seduces Carl into accepting what she does (when he seems surprised only after being HALF-COVERED with the pictures, you BELIEVE it). And Robert Drivas, whom I know from very few other things, was great as Willie, and as "Williams" in "The Long Rain." (Don Dubbins, who was in that story only, was also very good. He played another stranded spaceman in a Twlight Zone episode, and a trapped miner in a Kung Fu episode, oddly enough.) I only have a few complaints, and unfortunately, one isn't so small. "The Veldt", which is the longest of the three stories (though shorter than the "links," themselves), gets genuinely depressing in places. The original story was about the bad side of automation for one family, and had a "shock" kind of ending, but the film version was about an all-out "crumbling" marriage and "dysfunctional" family, and didn't completely go with the rest of the film. Also, at the very end of the movie (and this is my only partial spoiler), you see a character with his eye "closed over" like a boxer's (among other things), which is about the only gruesomeness in the whole film, and doesn't quite belong either. One reason I know how underrated it is, is how little effect it's had on "pop culture" - you don't (as far as I know) hear it referred to in documentaries on tattoos, comedy scenes about them, one-liners about them, serious criticism of them (and now more than ever, a REMOTELY well-known movie, all about THAT subject, WOULD be referred to). Also (though there would be "commercial" reasons for this), I've seen the outsides of countless "tattoo parlours", but I've never seen one called "Skin Illustrations." (You'd think that at least one Bradbury fan / tattoo artist would do that.) The only POSSIBLE, indirect reference I can think of was a "Barney Miller" episode, where an artist hated the word "parlour" and insisted on the word "studio." Anyway, it's no joke to say (as I think one person here did) that after knowing this film, in the back of your mind, at least, you might be a little afraid to even say the word "tattoos". Once you hear Rod Steiger say, "They're not tattoos, they're skin illustrations!!", it really stays with you.