The biggest problem with NFL Blitz: Pro’s isn’t its graphics, sound, or even gameplay. It’s with the game’s identity itself.

The original line of NFL Blitz games were all about being extreme — so extreme, in fact, that they inspired the short-lived Xtreme Football League. Players on fire, smashing each other into oblivion. Games were short, fast, and wild.

NFL Blitz: Pro has changed its face this time around. The first thing veterans of the series will notice is that each team has eleven men on the field instead of seven, and first downs are every ten yards, not twenty. Sure, the over-the-top bashes and smashes are still there, but with toned-down graphics and gameplay, NFL Blitz is starting to look a lot like all the “other” NFL games.

And that’s too bad, really. Electronic Arts and Sega both make really good football games, and there’s really no need for yet another clone. That’s not to say NFL Blitz: Pro is a straight-up football sim, but is certainly a step closer in that direction from past efforts.

NFL Blitz: Pro manages to keep one foot in the arcade field with features like unlockable characters, stats, and moves, but even with all of those features it still feels like it’s lost it’s “extreme” personality.

IGN gave NFL Blitz: Pro 8/10, but then again IGN runs ads for this game on their website and we don’t. Fans of sims should stick with EA or Sega football. Fans of NFL Blitz should stick with 2002 or 2003. If you always thought, “damn, this Blitz game would be better if there were more men on the field,” then by all means give it a rent and check it out.

Dudes like monster trucks. Dudes like video games. Dudes like rock and roll. Put the three together correctly and you’re guaranteed a winning combination. Monster 4×4 – Masters of Metal combines those ingredients and dishes out thin but fun racing title. If lots of dirt, huge jumps and car crushing sounds like fun, welcome home.

There are three kinds of races in MoM. First up are the legally sponsored arena races, where players race head-to-head against another monster truck, doing laps around a dirt track packed with lots of bumps and jumps. There are also in town races, not unlike Smuggler’s Run. These races will send and five other trucks racing all over town, battling to be the first to reach checkpoints. There are also trick competitions, where players will have to grab huge air and crush the most cars to advance through the ranks.

Gamers used to hundreds of options will hate MoM — controls consist of gas, break, and nitro in later levels. There’s one camera angle, a 3rd person chase view which works well most of the time. During some of the dirt tracks it gets a little tough to see from all the dust being kicked up, and it gets a little hard to see your truck if someone is knocking on your back bumper — still, it’s no worse than any other 3rd person view out there.

With so little options, players should have the controls down by the end of the first race. The first thing you will learn is that the brakes seem to turn whatever turf you’re on into ice instantly. Anything more than a gentle tap will send you sailing off the track. Fortunately the trucks lose speed rapidly just by letting off the gas, so there’s no reason to ride the brakes.

I found the graphics to be pretty good. I saw no major jaggies and the framerate kept up despite the terrain. The graphics of the drivers themselves are kind of cheesy, but that just adds to the whole redneck motif. Alongside the graphics are the sounds. The soundtrack consists of nonstop generic metal riffs which reminded me of the old Destruction Derby audio tracks. The truck sound effects are good, but the in game announcer is a little goofy (which didn’t make or break the game for me personally).

Like all games, there are a few annoying quirks you’ll have to get used to. For example, while your truck can smash trucks, buildings, hot dog carts and everything else, trees are immortal. Even the smallest tree will stop your truck dead in its tracks. Another odd thing is how your truck takes damage — or how it fixes itself, rather. While bumping a car out of my way I managed to knock off my front wheel. Seconds later, another wheel popped on. Another time I misjudged a jump and somehow severed the rear axle off my truck. Moments later a new one popped on — I even won the race!

Monster 4×4 – Masters of Metal isn’t Gran Turismo, but then again it doesn’t pretend to be anything its not. I think this game caters directly to its target audience. If you like racing games where you can pick up a controller and win the first few races right off the bat (and smash a few cars in the process), give MoM a shot.

Gundams. Mechs. Shogun Warriors. Transformer lookin’ dudes. Big fuckin’ robots. No matter what you call them, there will always be a group of nerds out there who want to control them. Well, rejoice, nerds! In G-Saviour for the PS2, you get to do just that.

After sitting through a ten minute long intro (I actually went and crapped while it was going, came back, and it was still going), you finally get to choose your robot. Of course, from what I could tell you only get to choose from one, so that’s really not choosing. After that, the game loads for a while, because you know, the game didn’t know which robot you were going to choose. Once the game finally loads up, it’s shoot-em-up city.

If I could find the name and address for whoever designed the controls for this game, I would gladly send them a picture of my cramped thumb. To fly the G-Saviour, you need to HOLD DOWN L3 and also STEER WITH THE LEFT ANALOG STICK. Yeah. So the entire time you’re flying around, you’re pushing down with your left thumb and steering with it at the same time. In only a minute or two my opposable digit began quivering with pain.What’s worse is, you can only fly for about fifteen seconds before having to recharge your hover power. It reminds me of those mini RC cars everyone got a couple of years ago for Christmas that ran for minutes before needing recharging. Except the difference is, these are big-ass military robots. Those wacky Japanese.

Even though you end up flying most of the time, you’ll find that there are some things you can’t fly over, like … oh, the tops of hills. Seriously. Someone built a big fuckin’ robot that can’t fly over a hill? This thing has more weapons of mass destruction strapped to it than all of Iraq, and yet you can’t fly over a molehill? Even more frustrating is that at any given time you can really only control two axis. When you’re flying, you can strafe and move forward and backwards, but you can’t really “turn”. Likewise, when you’re walking, you can walk forwards and backwards, and turn on a time, but no longer strafe. You can use L2 to kind of “hop” in a general direction but it’s hard to do. When I ordered my robot I wanted a Toyota but it looks like I got a Hyundai. This is especially nice when people are shooting at you, and when you want to evade their shots you just end up pivoting and getting shot in the back of the head. This robot ain’t got nothing on Johnny 5.

Killing targets is pretty simple because the entire targeting mechanism is automatic. Get near anything and it’ll highlight in your targeting system. Then just press R2 and you’ll blast it to bits. If you’re flying, evading incoming fire is pretty easy. If you’re walking you’ll get hit every time. It’s like you robot’s saying, “don’t worry boss, I’ll take this one on the shoulder.” So he does, again and again, and I have to let him while I give my left thumb a rest from holding down L3.

Several of the buttons launch small, short range laser blasts. When you get bored, start hitting O, which launches a Death Blossom style attack on everything around you — which usually isn’t much, enemies are fairly few and far between in this game. But go ahead and hit it because it’s great to watch. Your robot will just start flying around shooting everything in site. There are explosions, missles, fire … it’s like Beavis and Butthead’s dream.

Your cheap ass robot is also equipped with a fancy radar system that appears to have come out of a box of Japanese breakfast cereal. I’m serious, I’ll bet better toys have come out of boxes of Cap’n Crunch. The radar system will show you enemies after you have had a visual on them for five to ten seconds. Yeah. Your line of sight has twice as much distance as your radar. So, the radar is for … ?

While destroying the enemy’s stronghold, gamers are treated to a snazzy little Japanacheezey piano tune I like to call, “Casio #3.” The song is not very long and is very repeditive, so pretty soon you will be wishing the targeting system could be turned toward your PS2 itself or at least the volume knob. The menu songs sound like every song I ever heard in any DDR game.

I beat the first mission and then turned G-Saviour off. There was an option to save my game at that point but I couldn’t really imagine anyone who had played the game before wanting to play it again. Save yourself the trouble; go down to the nearest thrift store and pick up an old used Transformer toy instead. It’ll be twice as fun and half the frustration. And, it’ll be able to go over hills.

Four years after 1985’s Gauntlet stormed arcades, Sega introduced their own “Dungeons and Dragons” themed game. Golden Axe, a simple side-scrolling fighting game, became an instant classic with kids everywhere. 14 years after the original was released, incarnations of Golden Axe are still finding their way to home systems — this time it’s to the PS2, in the form of one of the new Sega Ages 2500 releases. For those not in the know, Sega Ages 2500 are a series of classic games being remade by Sega. Currently the Sega Ages 2500 series of games (including Phantasy Star and Space Harrier) are available only in Japan, meaning you’ll have to own either a Japanese or modified Playstation 2 to enjoy this series. While Sega’s reworking of Golden Axe features all new graphics and sound, the gameplay is undeniably the same.

As with the original, players can choose one of three characters, dubbed by me as “guy with sword wearing blue”, “chick with sword wearing red”, and “dwarf with axe wearing green”. Like Gauntlet, each character has slightly different strengths and weaknesses, but all basically act the same.

Controls are a throwback to the original as well, with one convenient new addition. The original game offered three buttons to players: attack, jump, and magic. Additionally, players could perform a “jump and attack” by hitting jump then attack, as well as a “shoulder smash” by double tapping the joystick in a direction. Like Double Dragon, there was also a “rear attack”, accomplished by hitting both buttons at the exact same time. In the arcade, this was pretty effective, but it’s never translated well to home game pads. While playing the original Golden Axe on the Dreamcast (in Sega Smash Pack), it never failed — while waiting for a baddie to come up behind me, I would prepare to press both buttons, and then WHAMMO! My character would jump facing the wrong direction and begin attacking air, as some evil-doer wasted no time in questioning my somewhat odd behavior while simultaneously attacking me in the back. Sega Ages 2500’s Golden Axe fixes this age old problem by assigning another button to the “rear attack”. Mo’ buttons, less problems.

As previously stated, gameplay is identical to the original. Those of you who have played Golden Axe before (um, everybody?) will be able to jump right in and begin button mashing. Even when trying to be verbose, it’s tough to come up with more than a sentence or two to describe gameplay. “Keep moving to the right, and, uh, kill everybody.” My seven-year-old nephew gaming buddy understood them just fine, as we hacked and slashed our way through several levels.

The biggest difference between this version and the original are the graphics. In a world where 2D games just don’t seem to sell any longer, the sprites in Sega Ages 2500 version of Golden Axe have received a facelift. Not a big one, mind you — each of the old characters are still recognizable, but everybody looks “thicker”. It’s not as blatant as when Homer Simpson turned 3D; while the characters may now look three dimensional, you’re still playing in a 2D world.

Sega Ages 2500: Golden Axe has brought a game from the 80’s into the 21st century by updating the graphics engine but leaving the gameplay alone. I don’t know how well younger gamers will take to this game, but then again, I don’t think it was made for them either. Kids who have grown up on Quake and the like will probably find this new version of Golden Axe boring and repetitive. Those of us who grew up pumping quarters into the original arcade machine as well as spending hours playing Golden Axe on Sega consoles will appreciate the bone Sega is throwing to us old timers. Sega Ages 2500 Volume V: Golden Axe is a great way to kill a rainy Saturday without having to sweat (or think) too hard.

The first Fire Prowrestling game I ever played was on the Super Nintendo. Despite all the graphic improvements made over the years, this old, 2D wrestling series is still one of my favorites. Fire Prowrestling games have appeared on several different platforms over the years, and have finally made their way to the PS2.

Unfortunately, what it hasn’t done is made its way the US market yet, and probably won’t. If you want to check out Fire Prowrestling Z, you’re going to have to wade through a lot of mostly Japanese menus. A lot. Fire Prowrestling Z is one of the most configurable games ever. Pretty much every type of match and option is available in this game somewhere, hidden in a Japanese menu.

Although the game contains no actual licenses, you will see a lot of wrestlers that oddly enough look VERY SIMILAR to other wrestlers or shoot fighters you might know or remember. And when I say there are a lot of wrestlers, I mean there are a lot of wrestlers. Like, several hundred to begin with, and even more unlockable. It will take you five or ten minutes the first time through to look at all the leagues and available warriors.

Once in the ring, my match quickly turned into an encyclopedia of every wrestling move known to man, performed on my little green-masked wrestler. There were body slams. There were pile drivers. There were leg locks. There was the abdominal stretch. There were leaps off the rope. I think he might have even shot me once or twice, I’m not sure.

Each wrestler has three attacks which correspond with three different buttons (handy, eh?). In that respect, it feels more like a Neo Geo fighter than most US wrestling games. The grappling system is involves walking into your opponent, and then pressing a button/direction combo. I lost every single grapple my first two games.

After getting my ass kicked I decided what I needed was a new wrestler. So, I headed back to the main menu and went into the create-a-wrestler mode. It was a little hard to get through with all the Japanese text, but I ended up with a guy who looked a lot like the Missing Link and I headed back into battle with him. I got my ass kicked using him too, but at least I felt like I looked good while I was handed my beating.

Fire Prowrestling Z hasn’t evolved much in the graphics and sound department over the past few years. Despite being a simple looking, two dimensional wrestling game, it’s still fun as hell. If you take the time to get over the language hurdle, there are enough options, modes and wrestlers here to keep you busy for a long, long time. Let’s hope Fire Prowrestling Z finds its way to the US market eventually.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the PS2 blurs the line between television and gaming more than any game I’ve ever played.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You may have read the comic books, watched the cartoons, seen the movies, even played the NES, SNES, and arcade games, but I can guarantee you, you’ve never seen anything like this.

Assuming that everyone already either knows (or doesn’t care about) the back-story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) begins with a completely television-quality cartoon of the turtles fighting random adversaries. After the introduction and theme song are over, you get to choose which of the four turtles you will play. If you are willing to admit to a friend that you play kiddie cartoon-based video games, they can join you in some 2-player mission action. Don’t tell your secret to too many friends though; there’s no four-player mode to be found.

Once you’ve picked your turtle(s), it’s on to the story. In the first level, you’ll find yourself back in familiar territory — home sewer home. The enemies on the first level are little mechanical chompers. While they don’t pose much of a threat, fighting them is a great way to learn the controls. Each turtle has three hand-to-hand attacks: a fast attack, a hard attack, and an uppercut. The uppercut can also be used on fallen enemies, which is handy when you’ve just knocked down five or six opponents and want to inflict some additional damage. In addition to that, you can also jump, throw shruiken, and dodge attacks with a turbo-like maneuver. The shruiken aren’t as handy as they sound. While they’re overly simple to use (aiming is automatic), it takes four or five of them to kill an opponent, and you only get ten of them. Most of your enemies will be dealt with knuckle-to-knuckle.

Levels follow the cartoon series pretty closely; none of the missions take place on the moon or anything. No, as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, your battlefield is the city. Game levels take you through sewers, streets, buildings, rooftops, and beyond. Throughout these levels, you’ll meet a multitude of enemies. From mechanical chompers to gang members to other ninjas to … worse. Don’t expect any fair fighting from these guys either. Usually they travel in packs of four or five. Fortunately you’re equipped with some “Turtle Radar”, which shows how many enemies are coming, and from which direction.

Never before has a game been more perfectly designed for cel-shading. Cel-shading is a technique used in games to make them look more comic book-ish (think Jet Set Radio, or Auto Modellista). The backgrounds, objects, and characters are all cel-shaded, making the game look and play like a living comic book. To accentuate the game’s comic book roots, each attack is accentuated by a pop-up “crash”, “pow”, or “thwak”, just like the old Batman television show. Sometimes this is a nuisance, especially when you’ve just smacked four or five guys in a row and now can’t see anything from all the pop-ups. Each of those attacks is also accompanied with a sound effect. With each attack your character utters one of about four randomly chosen quotes (“don’t get up from that one” and “cowabunga” seemed pretty common in my game). These get old pretty quickly, and continue the entire game. Fortunately, no one ever hollars, “Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go!”

While I guess over time one should develop some sort of strategy in the game, I found the “button-mashing” technique got me pretty far. When it worked, it worked, and when it didn’t … I pressed continue. Several times the game would award me bonus points for combos. Then I would say, “who, me?” and the game would say, “yes, you!”

One of the most annoying things within the game itself is that it seems like half of the town is explosive. I’m 30 years old and I’ve never actually seen barrels of explosive material sitting around on the sidewalk! And yet they are all over the place in TMNT, waiting for you to accidentally bump into one of them. Half of the damage I took seemed to come from me killing someone, who flew into something else that exploded, which in turn hurt me. Shouldn’t you have some kind of explosion-immunity if you were the one that instigated the chain reaction? The worst part is, the little mechanical chompers you fight throughout the game are ALSO explosive. More than once I ended up flame-broiled because I killed someone, who landed on a chomper, who exploded into a barrel, which ALSO exploded, which killed me. Fortunately, there are power-ups stashed throughout the levels (some hidden in crates) to boost your health back up — and yes, they’re still slices of pizza, hamburgers, and shakes.

Other than that one minor annoyance, the game is a blast. The turtle-radar and occasional directional arrows keep you on track. Not once did I get lost, or wander around wondering what I was supposed to be doing. Sure, a platform beat-em-up isn’t going to win “innovative game of the year”, but it might be a contender in the “most fun”, “best graphics”, and “easiest to learn without a manual” categories. The levels are interesting but not complex, and the camera-angles (for the most part) keep things positioned where you can see the action. The bosses at the end of each level are another nice throwback to the “old” days.

Gamers who tire of the story mode can also launch into a vs. battle mode, where each of the different characters can fight one another. I tried it three times with three different characters and had the pleasure of having my ass kicked in three different locations by the CPU. With a very simple fighting engine devoid of any combos, strategy or even the ability to block, any fan of any other fighting game ever will get bored with TMNT’s vs. mode very quickly.

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Graphics: 8/10. This game is gorgeous, and really does look like a comic book come to life.

Sound: 5/10. Nothing great and nothing offensive. The voice-over work and introduction are great, but are cancelled out by the repetitive catch phrases and background music you are subjected to throughout the game.

Gameplay: 7/10. It’s not rocket science, but then again, I don’t WANT rocket science when playing games. Easy to pickup and learn, tough to beat. The two-player mode and overall game play simplicity make TMNT a fun game to kill some time with without having to spend a weekend learning the controls. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a retro game updated to the next generation of consoles.

Most movies can by summed up with a genre and a short one or two sentence description. While these short summaries wont necessarily tell viewers if they are going to like or dislike the movie, they will at least give them an idea of what is in store for them. Zoo, the 2007 documentary, tells the true story of a man (Mr. Hands) who died after having anal intercourse with a horse.

That should rule out about 99% of you.

And no, Im not kidding. Zoo delves into the world of Zoophiles, people who prefer relations with animals over ones with human beings. Specifically, the documentary covers a group of fellows who met via the Internet and migrated to Washington State. As of the time of the incident, Washington was one of around twenty states where bestiality is in fact legal.

Throughout the film, viewers meet characters with names such as The Happy Horseman, Coyote, and Mr. Hands, all fellows who made the trip to just outside of Seattle where they met with Mr. H., a ranch hand with access to horses. On a regular basis these seemingly normal people would make weekend trips to the ranch where they drank beer, danced, partied, chatted and ultimately had sexual relations with horses.

Although the film is presented as a documentary, Zoo contains no authentic footage of the actual participants from the actual meetings (thank goodness). While one or two of the original participants appear in the film, the majority of the people in the film are actors. Much of the film is peppered with audio taken from interviews with actual people. Because all the footage is new, it doesn’t have the look of the average documentary. Much of the film contains beautiful shots, occasionally making one forget about the darker subject at hand.

Surprisingly, my biggest complaint about Zoo wasn’t the subject matter but rather the films pacing. I could sum the entire film up in five minutes without leaving out a single detail. Many of the scenes are unnecessarily stretched out in length. I continually got the feeling that the filmmakers only ended up with 40 minutes worth of material, which was been stretched into an 80 minute runtime.

The films biggest hurdle, and one I’m not sure is ever completely overcome, is its inability to make viewers empathize with people who like to have sex with horses. Thats not to say it doesn’t try; multiple times it is explained that these people care for and actually feel as though they have a relationship with these animals, but I’m not sure 80 minutes is enough time for viewers to go from “eww” to “aww”. I’m not sure 80 million minutes would be enough time, to be honest.

As a kid, one of the books in our home library that I remember thumbing through over and over was one called “Four Days”. The book covered the four days between John F. Kennedy’s assassination and his burial, including Lee Harvey Oswald’s arrest (and murder), and Jack Ruby’s arrest for the murder of Oswald. “Four Days” started me down the road of a life long fascination with the murder of a president and the conspiracies surrounding that day’s events.

The single most important piece of evidence in the Kennedy assassination (and arguably the most important piece of video ever recorded) was Abraham Zapruder’s 26 seconds of home video 8mm footage he shot. Zapruder’s film, while shaky and raw, shows in graphic detail the death of a president.

Image of an Assassination: A New Look at the Zapruder Film is a documentary about the actual Zapruder film itself. It begins by explaining how Abraham Zapruder came to be standing where he was with his camera (which incidently he had left at home that day, before coworkers persuaded him to go home and retrieve it).

The documentary follows the trail of the film — from having it processed, to selling the rights to LIFE magazine (for $50k) and eventually the motion picture rights (for another $100k), the sale of the film back to the Zapruder family for $1 (after Abraham’s death), the movement of the film to the National Archives for preservation, the first time the film was shown on television (by Geraldo Rivera, in 1980) and the restoration effort spent on the film which culminates in the copying of the film frame by frame from 8mm to digital media, where it was eventually cleaned up.

The highlights of the disc are the several versions of the Zapruder film shown. From worst to best, you get all known qualities — second hand copies, a view of the original, and the beautifully redone digital version. The 1998 digitally repaired version shows amazing detail, and that version is shown several times, once normal, once at half speed, and once at half speed and zoomed in tight. This is probably the best quality version of the Zapruder film I have ever seen. With digital editing, the crew was also able to “stabalize” the picture, providing a completely clear vision of those 30 seconds in time. It’s awesome and disturbing at the same time.

Those of you looking for insight into Kennedy’s death or the many theories surrounding it will be disappointed in this film. This DVD presents very little evidence for either side of the fence (lone gunman vs. conspiracy). This movie focuses solely on the life of the film itself.

Worth the price of rental just to see the remastered version of the Zapruder film. Those interested in learning more about what happened that day should either head to the public library or keep an eye on the History channel. Those looking for some interesting fiction should rent Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK.

Xander Cage, AKA XXX, is James Bond, dumbed down and oiled up. While James Bond wore tuxedos, XXX wears sleeveless shirts to show off his big muscles. Bond flashed his intelligence; XXX, his tattoos. Bond mingled with the upper echelon of society; XXX hangs out at his pad with Tony Hawk, Mat Hoffman, and Rick Thorne. Bond had a million gadgets at his disposal, XXX has that many bullets.

Xander Cage is basically James Bond, without the class.

And so, for the X-Games Generation, comes XXX. Samual Jackson plays facially-scarred Agent Augustus Gibbons, an employee of the NSA who is tired of having his undercover agents removed from their positions in body bags. Gibbons develops a plan; capture the best and the brightest of the underworld and put them to work for him. His best bet to date is a young recruit named Xander Cage, dubbed XXX (as in, he’s about to go to prison for his third strike).

After running XXX through some pretty unbelievable tests (eliciting some pretty unbelievable responses), Cage is unleashed into the underground world of loud bands, fast cars, and anarchy; Anarchy 99 that is, which is a group of individuals who … well, blah blah blah, who cares, they’re bad guys, Cage is undercover, and guess what, there’s gonna be a whole lot of shooting, fire, car chases, skydiving, snowboarding, and more.

What XXX lacks in brains, it makes up for in action. Unfortunately, some of those action scenes are pretty few and far between. Cage shows all of his X-Games moves, whether it’s doing a railslide on a lunch tray, outrunning an avalanche while on his snowboard, or parasailing behind a torpedo hauling ass through a downtown river.

The action scenes go by so quickly that you don’t really have much time to think about how silly or crazy they were until afterwards. Fortunately, so does the movie, and after it’s over the whole experience kind of washes out of your brain like a hazy dream.

In fact, I can’t even remember if I even saw it now. Oh well.

Perfect for those who found the Indiana Jones trilogy “too slow moving” and “too complicated.”

While watching this film I can’t help but to wonder, if I had the powers of Superman, would I be a superhero?

If I could fly, were impervious to things like bullets and had x-ray vision, would I spend my time rescuing people from burning buildings? Maybe. Or maybe I’d be the world’s greatest criminal this planet has ever seen, punching holes into banks at night, flying away with bags of money in one hand and flipping off the cops with the other.

It amazes me that people who gain “extrodinairy powers” in movies never know quite what to do with them. Dr. James Xavier is one of those people. You see, Dr. James Xavier is quite the scientist. While working in a laboratory, Xavier develops eye drops that give him x-ray vision. The first drops allow him to see through paper and clothing. The next few drops knock him unconscious.

When Xavier wakes up, he finds that funding for his research has been cut off. Even though he is not taking the drug any longer, the “X Effect” remains. Like most good doctors, he (briefly), uses his power for good. He corrects a wrong diagnoses on a young patient in the hospital. But, unlike most good doctors, when the attending physician insists on performing the wrong surgery, Xavier stabs the doctor in the hand and performs the surgery himself.

Xavier’s powers and madness both begin to increase. At a dance party, Xavier finds he cannot control his power, and a funny scene of everyone dancing naked is shown. Xavier’s two research buddies soon call him back into the lab for some more experiments, but Xavier decides he would rather push one of them out the window, which he does.

Xavier, now on the run and wanted for murder, decides that the best way for him to hide out would be to get a job in a sideshow as a guy who can see through things. That’s not really what we call “laying low”, folks. The head of the sideshow, Crane (Don Rickles), is greatly curious as to what this newcomer’s “trick” is, but Xavier insists there is none. When a woman at the carnival falls and is injured, Xavier immediately tells bystanders that she has a broken leg, and two broken ribs. Crane, after seeing this, comes up with the idea of calling Xavier a “healer”. If you’re taking notes, the two uses he’s found so far for X-Ray vision is “job at side show carnival” and “fake faith healer”.

Dr. Diane Fairfax, Xavier’s female assistant, eventually finds him and whisks him away from the world of fake faith healing. Xavier needs money for research, and there’s one place he can get it. Vegas, baby! So, the two doctors, ever faithful to their oaths and promises, head out to Vegas to rob the town blindly.

X – The Man With the X-Ray Eyes was directed by Roger Corman. This movie is considered to be one of Corman’s “best” works — which is a lot like saying you ordered the “most expensive item” at Taco Bell. I searched the web for reviews of this film and kept coming up with “A” and “B” ratings. I believe that these people too may have been experimented upon. Of course the special effects seem dated, but my complaints are more directed towards the plot. If the best career move you can come up with is “fake faith healer” once you develop X-ray vision, maybe you should look deep into your own head and jostle them brains around a little bit. As mentioned, the special effects are hokey, particularly when Xavier begins to see through people. We’re treated to plastic skeleton marionette shows during those parts, and when the mad Doctor begins to see through the cosmos, it looks more like an excerpt from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The ending of this film has been described as “shocking” and “disturbing.” I might throw in the words “dumb” and “unbelievable” as well. It’s a dumb ending to a dumb movie full of dumb special effects. Maybe people under the age of seven who have never heard of the Twilight Zone or Amazing Stories might be “shocked”, but I didn’t need X-Ray vision or even particularly good vision to see the ending coming a mile away.

X – The Man With the X-Ray Eyes is rated both D for Dumb and H for Hokey. Corman fans or people like me who get their abuse one DVD at a time are the only ones might enjoy sitting through this snorefest. And, if you think the movie moves slow (there’s more sermons here than in any church I’ve ever seen), flip on Roger Corman’s commentary track. No one loves commentary tracks more than me, but after falling asleep three times during it, I gave up.