speaks. He explains how he can no longer close his eyes to achieve darkness and is haunted by his power. He moves to leave. Having researched Xavier's true identity, the manager threatens to summon the authorities to arrest him for Brant's death if he leaves the consultancy. Fairfax drives Xavier away. They drive to Las Vegas to use his skill to cheat at a casino. As Brant feared, the drops have begun to affect Xavier's mind; in an irrational fit of anger, he deliberately provokes the casino owners by announcing which cards are in the blackjack dealer's hand and are about to be drawn. The casino calls security. His glasses are knocked off in a scuffle and his eyes are exposed as black and gold. He throws a bundle of cash into the crowd as a diversion, allowing him to escape. Xavier drives out to the desert alone, but his eyesight is too strange to drive accurately, especially at high speed with a helicopter chasing him. He crashes. He wanders from the crash site and finds a large tent holding a religious revival. The helicopter lands. He tells the evangelist that he is beginning to see things at the edges of the universe, including an "eye that sees us all" in the center of the universe. The pastor replies that what he sees is "sin and the devil" and quotes the Gospel verse, "If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out!" Xavier tears out his eyes. Cast Credits adapted from the Second Sight Films Blu-ray booklet. Production Corman says the idea for the film was his. It was originally about a scientist, then he felt that was "too obvious" so he changed the protagonist to be "a jazz musician who had taken too much drugs, and I get into about four or five pages [of my outline], and I thought, 'You know, I don’t like this idea,' and so I threw the whole thing out, and started back and went back with the scientist, which was the original idea." The film was shot in three weeks on a budget of approximately $300,000. The film was announced as part of AIP's release lineup for June 1962, with Lou Rusoff as the producer. Corman made X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes after his 1963 H. P. Lovecraft film adaptation The Haunted Palace. In his non-fiction book Danse Macabre, Stephen King claims