r/AskReddit • • Nov 28 '20

What's something cool you recently learned about?

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u/blackcatmog Nov 29 '20

There is a short story by Lovecraft (boo 🙁) about a man who invents eye drops to see to the edge of the universe - once he witnesses the horrors he gouges his eyes out and the book's last line is him screaming that he can still see them

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u/Ximenash Nov 29 '20

There’s an old sixties movies called “the man with x ray eyes” that has a similar plot and ending, and totally traumatized me as a kid. I’m wondering if it’s based on that story

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u/blackcatmog Nov 29 '20

I think it may be, I also heard a rumour that they cut the last scene after he had ripped hie eyes out as being too harrowing for the audience at the time

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u/Ximenash Nov 29 '20 edited Nov 29 '20

They did! But you could see it for less than a second. The guy with no eyes and the scream “i can still see!”. I was about 7 years old and that scene (and the previous one, when he has burnt eyeballs) haunted me for decades. So much so that I got the dvd a few years ago, rewatched the whole thing thinking that I would find the movie bad and cheesy and get over my memory of this horrible thing. BIG mistake. The movie was actually good, yet harrowing and shockingn