User reviews

Hokey 50s sci fi from Bert I Gordon, who despite the prevalent hokum, crappy effects and cheap sets, keeps cranking fun flicks from the 1950s sci fi heyday. It's one of those films, if you first saw it as a kid, it's left a pretty strong impression, just with the horrendous makeup. That was back before we noticed things like plot inconsistency and illogical character behavior, both of which are pretty rampant in this film. Apart from the monster makeup, which is one of the most powerful and distinctive of all 50s sci fi monsters, Gloria Talbot is the best thing this movie has to offer, as a young woman who undertakes a mission into remote Mexico to find her fiancée, missing for three years after a plane crash. She and her unlikely cohorts discover instead a lost world of gigantic animals (very poorly matter or even superimposed real animals, depicted in large size) and, of course, her surviving fiancée, now grown to gigantic proportions due to radiation abounding in the area, horribly disfigured and mute due to injuries from the crash. There's a still powerful bit of pathos in the confrontation between Talbio and her fiancée, but the rest of the story plays out pretty dully, although the film remains entertaining if you're able to suspend your disbelief and overlook the gaping holes in logic and behavior of the characters. An effective monster movie score from Albert Glasser, who scored most of Bert I. Gordons sci fi films, gives the plot most of its propulsion. This film was reported made in 1955, which puts it as a precursor to Gordon's THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (1957) and its sequel, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST (1958), wherein the big dude sports the same makeup used for THE CYCLOPS. Other than the similarity in height and appearance, the film's story lines are unrelated.

This was the first movie I ever saw! I was 2 years old and my brother was 4. Scared the be-jesus out of me! Hey, I was only 2. Down through the years, I became an avid reader of FaMOUS MOnsters of Filmland magazine, and NEVER saw it covered, and nary a publicity pic from Dear Old Uncle Forry! At 12, I watched War Of The Colossal Beast on the Saturday matinée, only to be thoroughly disappointed that it wasn't "that" movie.

Fast-forward to 1984. I went with my brother and his wife to a video rental store in a nearby town and the video box was one of those Elvira thingies...but "something" about that title... I showed it to my brother with a quizzical look and he flashed me a strange half-smile...

Anyway, I found it, (or should I say..."we" found it!) in 1984 after it had been aired on network t.v. only once (to my knowledge) back in 1962 or '63! Needless to say, we had a neat little "reunion" that Saturday afternoon! Ain't life fun?!?!?!?!

Some day, film historians who have entirely too much time on their hands might attempt to settle the question of which is Bert I. Gordon's "best" cheesy sci-fi film -- which would require hair-splitting on such an infinitesimal scale that in the end it could probably only be resolved by gladiatorial combat.

On the other hand, there should be near-universal agreement that this is hands-down his worst. "The Cyclops" is just plain dull, even though it at times rips off -- er, I mean, echoes -- the Greek legend of Ulysses and Polyphemus. Gloria Talbott is literally this movie's only redeeming feature: she's the reason I give it two stars out of ten, instead of one. Well, her and the classic Stinson Voyager monoplane.

She certainly emotes her heart out, during that forty-minute scene -- OK, maybe it was only ten minutes, but it sure seemed much, much longer -- in which she and her mates have been trapped in a cave by her radioactively-enlarged, brain-damaged, horribly disfigured fiancé. Ever-versatile Paul Frees supplies the monster's voice, in what may be the longest continuous series of inarticulate grunts and growls recorded outside of a Screamin' Jay Hawkins session.

One way you could look at this movie is as a test-bed for plot elements of "The Amazing Colossal Man" and especially its sequel, "War of the Colossal Beast". My advice to anyone who isn't a Gordon complete-ist, though, would be to skip this one and go straight to the other two, which despite their ultra-cheap special effects and lower end of the B-list actors are still somewhat entertaining.

This was easily the most disappointing among the numerous B.I.G. efforts I included in this challenge – and not because the copy I watched was out-of-synch all the way through! The premise in itself was not bad – it plays a bit like THE LAND UNKNOWN (1957) incidentally – but the treatment left a lot to be desired, defeating a good cast (James Craig, Gloria Talbott, Tom Drake and Lon Chaney Jr.) in the process. Talbott goes to look for her missing husband in some remote territory we learn was hit by radioactivity; she is accompanied by his best pal Craig, philosophical drunken pilot Drake (actually the best of the lot) and Chaney (annoying as a sourpuss obsessed by uranium). The biggest let-down proves the titular creature itself, though his look is decent enough under the circumstances (Gordon would tread similar territory in the {hopefully better} THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN {1957} and its sequel, WAR OF THE COLOSAL BEAST {1958}): his relentless moaning is not only baffling but it even nullifies Chaney's own previous grumpiness!; besides, he does very little of consequence except fight a giant snake (the then-pioneering magnified lizards of ONE MILLION, B.C {1940}, also with Chaney, get another work-out here – as had been the case with the even more execrable ROBOT MONSTER {1953}); and it takes an awfully long time for the heroes – but not the viewer – to realize that he is really what has become of Talbott's unlucky spouse! By the way, looking at the IMDb entries on this one, I was shocked to learn Michael Elliott gave this a *** rating and even considers it Gordon's best "radioactive monster" outing!

Writer/Director/Producer Bert I. Gordon had a thing for making movies about giant and/or teenie weenie people. This one obviously falls into the first category.

Gloria Talbott plays a woman searching for her fiancé, who was lost in a plane crash somewhere south of the border. Now if you can't figure out who the title character is from that clue ...

Talbott enlists the aid of 40s' leading men James Craig and Tom Drake. For laughs, she also brings along Lon Chaney, Jr. Guess which one turns rotten. Guess who doesn't come back alive.

We are treated to a few giant lizards and a giant hawk eating a giant rodent. Radiation is to blame.

The Cyclops does not show his face (if you want to call it a face) until 45 minutes into this 65-minute opus. He is about 25 feet tall, has lost one eye, and all of his marbles. He wears a diaper. He kills a giant snake. He grunts and says "Bwaaaaah" a lot - kind of like the sound Ralph Kramden made when he threw his back out while bowling.

Susan Winter (Gloria Talbott) is searching for her missing boyfriend test pilot Bruce Barton. He's been missing for three years in the Mexican jungle. She has joined up with wealthy Martin Melville (Lon Chaney Jr.) looking for uranium. The other two people on the search plane are friend Russ Bradford (James Craig) and pilot Lee Brand (Tom Drake). They encounter giant creatures created by the radiation.

The special effects of the giant creatures are compositing two different footages. It's not the best looking. The big-size half tends to be transparent. It's classic B-movie stuff. It's a lot of cheese. It needs more drama from Melville. When he first push the plane down, I thought he would be tied up and later cause problems. The others are not reacting enough to his aggressiveness. The plot is not good enough. As for the cyclops, his mask is fake old style. It's not that good, but it is weirdly interesting. That's this movie. It's not good but weirdly interesting.

Crazy, super sized fun film! It's one of those large creatures films that was so popular in the 1950s thru the early 1960s. If you like those types of sci-fi, horror films then you might like The Cyclops! Susan Winters' (Talbott) fiancée is missing. He has not shown back up from his trip to Mexico so Susan decides to get help from Martin Melville (Chaney) to fund her trip in exchange for some of the uranium that is suppose to be in rich supply in the area. She enlists the help of Russ Bradford (Craig) as a guide and Lee Brand (Drake) a pilot. What they discover are an abundance of uranium, over-sized creatures and The Cyclops! I really enjoyed watching this film again after years of no-see! 7.5/10

The Cyclops

The upside to being 50-feet tall is you can make money just by standing outside car dealerships waving.

However, the mutated features of the colossus in this horror movie might scare off customers.

When Susan's (Gloria Talbott) test pilot boyfriend Bruce (Duncan Parkin) crashes over a mysterious area of Mexico, she hires a pilot (Tom Drake) to take her, a scientist (James Craig) she just met and a shady mining consultant (Lon Chaney Jr.) to the cursed region where gargantuan creatures are rumoured to dwell.

Unfortunately Susan's rescue party is more interested in harvesting the radium that turned Bruce into a mindless Cyclops than in helping her subdue him.

Just one of many radioactive giant B-movies released in the 1950s, what sets this black-and-white jungle adventure apart is the Cyclops' unforgettable design and Lon Chaney's drunken performance.

Incidentally, a thoughtful gift for a giant is a hot air balloon poncho. Yellow Light

vidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

Bert I. Gordon, when you hear that name many people smile but some tremble. Many of us remember his back projected monsters (THE BEGINNING OF THE END), transparent giants (THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN) and his malevolent ghosts (TORMENTED). Okay so his effects were usually less than special but his movies were always entertaining. That brings us to the movie I am here to-night to talk about, THE CYCLOPS.

Susan Winter (Gloria Talbott, looking just so gosh-darn sexy with that short haircut) is searching for her fiancée who vanished 3 years earlier while flying over a dangerous mountain range in South America. Refused permission to fly into that same mountainous area she and her crew go anyway. On board is Russ (James Craig) who is secretly in love with Susan and is probably hoping all they find is a pile of bones, pilot Lee (Tom Drake) who is just in it for the money, and Marty (Lon Chaney) who is looking for uranium. Oh he doesn't want to mine it; he just wants to file a claim as part of an elaborate stock swindle he is planning.

Okay so they make it to the lost valley (actually the ubiquitous Bronson Canyon) and right away Russ sees, or thinks he sees, a giant lizard. Lon finds his uranium, in fact the whole valley is loaded with it; he's gonna be rich!

While exploring the group discover there are indeed giant lizards, also giant spiders, birds, rodents and . . . well . . . every living thing in that valley is huge! Russ starts thinking maybe it isn't uranium in the ground but some other, more dangerous radioactive element (hey it was the 50's, you had to keep "radiation" in the plot!). Guessing they all might start growing too if they hang around too long Russ, Marty and Lee all want to split but Susan says no . . . and she has the keys to the plane! (So 3 guys can't overpower 1 woman just long enough to take the keys? Just keep repeating "It's only a movie . . .only a movie . . .")

Finally they all locate a cave where it looks like someone has been living. In fact someone is still living there, a 25 foot high one eyed monster (Duncan "Dean" Parkin). Now hands up all of you who know right away who the giant cyclops really is. Ah . . . I thought so!

From then on it's a race to see if they can get back to the plane before the giant gets them. Do they make it? Oh come now, you don't expect me to spoil the ending, do you?

There is a nice behind the scenes story attached to this movie. Lon Chaney's biological mother, Cleva Creighton, visited to location every day to bring Lon his lunch. If it seems a little odd that a 51 year old man should be brought lunch by his mom consider this; Lon Sr and Cleva divorced under bitter conditions and Lon told his young son that Cleva was dead. When Lon Jr found out the truth it created a rift between him and his father that never really closed. After the death of his step mom, Hazel Hastings, in 1932 Lon tracked down Cleva and remained very devoted to her until her death in a Hollywood nursing home in 1967.

The makeup for the Cyclops was handled by Jack Young and it is very good, quite convincing and scary as all heck! Duncan Parkin also played the title role in WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST wearing an equally scary makeup design. Paul Frees got a hefty payday for standing in an echo chamber and growling to dub the Cyclops "voice".

Now forget the fact that you can see right through some of the monsters and that matte lines are jumping all over the place. After nearly 50 years this is still a fun movie. Pop some corn, open up some root beers and get comfy on the sofa some Saturday afternoon and enjoy this one. You'll be glad you did!

Cyclops, The (1957)

*** (out of 4)

A woman (Gloria Talbott) travels to the Mexican desert to locate her husband whose been missing for three years. She finds him but he's now a huge, one eyed Cyclops. Here's a classic of the 50's sci-fi directed by Bert I. Gordon who would make a career out of these "man/animal grows big" films. The entire cast, including Lon Chaney, Jr. are a lot of fun and the dialogue gets some nice chuckles as well. Gordon made a lot of these "big" pictures throughout his career but I think this one here is the best of the bunch.

Yeah. I get it. It was the era. There was atomic testing going on all over the place and people were truly afraid of World War III breaking out. But for all the fears of the general public, it was a huge opportunity for Hollywood, and especially for independent movie makers with low budgets to cash in. So there were all kinds of movies in the era that dealt with the fears about the effects of radiation. "The Cyclops" was one of those. It's passable. What more can I say. Certainly not great, and actually not even good, but passable if you're looking to kill a little bit of time.

Susan (Gloria Talbott) is searching for her long lost fiancé. His plane crashed in a remote part of Mexico and his fate is unknown, but the Mexican government doesn't want her to search for him. It's a restricted area. But she gets a team together. James Craig plays a long time friend and bacteriologist, Tom Drake is the pilot she hired and Lon Chaney, Jr. (reduced to such movies because he can't escape from the Wolfman) is the multi-millionaire who finances them. He's interested not in Susan's fiancé, but in uranium. This remote part of Mexico is full of uranium. But uranium, of course, is radioactive - and that has consequences.

Everything in this region (well, the animals anyway) grows to a huge size - including a disfigured human with only one eye whom the team stumbles upon. OK. They, for some reason, don't get it for a while but it's pretty obvious who the cyclops is. So for a while we watch the group do battle with the various gigantic creatures (well, actually, they spend more time watching the various gigantic creatures) until they figure out the mystery and escape. No. There's not really much more to this than that.

As you'd expect in a low budget B movie from the 50's the effects and makeup are pretty weak. Everybody seemed to try, but still the performances were OK at best, but no more. It's passable. It'll kill some time. It's no better than that. (3/10)

Absurd but fun 1950s silliness from Bert I' Gordon, as a woman (Gloria Talbott) hires a team of three men to fly into a remote area of Mexico to help find her missing fiancé who disappeared a few years earlier. What they discover is a forsaken land contaminated by radiation which has produced giant animals and reptiles, as well as a raging 25-foot tall bald man with one eye. The highlight of this show is Lon Chaney as a punchy hot-head on the expedition, who cares more about finding uranium than he does saving a man's life. The monster itself becomes annoying with his consistently dubbed roars and growls.

** out of ****

Watch this film to get the full effect of Bert I. Gordon's mastery of his own special kind of special effects.

One of the zillions of 50's horror/sci-fi-flix this probably was (one of) the first monster movies I ever saw, I must have been around 5 years old when it was aired on Chiller Theater one Saturday night in suburban New York. I remember particularly freaking out and screaming when the giant cyclops popped up from behind a pile of boulders in a cave sometime during the film. The film left such an impression on me that certain scenes are still vivid even though it's been 40 years since I've seen the movie. I'd love to see it again and show my kids.

Bert I. Gordon directed this film that stars Gloria Talbott as Susan Winter, who organizes an expedition to find her missing fiancée in Mexico, where he was last seen. Three men(played by Lon Chaney Jr., Tom Drake, and James Craig) join her, since there is rumored to be a vein of uranium in the area, which is worth a fortune. They do find her fiancée, who has sadly become mutated by the uranium to giant size, insane with one eye. Other mutations also exist, and it becomes a desperate fight for survival of the group, trying to get back to their airplane. Afternoon movie favorite for years, film is ruined by poor F/X and a much too abrupt ending, though does have a good cast at least.