The Cyclops

Poster tagline: NATURE GONE MAD!!! A WORLD OF TERROR – IT WAS A MONSTER YET IT WAS A MAN! YOU’LL HARDLY BELIEVE WHAT YOUR OWN EYES SEE!!! At the beginning of his career, Bert I. Gordon was very much into mutations of all kinds (and he didn't really leave them until his death). He became famous for the escapades of the mutated giant Lieutenant Colonel Manning (The Amazing Colossal Man and War Of The Colossal Beast) and in the meantime he made this genre film where many things are mutated, from mice to humans. This is due to a radioactive rock that’s causing an enormous growth of local fauna on the Mexican plateau where the film is set. And it goes like clockwork – the heroes' fight for bare life, plus giant lizards, a giant mouse, a tarantula, a hawk, a snake and the highlight, yes, the female lead’s boyfriend, mutated into a giant about 10m tall with a disfigured face and one eye. If I wrote in The Amazing Colossal Man that the rear projections are quite adequate for the period, here almost nothing works, the proportions are horribly off, different in every shot, and the fight between the cyclops and the snake is so badly edited that even Ed Wood would blush with shame. But the way the film takes itself deadly serious makes it irresistible silly fun. (09/02/2012)

The Cyclops is an example of an American 1950s B-movie that does not work, is not very funny, takes itself too seriously, and looks really dated after sixty years. Lon Chaney Jr. may have perhaps proved that he was not only good at playing monsters, but even that is not enough to make this movie even slightly above average. There are plenty of similar yet better American B-movies from the 1950s. (15/10/2019)