Thu 17 Jul 2014
A Sci-Fi Movie Review: THE CYCLOPS (1957).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , SF & Fantasy films[6] Comments
THE CYCLOPS. Allied Artists, 1957. James Craig, Gloria Talbott, Lon Chaney, Tom Drake, Duncan Parkin. Screenwriter-director: Bert I. Gordon.
There is some suspense in this rather mediocre sci-fi movie, but not more than you would want to pay more than a quarter for, as you might have, if you were a kid back in 1957.
It begins with three men and a girl (Gloria Talbott) trying to locate the girl’s fiance,or his body, whose plane went down in a mountainous area of Mexico three years ago, an area so forbidding they are, well, forbidden by local authorities to travel there. Of course, they do so anyway, landing safely (barely) in a small plane built for four.
Turns out that one of the men (a rather dissipated-looking Lon Chaney), who has financed the venture, has an ulterior motive: uranium, and it turns out that the valley where they’ve landed is loaded with the stuff. It also turns out that the valley is chock full of giant beasts. Connect the two facts, and I think you can figure out where this is going right away, but it takes our four adventurers a while. It has to, or else they’d get right back in the plane and get the heck out of there.
They don’t but they soon wish they had. The special effects are awful quite primitive, and the giant guy with one eye is really hokey ugly. The fact that Gloria Talbott is rather fetching, even in coveralls, does not make up for a really inferior work of art on the monster’s makeup job.
The movie, while still mildly entertaining today, was really made for someone who was maybe nine or ten in 1957. Or to be honest, for someone who was nine or ten in 1957 and for whom the nostalgia factor is greater than the judgement of someone seeing it now for the very first time.
July 17th, 2014 at 2:33 pm
I was more like 16 than 9 or 10 in 1957, but of course I saw it in the theater. Everybody went on Saturday night, no matter what was showing. It was pretty bad, even then.
July 17th, 2014 at 2:46 pm
At first, I thought Chaney would be good in this. But after a while, one realizes he basically says the same thing over and over: “Let’s get out of here!” or “We need to go now!”.
July 17th, 2014 at 2:48 pm
I was more like 6, though I think I have seen it on television in the sixties as a teen. Pretty much everyone in it but Talbot was a known drunk on the way down hill and at a considerable speed and frankly all looked it by then. Breath mints must have been at a premium on that set.
Cheap special effects in a Bert I. Gordon film? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.
July 17th, 2014 at 2:51 pm
Chaney, in particular, looked very ill
July 17th, 2014 at 9:59 pm
I was 15 in 1957 when I saw it at the Broad Theatre in Trenton, NJ. I went every Saturday afternoon for the double feature no matter what was playing: SF, mystery, war, comedy, western, drama. I’m still interested in all the genres but now I tend to look for the top 10%.
July 18th, 2014 at 3:11 am
Gloria Talbott deserves some sort of place in Cinema History as the the Horror Film equivalent of Margaret Dumont. Her ability to face even the most ludicrous monsters with a scream of terror should have endeared her to those of us who sat, mouths full of popcorn, through THE LEECH WOMAN, DAUGHTER OF DR JEKYLL, and I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE.