Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

mark.waltz There's uranium in the Mexican hinterlands, bringing down a plane and ironically where passenger Gloria Talbott's missing boyfriend happens to be hiding among the gigantic creatures grown to huge proportions to their regular size. Desert lizards become dinosaur sized, a giant hawk devours a huge dog-sized rat, and the one-eyed title character seeks to find out his past through grunts and groans. So what do the other three passengers on the plane decide to do? Destroy him to put him out of his misery. It's all pretty dumb, with the creature looking like he's got a piece of lettuce over his eye with plastic costume shop teeth in his mouth to give the illusion of deformity due to radio active contact. Lon Chaney Jr. delivers a weak performance as the oldest member of the quartet with seemingly nefarious plans that have no real impact on the plot. James Craig us dull as the pilot, seemingly in love with Talbott and must break the shocking news of who the Cyclops is. Ultimately amateurish and not even funny in a silly way, this ranks as a boring stinker that seems hastily rushed out of the B studio assembly line and would be considered a stinker a decade before it came out.

lemon_magic I had a chance to see "The Cyclops" as part of a retro double feature a few weeks back, and it's a classic indication of the perversity of human nature that the annoyance value of this movie kept me thinking about it long after I stopped pondering classics such as "Bride of Frankenstein".This movie has a fine cast, but they appear to be mostly going through the motions on this one, probably because the lapses in logic and plot holes in the screenplay make it impossible for most people to take it seriously. Lon Chaney has a particularly ridiculous character to play, and while I am a fan of this great actor, I almost cheered when his character bought it. The special effects are, well, about what you'd expect from Bert I. Gordon. I've never seen a person apparently so obsessed with traveling mattes and gigantism; if he'd done it better, it would be inspiring. As it is, his technical limitations make for really contrived and unconvincing scene layouts. Not bad enough to be funny, not good enough to be involving, but I kept watching in case something interesting or magical happened before the end. It didn't.By no means the worst movie in the Bert I Gordon canon that I've seen..."Village Of the Giants" was much worse in spots. (But it also some cheerfully goofy dance scenes,. bawdy teen freakouts, and some hot babes to enjoy.) I felt especially bad for Talbott and Chaney.

sddavis63 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)

MARIO GAUCI 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!