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Monday, October 29, 2012

31 Days of Halloween: Day 29

The Cyclops
1957
Bert I. Gordon

Susan Winter (Gloria Talbot) is in Mexico searching for her lost fiancĂ©. She thinks his flight crashed in a remote valley and she tells a seedy prospector, Marty Melville (Lon Chaney Jr.), that the area is possibly rich in uranium in order to get him to finance a trip. Along with a guide, Russ (James Craig) and a pilot, Lee (Tom Drake) the group heads out, one step ahead of the law, only to crash their plane in the same valley.  Turns out Susan was right, the area is rich with uranium and highly radioactive. It’s also inhabited by giant animals and a huge man with a scarred face and one giant eye.

‘The Cyclops’ and ‘The Amazing Colossal Man’ (1957) share a lot of similarities: Same director, same release year, a love interest desperately looking for someone who ends up being a huge bald guy. Whereas ‘The Amazing Colossal Man’ tries to play up the pathos of the situation a little more, ‘The Cyclops' is in it mostly for the monsters and even mixes things up a little by having Marty be a double-crossing scumbag.  It’s a 50’s Bert I. Gordon film, so the acting is wooden, the story flimsy, and the effects pretty cheap looking. It’s barely over an hour long, so it keeps moving and ends up being a pretty fun monster movie.

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