Rainey Dawn 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

Leofwine_draca You know, it's weird. Director Bert I. Gordon only made seven films during the 1950s, but I could have sworn he made dozens. That's because his name – and, more specifically, his nickname ("Mister B.I.G.") is synonymous with the back-projection craze in monster movies. Spend ages creating a stop-motion dinosaur? No thanks – what's the point when you can just dress up everyday creatures, blow them up to full size and then use back projection to have them 'menace' your real-life actors? Unsurprisingly, Gordon has developed a cult fan base over the years, and it's easy to see why. His films may not be masterpieces, but they are universally entertaining, and the same can be said of THE CYCLOPS.It's typical stuff, thinking up some 'whatever' excuse to get the small cast (4 actors here) into a remote location. The good news is that, thanks to the short running time, barely minutes have passed before they're up to their neck in huge rodents, birds of prey, spiders and (inevitably) lizards. So far, so good, you might think, but then Gordon reveals his trump card: a HUMAN, horrifically scarred by an accident, transformed into a bloodthirsty GIANT! From then on, our characters must try to escape from this gigantic menace while there are a few nods to Homer's Odyssey as they get holed up in a cave and figure out a less-than-original way to destroy the beast.One thing that surprised me was that this little 1957 flick was actually SCARY. That's all down to the disgusting make-up job done on the Cyclops; apparently, it was so good that Gordon used it in a few different movies! With exposed, rotting teeth, an eye bulging out of its socket and the rest of its face a slump of liquid flesh, this monster looks NASTY – definitely the scariest '50s creature I've seen yet! (when you compare this with the carrot-man Boris Karloff-impersonator in THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, you'll see what I mean). The special effects might seem cheesy and dated, and the script often laughable, but it's the makeup which makes this film, if you see what I mean. Oh, and Lon Chaney Jr.Everybody gives Chaney a hard time, chuckling at his performances because he was an alcoholic by this stage of his career. I have to ask, who cares? Chaney's still got it, and to prove that he gives one of his very BEST performances in this film! He's essentially the no-good villain of the story, although his character is painted in shades of grey rather than black. I have to say, I loved Chaney here, and he pulls off a great performance that puts the other cast members into the shade – especially unlikable wooden hero James Craig who ended up in an Ed Wood movie after a long career in westerns! Gloria Talbott is another who doesn't make much of an impact. If you want to see this film, watch it for Chaney and the monster. It's no classic but it IS an entertaining B-movie of its time.

mrb1980 I always liked the perky and pretty Gloria Talbott. She was almost always saddled with pretty poor roles (I guess "The Leech Woman" was a fairly good one) in low-budget productions. True to form, Talbott appears in this impoverished sci-fi/horror movie about yet another guy grown to monstrous size.The fiancée of Susan Winter (Talbott) is a test pilot who disappeared in Mexico, so Talbott joins a group of searchers trying to find him. Well, they do...and he's grown to monstrous size with a large hole where one of his eyes should be. The remainder of the movie focuses on the monster trying to kill the expedition's members, including the crazy Melville (Lon Chaney, Jr.). The story ends with the monster dead and the survivors flying away.The movie comes to us courtesy of schlockmeister Bert I. Gordon, who specialized in 1950s monster movies with really poor special effects. He delivers another turkey here, including a monster who's identical to the one in "War of the Colossal Beast" (maybe Gordon had some leftover makeup). The whole thing is so cheap and embarrassing that I felt sorry for the cast. Even by Gordon's low standards, this one's really bad.

henri sauvage 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.