bkoganbing Three men and the woman who is financing the expedition go into a forbidden part of the Mexican desert. Gloria Talbott is searching for her fiancé who was an aviator and went down in the region three years earlier. Her fiancé's best friend James Craig who is a scientist is along, pilot Tom Drake, and Lon Chaney, Jr. who is looking for uranium deposits is along.Radioactive material they find all right, it makes ordinary creatures grow to incredible size. One of those creatures is a 25 foot deformed man with only one eye like the legendary cyclops of Greek mythology. I think we know what happened to the fiancé.Bert Gordon produced this one for Allied Artists on an Allied Artists shoestring budget. But the studio got its money's worth. Some nice sincere performances from the cast about a human tragedy. The Cyclops is worth a look.

thejcowboy22 On a warm Saturday summer evening in the early part of the l960's I warmed up my 21" Motorola Black and White TV and sat back in my Father's easy chair and Watched my favorite show CHILLER THEATRE. My favorite title appeared THE CYCLOPS and I couldn't wait to see the disfigured Giant. I had viewed this movie several times before but this time I wouldn't turn away when the leading man spears the Giant in his lone eye. Favorite scene is when the party of 4 gets trapped in the huge cave as the huge boulder slides forward ever so slowly blocking the front of the cave.Then abruptly the Giant appears in full view Bald,scarred,ugly with only one eye that doesn't blink.What really disturbs you is the load roar or moans coming from our 30'friend.Oh did I mention that this Giant is the woman lost fiancé? I recall my younger sister running from the room at top speed when she saw our one-eyed star simultaneously crying for my Mother. Swiftly My MOM would come into the living room and switch off the set and tell me to watch something more suitable or just read a book. I'd wait a few minutes and click on channel 11 and continue watching our four prisoners trapped in the Cyclops's cave. Periodically our bald one-eyed menace would rises up and growls at them when he wasn't taking watch outside the cave. Lon Chaney Jr. had the gumption to shoot the giant but gets clobbered and dies. A large snake appears and attacks the Cyclops so the remaining three make a break for the forest. The climax is worth waiting for and this time I did indeed watch the flaming spear penetrate the lone eye of the giant in the hill climbing scene. It wasn't the act of spearing that bothers you but the reaction of our mutant giant crying like a small child. Whimpering in defeat and blindness as he pulls out the spear and struggles to get his bearing to no avail. The three remaining get in their plane and barely clear the Giant and mountains as our giant lays on the ground. When you get right down to it . The girl doesn't get her fiancé, The guys don't find uranium. Lon dies and our star the giant is blind and we'll probably get strangled by that large snake when he sleeps which is all he has left. I love this movie!

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.

dougdoepke Four adventurers go searching on a radio-active island for the girl's lost love. What they find is a couple days work for a special effects department.Okay, the reason I tuned in was to catch cult favorite Gloria Talbott in another of her Z-grade drive-in films. She does manage to get into a tight sweater, but she also looks like she swallowed a lemon. There's none of that charming fright girl from her classic I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958). Here she just looks glum, like she can't wait to exit the set. Too bad.The rest of the movie almost reaches camp level. The monster's make-up looks like they stuck a billiard ball in one eye and left a Kleenex on his cheek. Besides that endless grunting almost left me hearing impaired. Then too, Chaney acts like he's going to make up for the general lack of motivation all by himself. For former A-movie actors like Craig and Drake, this must have suggested the end of the road, which may be why they just walk through their parts.Sure, it's easy to make fun of a drive-in cheapo like this. But even on that lowly scale, this Bronson Canyon, LA Arboretum, special is nothing else than a bad horror movie, dear Gloria or not.