The Cyclops (1957)

Bert I Gordon's second film as director, The Cyclops (1957) feels like a dry run for his The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), released later the same year.  Both concern ordinary guys who are enlarged to gigantic proportions after receiving huge doses of radiation.  The key difference is that the later film presents its protagonist as initially sympathetic, only later turning into a rampaging monster as the radiation causes his mental faculties to deteriorate, whereas in The Cyclops, we only meet the title character after he has become a monster.  The creature in The Cyclops is, however, allowed to show us a glimpse of his human side as, toward the end of the film, he starts to remember his former identity and life.  Not that it lasts - he's soon back to menacing the heroes before succumbing to a spear in his single eye.  What's clear watching The Cyclops is that it was clearly made on a tight budget, featuring only a handful of characters for most of its running time and confining its action to a single outdoors location, with a very simple plot structure and a typical B-movie cast, (Lon Chaney Jr and Gloria Talbott being the most recognisable faces).  The effects work, even by Bert I Gordon standards, is noticeably cheap, with his trademark giant animals being inserted into the action via some quite shoddy process work.  The title monster itself fares best, with better quality back projection and matte work inserting it into the action, although the make-up - with a mass of mutated tissue obscuring one eye, to effectively make it a cyclops - is somewhat rudimentary.  It is striking, but not particularly convincing.

But the cheapness shouldn't be surprising, as Gordon made the film for Allied Artists, formerly Monogram - the king of poverty row studios, which, at this time, was trying to move upmarket with bigger budgeted, more respected films, but still couldn't resist turning out low budget B-movies like The Cyclops.  Even AIP mustered larger budgets for its B-movies, as witnessed by Gordon's second attempt at the subject, made for AIP, The Amazing Colossal Man.  The AIP-produced film had better production values, a more expansive plot, varied locations and featured far better special effects, with not only more competent process work, but also a far more extensive use of miniatures.  While the two films are undoubtedly similar, it is the sequel to Colossal Man, War of the Colossal Beast (1958) which most closely resembles The Cyclops.  While The Cyclops involves a woman searching for her missing fiance, whose plane had crashed in the wilderness in Mexico (which, as it turned out, was full of radioactive ore-bearing rock), Colossal Beast opens with the sister of the, presumed dead, giant of the first film, searching form him in Mexico.  In both films, the titular giant is found living in a rocky wilderness (probably the same location was used in both) and has suffered facial disfigurement.  Colossal Beast's first half really does feel like a slightly bigger budgeted version of The Cyclops.  

The Cyclops might not be a great film, but some of the performances are OK, particularly that of Lon Chaney as the blow hard uranium prospector who co-finances the expedition and does manage some poignancy in the scenes where the monster starts to recall its true identity.  It doesn't dwell on this part of the plot, however, quickly moving back to being a regulation monster movie, with its title beast chasing the rest of the cast around.  It's pretty much a typical Bert I Gordon movie: briskly moving, utterly ludicrous and rough around the edges.  The cinematic equivalent to a short story from a down market pulp magazine, in fact.  But it clearly worked as a stepping stone, allowing Gordon to step up to AIP and slightly bigger resources -his films for AIP are noticeably slicker and more solidly made than his earlier output.  Gordon would eventually fall out with AIP, though, and return to Allied Artists in the sixties.