The Cyclops (1957)

A young woman (Gloria Talbott) hires a crew to sneak her into the mountainous forbidden zone in Mexico to search for her fiance who crashed there several years ago. Soon we learn that each crew member has their own reasons for going on the trip.

Writer/Director/Producer Bert I. Gordon made a bunch of films in the second half of the 1950s usually depicting creatures of unusual size. Here our heroes discover huge creatures and later a giant deformed man. I wonder …

Lon Chaney Jr. was squarely in the “take any job” segment of his career. Five years earlier he impressed in a small role in High Noon (1952) but would never repeat that success. Pretty Gloria Talbott had a long career in low budget genre pictures, starting when she was just four years old. Years ago I saw her interviewed for the underwhelming 100 Years of Horror (1996) and it was clear time was not good to her. She passed a couple years later at the age of 69.

Considering the humble budget, the effects for Cyclops aren’t that bad. Occasionally the monster would be transparent, but otherwise effective. Mr. BIG would again explore the giant man trope later the same year with The Amazing Colossal Man, which got a sequel the following. Oddly, the only cast member in common between the three films is Duncan 'Dean' Parkin, who played today’s Cyclops and Colonel Manning from the Colossal Man sequel.

The Cyclops almost feels like a proof of concept for Gordon’s later Giant movies. It’s the shortest of the three and while not without good story elements, the conclusion feels a little rushed. But it holds your interest and doesn’t overstay its welcome. AMRU 3.

The Amazing Colossal Man (1957)

The US military is testing a new “plutonium” bomb but it fails to detonate. Soldiers are ordered to stay put but when a civilian plane crashes inside the test site Colonel Manning leaves the safety of his trench to try and rescue the pilot. The bomb detonates and Manning is caught in the blast. He is not expected to live. Miraculously, his skin grows back overnight and doctors are stumped. Things escalate when he starts to grow and his behavior becomes erratic.

One doesn’t expect a “radioactive giant attacks Las Vegas” film to be rock solid with the science, especially when the title sounds like a sideshow attraction, but that low bar may have been too high of a hurdle. The most egregious error was that Colonel Manning’s erratic behavior was blamed on the fact that his heart was growing at a slower pace than the rest of his body because the heart was “only one cell”. Every part of the problem and proposed solution made no sense.

A bigger problem is the film’s reliance on exposition. The bomb test in the opening sequence was described by a man speaking over a loudspeaker, and each time the doctor needed to describe the current situation with Manning, they used the conference room with film strip trope.

On the positive side, the movie makes good use of its tiny budget. The sparse sets made sense in the context of the film. Also, the match cut (if I can call it that) when Manning is hit by the explosion was quite effective. And the heart of the film is about Manning’s feeling of disillusionment and dissociation. We see his attitude transform from anger at his predicament to disregard of the “little people”. Not exactly Oscar worthy, but better depth than you normally expect from the genre.

I kind of liked The Amazing Colossal Man. Producer/Director Bert I. Gordon only made 24 films between 1954 and 2015, and I saw a handful of them in my childhood. This, however, is only the second one during this fourteen year journey. I’ll likely see a few more. AMRU 3.

Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

Loopy doll maker hires a new secretary. She isn't interested because he seems to think his dolls are real people. He begs her to take the job because ... it's the fifties.

She confesses her suspicions to a salesman who laughs in her face. They date (because that makes sense) and shortly after he proposes, he mysteriously disappears. Just like a bunch of other people. After she accuses her boss of turning people into dolls, he shrinks her and adds her to his collection. See, he wasn't crazy. Just lonely.

Well crafted, well paced, predictable, unimaginative, uninspired, watchable. You know what would have made this better? If the puppet people actually attacked something. Or if the scene in the poster took place. Or threw a hint of sexual perversion, or cold war fear, or drama, or action. A well crafted baloney on white is still a baloney on white. Hey, sometimes I get hungry.

A key element in any Sci-Fi film is the hardware. Sounds harsh, but for the most part that's true. Puppet People has hardware, but it's barely described. There was the analogy to how a projector makes images larger, but Willie Wonka did a better job on the exposition.

Director Bert Gordon took a break from making giant-people movies to make a little-person movie, but has our protagonists go to the drive-in to see one of his films. Anything else interesting here? Nope. Maybe I'd say John Agar deserved a better movie, but let's face facts. This was right in his wheelhouse. AMRU 3.