THE CYCLOPS 1957

Blogathon

Hosted by 50 Westerns From the 50's

"It Was A Monster - Yet It was a Man !"
"You'll Hardly Believe What Your Eyes See !"

    Although Allied Artists produced and/or distributed much first-rate crime, western, noir & drama films they also seemed to had an affinity for low budget horror films including the entertainingly ludicrous Karloff vehicle FRANKENSTEIN 1970, the lurid THE HYPNOTIC EYE and the classic "walking tree of terror" FROM HELL IT CAME along with this 1957 effort from Bert I. "Mr. B.I.G." Gordon. One of Gordon's earlier efforts THE CYCLOPS is also one of his more impoverished and woefully cheap films (which is really saying something), but like all of Bert's films it still a wonderfully entertaining little piece of low budget sci-fi/horror. It's helped immensely by the presence of Gloria Talbot,  which along with this and I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE, THE LEECH WOMAN and Edgar G. Ulmer's interesting DAUGHTER OF DR. JEKYLL (which played on Dbl. bills with THE CYCLOPS) found a niche in films such as this and always could be counted on to give a performance that was often more than the material warranted.
    Talbot plays Susan Winter who gathers together a disparate group of four men in order to search for her missing fiance who disappeared in a remote valley in northern Mexico while exploring for uranium several years before. Along for the ride are Roger Craig (WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS) as Russ Bradford who was a friend of Talbot's fiance and has ulterior motives for the trip as he wants to prove the fiance dead in order to marry Talbot. He also serves as the film's nominal hero and scientist who's there to explain the strange goings-on with writer Bert I. Gordon's typical head-scratching "scientific" explanations (we can tell Russ is a scientist as his first introduced wearing Clark Kent-like glasses and continually puffs away thoughtfully on his pipe).
    Plus there's a scenery-chewing Lon Chaney Jr. as prospector Martin "Marty" Melville who hopes to find a rich uranium strike and Lee Brand, a pilot with a shady reputation who will fly them to the mysterious valley (who talks constantly about himself in the third person) and is played by Tom Drake (who showed up on practically every TV show in the 60's and 70's).

     After being forced to evade the Mexican authorities who will not give them permission to venture into the valley, the group makes a rough landing in the valley as a suddenly crazy Marty (a personality trait he lapses into about every 15 minutes or so here) grabs the controls of the plane and knocks out the pilot. Upon landing Marty immediately finds his uranium and pleads with the group to head back immediately.

    Susan however preservers and presses on with Russ where they begin to see giant animals such as a lizard, a hawk and most bizarrely a groundhog (which is eaten by the hawk !). These are all rendered with Bert's usual somewhat iffy rear projection process whereupon footage of actual animals is superimposed on the screen with the actors all standing on one side of the screen vaguely gesturing and interacting with the creatures on the opposite side of the screen. Russ summarizes that the radiation present in the valley is causing the growth and that they'll soon be mutating.
      The group soon discovers a giant roaming the area with a huge lump of flesh over one eye, a snaggle tooth grimace (along with a loin cloth) and appears to be a distant cousin of the creature in Bert's WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST. Some wreckage from a plane and bits of clothing from Susan's fiance are also found and after venturing into Bronson Caverns they're trapped by the "Cyclops" as he rolls a huge boulder in front of the entrance and then spends some time snarling and grunting at them. Susan seems to have some sort of connection to the giant as Russ ventures the theory that she is recognized by him. and it soon becomes exceedingly obvious to everyone except for Susan and her intrepid group who the giant really is.

     Clocking in at 67 minutes, like most of Gordon's output there's a fascinatingly weird curiosity in viewing THE CYCLOPS with its endearingly inept special effects as the rear-projected images often having that low budget patented partially invisible look to them and the stilted and often time unintentionally hilarious dialogue. The sequence where the group sneaks past the stiff as a board sleeping cyclops is worth the price of admission in itself and there's an entertainingly daffy scene with the cyclops attempting to wrestle with an obviously drugged & lackadaisical snake.
     Talbot's Susan shows the most backbone of all the characters and in a bit of a change is the one who's constantly pushing and prodding along the somewhat ineffectual males, although the climax finds Russ going to full hero mode (along with channeling a bit of Odysseus from Homer's The Odyssey) and the somewhat shifty Lee rises to occasion while constantly reminding everyone he's part Cherokee.
     Gloria Talbot had a couple big roles in major pictures such as Douglas Sirk's ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (in which she's quite good in a small, but important role) and Michael Curtiz's WE'RE NO ANGELS, but seemed to settle into roles in TV and low budget westerns and horror and always seemed to gamely try her best no matter what the film (as here). She gives a great little performance as the unknowing wife in I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE from 1958.
     Sporting the classic pencil-thin mustache and a shock of Brylcreem laden hair, Roger Craig is OK as the co-male lead and a somewhat stocky hero who in addition makes his feelings toward Talbot's character obvious from the get-go (which doesn't seem to bother her too much). His best role was probably in Fritz Lang's newspaper crime drama WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS where carried with on with Rhonda Fleming behind hubby Vincent Price's back.

    After appearing in some excellent small character roles in movies such I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES, HIGH NOON and SPRINGFIELD RIFLE, Lon Chaney Jr. was already well into his descent into lower and lower budgeted films. Although he would have a nice little role in 1958's THE DEFIANT ONES and later appear Jack Hill's excellent cult classic SPIDER BABY and Roger Corman's THE HAUNTED PALACE, Chaney would sadly watch his career spiral downward in the coming decades before his death in 1973. Only 49 at the time of filming THE CYCLOPS he looks at least 20 years older here and as the treasure hunting "Marty" he's alternately sullen/sweaty or chewing the scenery with abandon. The actor playing the title character has been referred to as a un-billed stunt man, while some sources claim it was Dean Parkin from WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST.
     Warner Archive has released THE CYCLOPS in a nice anamorphic 1.78 transfer. The initial release mistakenly was cut as it was minus a bit of bloody cyclops eye spearing but Warner quickly issued a new version.
      A big thanks to my very good friend Toby over at 50 Westerns From The 50's  for putting this blogathon together.

   

DEMONOID : MESSENGER OF DEATH ! 1981

aka MACABRA

 

"Up from the depths comes the ultimate horror !"

      Coming just on the cusp of the 1980's youth centered slasher craze and featuring a throw everything against the wall in a gooey mess script along with a couple of recognizable names for the marquee (and were probably wondering how they ended up here) this bizarrely entertaining Mexican/U.S. co-production has just been given a new lease a life courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome. Although released in 1981, DEMONOID with its mature cast of established (if not all well known ) faces and plot points concerning devil worship & procession (not to mention car chases, crawling hands & corpses exploding out of the ground) which seem to hearken back a few years to the glory days of 70's drive-in goodness.

     Produced and directed by Alfredo Zacarias for his indie distributing company American Panorama (which along with equally mind boggling THE BEES from 1978 were it's only two releases), it was co-produced by Americans Valley Hoffman and Paul Bagley, who both had connections to films such as THE HILLS HAVE EYES, STARHOPS and CAGED HEAT both in front of and behind the camera.

    Opening with a prologue in which a buxom blonde is shown knocking around some guys in robes and hoods before she's subdued, stripped topless and chained to a cave wall. Her hand is then chopped off whereupon it scuttles off before being skewered and placed in small silver box. Flash forward to the present where in the Mexican town of Guanajuato, Jennifer Baines (Samantha Eggar from David Cornenberg's THE BROOD) shows up to find her husband Mark (Sam Peckinpah regular Roy Jensen) in a bit of a quandary as the workers won't venture down into his silver mine for fear of a local legend concerning a satanic cult and "the devil's hand".
    Hoping to show this to be false the couple head down into mine and after discovering a mummified prospector (with a missing hand) they knock aside a few fiberglass rocks and come upon an underground temple where they come across the silver box seen in the prologue. Finding it filled only with dust they take the silver box home and later that night a hand crawls out and begins feeling up Jennifer while she's asleep in bed (!). Mark then wrestles with the hand and it appears to merge into his his own hand and now seemingly possessed by a evil & insane force, he goes to the mine the next day and blows it closed with all the workers inside.

    Fleeing to Las Vegas (with Jennifer in pursuit) Mark happily discovers that his new hand is now gangbusters at throwing craps which later leads to him being seemingly killed by a mobster and his frizzy headed moll (an uncredited turn by Russ Meyer starlet Haji). Jennifer traces his body to a cemetery in Inglewood, Ca. (where it later explodes out of the ground) and there joins forces with Father Cunningham ( Stuart Whitman - with a fading in and out Irish accent) who appears to having a  conflict of faith - along with being handy in boxing and welding.
    They begin following the hand as moves from one victim to another including a policemen (Lew Saunders from CHiPS) and a plastic surgeon (and his buxom nurse) all of whom go to some extraordinary lengths to extract themselves from the devil possessed extremity. Jumping from Mexico to Las Vegas to Los Angeles, the plot moves forward seemingly without the benefit of logic or common sense and takes a left turn about every 15 minutes or so into more and more bizarre sequences including a car chase with randomly flipping automobiles, the hand grabbing on to the underside of a train to gain a fast getaway and Whitman using a blow torch to burn off his Satan afflicted appendage.
    Zacarias actually prepared two different cuts of the film with the U.S. version titled DEMONOID : MESSENGER OF DEATH clocking in at compact 79 minutes while the international cut MACABRA ran at an expanded 90 minutes. The U.S. version also added the opening female sacrifice prologue (which some sources claim was shot by Jim Wynorski in Bronson Cavern as Roger Corman was involved in the early stages of the film's production) and also periodically quickly cuts to a sword wielding demon statue and adds a ending scene cribbed from Brian De Palma's THE FURY. DEMONOID also loses some dialogue sequences (including the entirety of Whitman's first scene) making it more of choppy viewing experience and adds a more ramped up bloody finale to Haji's death. DEMONOID's score is a patchwork of library music and cues from 70's A.I.P. and New World pictures while MACABRA has an original score comprising some disco-like rhythms and spooky choral music ala' THE OMEN.

    The British born Eggar had started out in major films such as DR. DOLITTLE but by this time had begun moving into TV and lower budget films and added to her drive-in bona-fides by also appearing in THE EXTERMINATOR this same year. Stuntman Roy Jenson (billed here as Roy Cameron Jenson) was a recognizable face as character actor usually playing "second heavy on the right" such as in Sam Peckinpah's THE GETAWAY where he was memorably blown away by Steve McQueen's shotgun and appears here in a rare (semi) leading role. At this time seemingly saying yes to every script within eyesight ex- Hollywood leading man Stuart Whitman had appeared in Tobe Hopper's excellent and underrated EATEN ALIVE and New Worlds CRAZY MAMA in 1976, Hammer's oddball SHATTER from 1974 and in 1979 he was a scenery chewing Rev. "James Johnson" (i.e. Jim Jones) in Rene Cardone Jr's infamous GUYANA : CULT OF THE DAMNED.
    Robert Burns (credited here as "special effects art director") worked on THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and was most likely responsible for the atmospheric temple setting and the periodically popping up demon statue. The appropriately grungy cinematography is by Alex Phillips Jr. who had shot Sam Peckinpah's (also appropriately grungy) BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA in 1974. Erika Carlsson was a pretty big star in Mexico at the time (which explains her prominent billing on the MACABRA version) and here as the busty nurse who runs afoul of the hand has only one line as she shouts "NOoo...!"  at her demise.
    Although Whitman's mumbling attempted Irish accent comes across as inebriation at some points (which may have well been the case) and Eggar spends most the film staring bug eyed at the proceedings around her, both are pretty good here as they say their lines with much more conviction then the material warrants and giving the entire plot a gravies that almost seems out of place (even when they're trashing about while holding a rubber hand to their face). I've always had a fondness for this ever since I saw it on a double feature with DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE back in the early 80's and because of the weirdly bizarre proceedings and its whack-a-mole style plot DEMONOID is an entertaining exercise in low budget drive-in horror (and would make a wonderful dbl. feature with Oliver Stone's entertainingly bad bigger budgeted THE HAND from the same year).
     Frustratingly hard to view in recent years as DEMONOID's only U.S. release was the old Media VHS tape (which seemed to show up in every Mom & Pop video store in existence at the time) and a few years back there was a quasi-bootleg DVD release of the MACABRA cut in Europe. Vinegar Syndrome recently released it on a DVD/Blu dual pack that image-wise brings forth the WTF (?) story line with in startling clarity, plus it contains both cuts of the film along with some extras including an interview with Zacarias. The equally insane THE BEES is hopefully coming in 2016. Lucky patrons to the early showings of DEMONOID were given a "Demonoid Diploma" (which I would love to find).

All the above screen grabs are from the Vinegar Syndrome DVD

Hey, if E.T. is sold out you can always check out SATAN'S MISTRESS & DEMONOID !