I’ve mentioned this before alongside Bert I. Gordon’s The Cyclops (which we’re actually gonna review this year), and i since came in possession of a restored DVD copy of it, so let’s follow up the teasing, by tackling what’s actually a very important B-movie, with 1940’s Dr Cyclops, directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack, better known for something called King Kong released 7 years prior.
Ah yeah this it’s a bit of classic, even though nowhere as good or influential as King Kong (few films are ever as such, after all), not only for its status as the first true american sci-fi film in Technicolor, but because it did establishing a trend that would continue for a decade and that the 50s would flip around leading to 1957’s The Incredible Shrinking Man, as in shrinking people to minuscule dimensions, in this case by a mad scientist that wants to shrink people in order to reduce the impact of humanity on the enviroment.
And doesn’t take well when a group of people that go on an expedition to the jungles of the Amazon encounter his lab and instead of leaving (after basically being told to fuck off immediatly), keep snooping about his uranium reserves and such, so human free guinea pigs for his experiments!
So yeah, this is your grandpa Downsizing, in many ways, since this one kinda wastes its accidentally progressive themes and ideas in clichès like uranium being this magic substance capable of all, a cheesy and kinda anticlimactic ending, horrible dialogues and a dull cast aside from Albert Dekker, he plays the mad scientist Alexander Thorkel, and he’s quite fun to watch, definitely the best performance in the movie.
It’s not a good movie and kind of a jumbled mess of a script and direction, but dang the effects (done with composite shots and tricks similar to King Kong, as one would expect given what we already discussed) are still amazing for the time, and aside some obvious composite shots like the cat hissing at the shrunken people through the cacti that are hilarious, the effects aged incredibly well, putting to shame many of the shlock it would follow a decade and plus later, and i gotta say the Technicolor is still pretty snazzy for a 1940 film.
And yes, the obvious question of why the fuck is this called “Dr. Cyclops” when the character it refers to isn’t a one-eyed pirate but a scientist with glasses?
But why, because at one point the shrunken captives of his manage to break one of the lens of his glasses, so yeah, there’s your “Doctor Cyclops”. XD
And the main good scientist dubbing him “cyclops” as in insult, because Poliphemus was arrogant, Torkel does actually have not very good sight despite the glasses, and i guess his silouhette with the thick glasses he wears (often enhanced by having goggles of some sort on top of his glasses) kinda looks like he has one eye… maybe.
Yeah, it does eventually feature tiny men escaping from a giant that hunts them down, so the Polyphemus thing isn’t completely random… it’s MOSTLY random anyway and kinda forced, as in they locked into that title early despite it making very little to no sense, heck, even the poster commits to the “cyclops thing” despite showing Thorkel with a normal pair of glasses.
It’s the kind of “so bad it’s actually good fun” cult classic that looks fantastic for the time and it’s still a technically impressive feat, so i’m kinda surprised Thorkel didn’t become a mad scientist figure of note or at least remembered by some fans of the oldie…..but then again him looking like an accidental yet priescent US propaganda charicature of a “jap” was most likely the reason for eventually becoming forgotten alongside actual Yellow Peril stereotypes.
Still, its worth a look for genre aficionados, it’s a fun time and quite the “looker”, indeed.
Wise Cafe (International) 