The Cyclops (1957)

This is one of those movies you would see on in the middle of the night, or hosted by a horror host back in the day.  I don't think your average person would go around seeking this out, but I have some fond memories of seeing this movie in the middle of the night, and that's when you should be watching it.  With all the bad but kind of great effects this has, it really is a joy to watch.

A woman named Susan hires a crew of guys to help her find her missing fiance who crashed three years ago in a remote area in Mexico.  She travels with Russ, a friend of her boyfriend Bruce.  She also travels with Lee, a pilot, and Marty, a guy looking for uranium to sell.  They travel in a four person plane, so just in case they find Bruce, they won't have room to take him back.  He crashed in restricted air space so Susan attempts to get a permit from the local governor so she can go freely there.  I know, exciting adventure movie right?  Anyway he says no and wants to send a security guard with to make sure they fly back.  So they start up the plane, Marty punches the dude in the face, and they take off without him.

They finally get to their destination and right away Marty is getting readings on his science device thingy... I forgot what it was called because I really don't care, informing him there is uranium around.  Russ sees a giant lizard but assumes his eyes are playing tricks on him.  Marty decides he wants to go back and stake their claim on the uranium, but Susan isn't willing since she hasn't been looking for Bruce for more than five minutes and everyone agrees to camp out in this dangerous radiation filled desert.  Russ confesses his love for Susan and shortly after, they see a dog sized rat get killed by a twelve foot bird.  Unfazed by this, Susan refuses to believe that her husband would have died in this harsh environment.  So they go camping since it is kind of late.  Shortly into that they hear growling from a distance.  Lee wants to go get some meat to eat, but Russ informs them of what he and Susan saw earlier.

Lee, Russ, and Susan go to see what that is and Marty stays behind.  What they discover is a giant tarantula that mostly just walks away, and two giant lizards fighting so they run away.  Everyone wants to stay except Marty who is saying they are crazy, and rightly so.  Russ goes out later and gets some lizard tissue from the lizard that lost, but isn't dead apparently.  He looks at it and discovers that the animals are getting big because of radiation and they will likely never stop growing.  He also mentions that staying here for another couple days will affect them due to radiation.  So everyone agrees to leaving... except Susan.

So in the morning Susan goes off on her own and finds the wing of Bruce's plane.  But she also discovers the titular character of the film.  She screams as the cyclops caries her off.  The men go after her and find her in a cave, hysterical, and surrounded by Bruce's belongings as well as plane bits.  The Cyclops traps them in the cave with a big boulder, and he peaks over the boulder, yelling at them.  After discussing the futility of their situation, Marty tries to leave so Russ punches him in the face and Marty stops.  The Cyclops then comes back and peaks over the boulder to growl some more.  Susan is elected to talk to the Cyclops due to her feminine voice being more soothing and it seems to help, until Marty grabs a rifle and shoots the Cyclops.  The Cyclops gets angry and attacks Marty who we then assume is dead because they say so, but you don't really see it.  

The Cyclops then grabs Susan and the rest of the frame in the movie and takes them away to out of the cave where he tries to talk to her until a giant snake attacks him.  The snake is actually kind of cute.  So the Cyclops gently places the snake off screen with a thud sound effect in order to defeat it.  In the struggle, the rest of the crew tries to get away.

There's more,  about ten or fifteen minutes more in fact, but I don't want to give away the "Big Reveal".  However, if you can't tell where this movie is going or what the ending is going to be about twenty minutes in, you should probably worry about yourself.  The story is insanely obvious.  That doesn't stop it from being fun though.  It isn't the kind of movie made for deep thought provoking messages or even heavy critique, which makes this and pretty much every review of it somewhat obsolete from the start.  When you see the poster, and possibly a few stills from this movie, you are going to know whether or not it is for you.

I enjoy this type of thing.  It would be a cool late night viewing type of movie, if you like cheap 1950's atomic Sci-Fi or Horror stuff.  There are some effects that are kind of fun and a bunch of not so great stuff.  The movie is predictable but not in an unlikable way.  With that being said, I'd like to show a quick visual of the sort of effects I am talking about and let you decide for yourself.  It is also from the end of the movie, but it is likely you don't care about spoilers for a movie this old right?  The movie is also just over an hour long so it really isn't painful or anything.  I say give it a watch.

Mutant/Night Shadows 1984

It has been a while since I posted something.  This requires a bit of explanation.  It turns out that I have a real life outside of the hobby of posting reviews, and sometimes that gets in the way.  Probably more so because I don't do this for a job or anything.  Enough of that though, let us get to the action.

Mutant, also known as Night Shadows and a few other things, is a 1984 horror film starring a guy named Wings Hauser.  What an awesome name by the way.  We need more people named ridiculous things.  How about Jet Panzer? That sounds pretty action like.  Anyway I saw this film recently and thought I would fill you in as it seems this movie isn't talked about too often.

The movie is about two brothers named Josh (Wings) and Mike who are on vacation, spending time with each other for the first time in eight years.  They decide to go somewhere and start driving recklessly, which invokes the wrath of a group of rednecks in a truck that runs them off the road.  So sadly they have to go to redneck town in order to get their car fixed.  The first thing they do is find a dead body, and Mike wants to report it.  They go to a bar asking around for the police where they run into the rednecks from before who start a bar brawl.  In this fight they are nearly killed by these maniacs when a Sheriff finally stops them.  Mike informs the Sheriff of the dead guy, but when they go to find him, some other bum is laying where he was.  Then Mike and Josh stay at a local Bed and Breakfast where Mike is attacked from under his bed by someone emitting a lot of smoke.

When Josh wakes up bright and early at the crack of noon to get his car fixed so he can leave this crazy town where he was nearly killed twice in the duration of a night, he discovers Mike is gone.  So he goes into town and the only place open is a bar.  Here he discovers that many people in town are getting sick.  This leads to an "investigation" where we learn that people in town are turning into mutant zombie things and attacking people.

They seem to bleed yellow acid stuff from openings in their hands and they are made from toxic waste.  All this leads to a few people in town running from these creatures.  Much of them are townsfolk who attack them in one long stand off moment at the end of the film.

I feel I have spoiled too much already, especially for a movie that has likely not been seen too many times.  So let's tell you what I think of it.  The movie is pretty slow paced, even though things seem to happen often early on.  It is however, largely just talking.  This isn't a problem for me but I could see someone giving up on this movie easily.  It really has the feel of a 50's horror film where people talk about vague science and investigate until a big finale of sorts.  If I had watched it some other time I may not have enjoyed it a whole lot, but I was kind of in the mood for that sort of thing so I was lucky.  

There is virtually no violence to speak of, and no ladies or dudes get nekkid in it so you can't really look forward to that.  The thing with this movie is that throughout it I felt it had some charm I couldn't put my finger on.  This is the kind of movie you show to a seven year old to scare them because it doesn't have much R rated content, but that doesn't mean it is stupid or anything.  Nothing in the movie is truly good or bad, it just happens to be okay.  The most stellar thing about it is the soundtrack by Richard Band which is very appropriate and fun throughout.  I don't know why but the whole thing was just kind of fun.  If you are looking for a bad movie you can laugh at, this isn't it.  If you are looking for a great scary movie, this isn't it either.  But if you are just looking for something half decent that you haven't seen and are bored... here you go.

Just a quick note here.  When I did my Dolemite review, (My least viewed review.) I mentioned that I plan on reviewing all the movies in the Dolemite Experience Box.  I still plan on doing that, but I will do movies like this in between as well.