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.

Terror of Mechagodzilla

I was very into Godzilla movies as a kid.  I tried my best to see them whenever they were on TV no matter what time they were on.  I also rented them when available at rental stores.  For whatever reason, one of the Godzilla films that sticks out the most for me is Terror of Mechagodzilla.  This is indeed a sequel to the previous Mechagodzilla film, but like most of these movies, you can catch on pretty quick.

The film stars off with a montage of Godzilla history, some a little inaccurate, but awesome regardless because right away you get to see monsters fighting.  Most importantly you get to see the most awesome part of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla where Mechagodzilla shoots Godzilla a bunch and Godzilla sprays blood all over the place.  Then Godzilla uses some kind of magnetic radiation power to shoot the rockets out of his body and keep Mechagodzilla grounded so he can behead him.  It is important to know that Mecha was created by Aliens that want to take over the world.

Anyway in this movie some scientists are looking for the remains of Mechagodzilla in the ocean when they are attacked by some Aquatic Godzilla-like Dinosaur known as Titanosaurus, who doesn't look like a Titanosaurus.  They are attacked and killed which leads a team of biologists to investigate this incident with Interpol.  I forgot to mention the Sub is body slammed into the ocean and explodes.

The biologist main character in this movie is called Ichinose.  Meanwhile, aliens disguised as Japanese people who look that way without any real disguising want to destroy Tokyo and make a Neo-Tokyo with the help of a shunned scientists named Mafune, who believed he could control a dinosaur he was looking for known as Titanosaurus with some device he made.  Got all that?  Well it gets weirder from there.  You see, Mafune has a daughter named Katsura who helped him with his research.  Sadly due to some faulty wiring, Katsura was shocked to death during an experiment and the Aliens revived her by making her a cyborg.  This makes Mafune in debt to the Aliens.  Combine that with his hatred for mankind for not believing in his life's work and it leads him to help the Aliens with a new Mechagodzilla as well as controlling Titanosaurus.

Interpol and the scientists now believe Mafune and want his help to find this creature, but they are too late.  This does introduce Ichinose to Katsura however and the two fall in love basically over a couple meetings and one date.  So Katsura warns Ichinose about going after Titanosaurus but he doesn't listen.  They build a better Sub and narrowly escape dying.  This meeting in the water does help them to discover that Titanosaurus is weak against super sonic waves, so they build a sonic oscillator.

Ichinose tells Katsura this and they are overheard by the Aliens.  Then when Titanosaurus and Godzilla are about to fight in Tokyo the Aliens capture Katsura and put Mechagodzilla's controls in her stomach.  Then they also capture Ichinose and tie him up in the control room where Katsura now controlled by the Alien's lackey Tsuda, is controlling Mechagodzilla and Titanosaurus with her eye beams and a computer, all while Mafune looks on in the same room.

So anyway, with less than a half hour left Mechagodzilla finally comes out to play.  What follows is a damn fine Godzilla battle where the King of Monsters is clearly outmatched.

Ichinose gets free and goes after Tsuda while this one Interpol dude who is in the movie a lot comes in and shoots Mafune and Katsura.  Once Mafune and Tsuda are taken care of, Katsura can think again.  Interpol and the scientists finally use their oscillator to stop Titanosaurus for a bit so Godzilla can focus on Mecha.  Ichinose holds the hurt Katsura and says, "Even if you are a cyborg, I still love you."  Katsura however reveals that the controls are in her stomach and shoots herself with a ray gun.  This allows Godzilla to take down the monsters, blow up the escaping Alien ships, and return to the sea once again.

This movie is awesome, at least by Godzilla standards.  There is so much monsters and models destroyed, as well as monsters fighting.  Just as importantly, the human story is equally ridiculous which makes it so much more watchable than some of the other movies.  The main problem with these films is that for the most part the humans follow the same formula, even in this one sort of, so that story always seems like it gets in the way of the crazy big monster fights that everyone wants to see.  Luckily the story is so entertain and strange in this one that the whole movie really feels worth the watch.  I like scientists walking around in rooms and discussing things by the way.  Pacing isn't always an issue for me as long as something is going on.  Sameness is the problem with most Godzilla films, but not so with Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, and Terror of Mechagodzilla.  Really I love to watch all of them, but if I were to introduce someone to Godzilla and I didn't start with the original, this is probably a great place to start.