Post by Chicago Jake on Nov 5, 2011 23:57:41 GMT -6
Tonight, Svengoolie screened a showing of Ernest B. Schoedsack's "Dr. Cyclops" from 1940, starring nobody you're likely to have heard of. I wasn't sure if I should include this in my "classic horror series" or my "cheesy horror series," so I sort of flipped a coin. By today's standards, it is quite cheesy. But for its time, the special effects were top notch, and I've read that it was the first ever color science fiction/horror movie. It certainly looked much more modern that its 1940 release date led me to expect.
The plot was relatively straightforward: A mad scientist is experimenting with radiation, using strange radioactive minerals he has found in the jungle. But his eyesight is failing, and he has trouble looking through his microscope. So he sends for some colleagues to join him. Once they arrive and solve his problem for him, he has no more use for them. So he uses his radioactive minerals to SHRINK them down to Barbie-doll size!
Of course the colleagues (several dudes and of course one beautiful chick), now clad in makeshift togas made out of handkerchiefs, try to escape before the mad scientist kills them. And we end up with an "Incredible Shrinking Man" type story, mini-man against nature, but also mini-man against mad scientist.
The mad scientist isn't really named Dr. Cyclops, of course; but one of his shrunken victims calls him that, in reference to how Odysseus and his men were held captive by the one-eyed giant in ancient Greece. I fully expected them to drive a spear through his eye. They didn't, exactly, but they DID do the modern equivalent, so the analogy was apt.
Anyway, as horror/syfy flicks go, this one was pretty okay. Not great, but a fun romp for fans of the genre.
Also - the leader of the victim scientists was as close as any of the cast came to being famous; he played the grumpy bank examiner in "It's a Wonderful Life." How's that for credentials!........Jake
www.imdb.com/title/tt0032412/
The plot was relatively straightforward: A mad scientist is experimenting with radiation, using strange radioactive minerals he has found in the jungle. But his eyesight is failing, and he has trouble looking through his microscope. So he sends for some colleagues to join him. Once they arrive and solve his problem for him, he has no more use for them. So he uses his radioactive minerals to SHRINK them down to Barbie-doll size!
Of course the colleagues (several dudes and of course one beautiful chick), now clad in makeshift togas made out of handkerchiefs, try to escape before the mad scientist kills them. And we end up with an "Incredible Shrinking Man" type story, mini-man against nature, but also mini-man against mad scientist.
The mad scientist isn't really named Dr. Cyclops, of course; but one of his shrunken victims calls him that, in reference to how Odysseus and his men were held captive by the one-eyed giant in ancient Greece. I fully expected them to drive a spear through his eye. They didn't, exactly, but they DID do the modern equivalent, so the analogy was apt.
Anyway, as horror/syfy flicks go, this one was pretty okay. Not great, but a fun romp for fans of the genre.
Also - the leader of the victim scientists was as close as any of the cast came to being famous; he played the grumpy bank examiner in "It's a Wonderful Life." How's that for credentials!........Jake
www.imdb.com/title/tt0032412/