The Cyclops

Another of my most recent purchases from Sci-Fi Station - I finally watched this after making plans about a year ago (after reading about it while writing up the post for The Amazing Colossal Man). This was Bert I. Gordon's warm-up for his more famous Colossal Man movie. It's not as bad as I thought it would be since I'd read that it's one of the worst monster films of the fifties. Gordon actually manages to present some sophisticated characterizations for this type of fare.

The 4 main characters - 3 men & a woman - use a single-engine airplane to fly into a remote jungle valley in Mexico in search of the woman's fiancee. At least two of the guys are somewhat deficient, par for the course in these films. Lon Chaney Jr plays the prime troublemaker; his goal is to stake a claim for the uranium he feels sure he'll find there. Tom Drake plays an unemployable pilot. James Craig, playing a scientist, has the hots for the woman, played by Gloria Talbott. They manage to land safely but are 'not out of the woods' so to speak.
It's not long before they start to see giant animal life - a huge rodent is picked off by a giant hawk (this gigantic bird never flies out of the valley?). Later, we see a giant spider and a giant lizard. Then, enter the 5th character, the woman's fiancee, now a 25-foot tall one-eyed horror thanks to the radiation in this valley, which affects the pituitary glands of living things. Much of the action in the latter half takes place in the giant man's cave, a direct steal from the story of Odysseus and his encounter with a one-eyed cyclops.