Atlas Against the Cyclops (1961)

That was an excellent one.

disgusting, overrated, pointless

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

In the decades after Ulysses killed the Cyclops, his followers lead a peaceful life until a vengeful queen sets out to capture his heir. Like all evil queens in these movies, she's a brunette, and the good queen is a blonde. But there's more to the evil queen, pre-destined by fate to seek revenge, and she longs to escape her evil heritage in order to find love and redeem herself. That comes in the form of handsome Gordon Mitchell whose only goal is to prevent the infant heir from becoming hoer devours for the surviving cyclops. The evil queen's obviously over-ambitious and jealous suitor (think "Aladdin's" Jafar in a toga) stands in the way and you'll spend the film's running time looking forward to his come-uppance.Gladiator films are really comedys disguised as sword and sandal adventures. Go into these films with a razor-sharp tongue, because like midnight showings of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", you'll find yourself yelling sarcastic comments at the screen. That really is the only way to find fun in them as the quality is usually poor, dubbing terrible, and a predictability that some critics must have made a form critique for each of these and edited in individual comments appropriate for each film.

Pardon my confusion, but I sat down to what this Spaghetti Epic, or Sword and Sandal as they prefer to be called, which was called Atlas In The Land Of The Cyclops, I didn't understand why Atlas was being addressed as Maciste.This was nothing remarkable and not my taste at all, as the well and I mean well-worn story of a Greek hero saving the day and in this case, putting a baby upon his rightful throne. This was part of a huge series of films,. following Maciste, here played by Gordon Mitchell, credited here as Mitchell Gordon. Unfortunately, there was very little to recommended it if you're not already a hardened fan of the genre.The sound dubbing was typical, with one particular moment standing out, as two characters are talking with the baby in the scene, and the baby's crying sounding like another baby had turned up during the recording session and had inadvertently supplied the echoy dub.Personally, I find these films to be hard to watch or enjoy but there is certainly and audience for them. But do I feel that this genre is falling in to the abyss, not only of obscurity but most likely into oblivion. The print quality was appalling, leading me to believe that since these films have fallen out of copyright, that the negatives are but faded, decayed or outright destroyed.This was a 2.35:1 widescreen print in its day I would bet that nobody has seen that print in 40 years and are likely to NEVER see it. The colour was almost gone, faded to the negative's native browns and the sound mix, only mono in the original instance, was also mushy. Granted this was a very cheap DVD, with a 1.33:1 print, clearly, based on the title, the U.S. TV print and no doubt, a 16mm one at that.The Spaghetti Epics where always a cheap Italian alternative to Hollywood's Roman Epics, but with little demand and limited financial return for the genre, I can see the negatives disintegrating and these movies being lost forever. Is that a bad thing? YES: even though I may never willing watch one again, it is a crying shame that the art of these films may lost forever. NO film should be lost, as no book should be either, but unless remastering technology becomes cheap enough and the demand for what could be regarded as cult classics, as horror films such as Dawn Of The Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are, then I see little hope.

If viewers can get by the crummy existing home video transfers currently available ATLAS IN THE LAND OF THE CYCLOPS, as this is know in it's English language form, is actually a superior example of the Italian Peplum sword & sandal genre. The problem with the existing versions isn't with the film, it's that a glorious widescreen (2:35:1 Techniscope) popcorn movie has been cropped and pan/scanned down to an abysmal, color rotted 16mm fullscreen reduction print meant for television distribution back in the 1960s. There should be a Crimes Against Humanity tribunal charged with tracking down those responsible for ruining this and countless other movies like it, perhaps forcing them to watch endlessly looped repeats of those old SnackMaster infomercials as punishment. The original elements are probably long lost and like a butchered scrap of an old Michelangelo painting, this is all we have left. It's a horrible loss.But even in such a miserable state this is quite the little Hercules/Samson/Maciste style adventure, with big grinning Gordon Mitchell at his finest as another he-man wandering the ancient world and righting wrongs. This production actually had a decent budget for it's time as well, with a huge cast of extras and some genuinely clever effects sequences and strong man spectacle moments -- at one point Mitchell even rows an entire slave galley at ramming speed, by himself -- along with the requisite eye candy Veil Dance naval gazing for the dads, slave mistreatment scenes, lots of Pizza Pizza guards running around in plumed helmets, the ubiquitous moment where the hero gets to flirt with all the serving girls or share wine & grapes with the evil sexy queen who is responsible for the misdeeds that he must set to rights.What makes this one stand out is that all of that happens before Atlas, as he is called here, even squares off against a genuinely frightful looking 18 foot tall Cyclops down in it's pit for a duel to the death to save both the pretty princess and the rightful infant heir to the throne. The Cyclops rulez and for once the muscle bound hero is presented with a monster that's quite worthy of his talents. Their battle is a doozie and actually somewhat graphic for it's time. You'd really have to be a cold heartless bastard not to get a kick out of it, and as usual the clever way it was filmed puts any CGI rendered special effects sequence depicting similar events to shame.And as usual the big lummox of a hero rides off into the sunset at the end while the adoring crowds cheer his heroism & derring-do, something that quite frankly the world could use a bit more of these days. I'd encourage anyone with a love for fantasy adventure/action films to seek this baby out, and you can: It's available on one of those 50 Movie Packs called "The Warriors Collection" easily found on Amazon.com for a few dollars, featuring forty nine other movies more or less just like it, which would take you about two weeks of non-stop viewing to get through it. And people say getting snowed in sucks, I call it an opportunity for cheesy Euro man-beef fantasy indulgence with an exceptionally cool monster to boot. Ignore the crummy picture quality, pop a bucket of popcorn and enjoy!8/10

This film was retitled to ATLAS AGAINST THE CYCLOPS when it was released in the United States, but our hero is still called "Maciste" in the film. In this one Maciste battles an assortment of bad guys and monsters including the cyclops of the title. Maciste rescues an infant from the cyclops before he dispatches with the one eyed menace. As far these spear and sandal epics go, this one isn't too bad. It has enough action to hold one interest. It isn't as "talky" as many of the other bigger budgeted entries in the genre. Flashback scenes from this film turned in up in the later Maciste adventure, THE WITCHES CURSE which started Kirk Morris. I would like to see this film in colour, but for some reason all video versions that I have found are in B&W.