Dr. Cyclops

Horror movies tend to get overlooked at Oscar time, I think, with the exception of the effects awards. An example of a film that TCM was in fact able to show during 31 Days of Oscar because it got a Visual Effects nomination is Dr. Cyclops.

As we saw a few months back when I reviewed The Invisible Ray, radium was considered something of a great hope in terms of its potential medical uses, despite the radiation also being extremely dangerous. The ore was often found in exotic out of the way locations which, in the case of Dr. Cyclops means the Amazon jungle of Peru. Dr. Thorkel (Albert Dekker) is working on the good use of radium together with Dr. Mendoza (Paul Fix). But, Thorkel is beginning to lose his eyesight along with going mad, the latter of which Mendoza is noticing. So Thorkel kills Mendoza, and writes to America to get research help.

The American institute sends Dr. Mary Robinson (Janice Logan) and Dr. Rupert Bulfinch (Charles Halton). They suspect there might be some sort of major discovery, so they engage Bill Stockton (Thomas Coley), a mineralogist who can't really refuse the offer because of the debts he's racked up. Getting overland to Thorkel's jungle research station is going to be difficult, and the pack animal owner Steve Baker (Victor Killian) is only going to rent the animals if he's able to go along. Rounding out the cast is Thorkel's servant Pedro (Frank Yaconelli).

The group gets to Dr. Thorkel's station, only to learn that all he wanted was for Bulfinch or Robinson to look at a couple of slides because of Thorkel's declining eyesight. This, along with other things such as bones that might be the harbinger of a new species, pique the group's curiosity, which is heightened when Bill determines this is the motherlode for some of the best pitchblende (the ore of radium and uranium) out there. And, Thorkel has learned how to harness it much more precisely than anybody before him.

Except there's the issue of how he's planning to use those radium rays. Thorkel has been experimenting on reducing the size of man in order to decrease man's environmental impact. But anybody figuring this out is going to be a danger to Thorkel's insane plans. And now this group of interlopers from America has come and seen those plans! So Thorkel locks them in the radiation chamber and shrinks them down to size, with the plan to kill them after subjecting them to suitable horrors since the group knows what's going to come and Thorkel is Bond-villianous in the way he reveals his plans. He could step on them, or let the cat kill them the way it kills mice.

Of course, the group isn't about to let any of this happen, and try to figure out a way to fight back. They being human, they really are the most dangerous game. Also, being miniature, it's a good excuse for the movie to engage in creative special effects, leading up to the climax.

Dr. Cyclops is another of those movies where they splurged on special effects, and Technicolor, to the point that the screenplay suffers. This isn't the most original plot by any means, and the cast shows that having the best actors in it wasn't that terribly important. Still, because of the effects, even a recycled plot works well enough to entertain. Only the effects that involve the players against rear-projection photography don't work so well, since the backgrounds look grainy from being so blown up. That's a minor objection. Dr. Cyclops, while not being great, succeeds at what it sets out to do.