Dr. Cyclops (1940)

Dr. Cyclops (1940)

King Kong (1933) collaborators Ernest B. Schoedsack (who directed) and Merian C. Cooper (who co-produced with Dale Van Every) created this below average sci-fi horror movie with Academy Award nominated Special Effects; Tom Kilpatrick wrote the screenplay. Filmed in Technicolor the drama involves a mad scientist genius named Dr. Alexander Thorkel (Albert Dekker) the renowned expert on organic molecular structure; he’s summoned a team of experts (played by Thomas Coley Janice Logan and Charles Halton) to his South American jungle abode where he has discovered the world’s largest uranium deposit. The three scientists along with their mule herder (Victor Kilian) and the doctor’s local assistant Pedro (Frank Yaconelli) soon learn of Thorkel’s startling discovery: using a powerful radiation condenser he can shrink living objects! Not wanting his secrets exposed the five become the bespeckled doctor’s first human subjects. The rest of the film consists of the ill-sighted doctor (one of his eyeglasses’s lenses is broken hence the "cyclops" moniker) his cat and even an alligator chasing the foot tall people around his laboratory and the jungle around it before the inevitable (Thorkel falls to his death). Of course a couple of his shrunken victims are killed beforehand and conveniently the shrinking "wears off" such that (a few months later) the people can return to their normal size and lives in the end. What may have really been something in its day comes off (and looks) pretty tame even silly today (unlike the original Kong).

Purchase this DVD collection now at