Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Colin Christian Right from the start this film has a unique visual style,Art Deco and jungle film,the opening scene is visually stunning,a dark room strobing light and a mysterious figure,it grabbed me right away,and then the striking appearance of Dr Thorkel and his cold,calculating,even murderous intent,all in the name of science,with no boundaries ,it had me interested in the first few minutes. Once the other Biologists arrive in their mistaken belief that Thorkel needed their help in his experiments,their indignation at their mistreatment,it's a great set up for what s to come. I love the scenes of Thorkel in his radiation suit,metallic silver,with that green radiation glow ? I find it visually compelling,a joy to watch,unlike anything else at that time apart from those Fleisher Superman Cartoons... The story is interesting enough,I'm not bored for a second,but it is Thorkel,his character,and the beautiful visuals that surround his actions that I find so enjoyable,and will watch time and time again,he s easily one of the greatest mad scientists on film,I never tire of this movie,entertaining right from the start to the last frame. Fantastic film.

Spikeopath Dr. Cyclops is directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack and written by Tom Kilpatrick. It stars Albert Dekker, Thomas Coley, Janice Logan, Charles Halton and Victor Kilian. Music is collectively arranged by Ernst Toch, Gerard Corbanara and Albert Hay Malotte, and cinematography is by Henry Sharp.A group of scientists are requested to join Dr. Alexander Thorkel (Dekker) at his remote laboratory in the Peruvian jungle. Once there they find the doctor is losing his sight but working on something very secretive. Soon enough they wish they hadn't stuck around to find out just what it is he is up to.One of the better of the "mad scientist" movies from the classic era of sci-fi schlockers, Dr. Cyclops boasts nifty effects work, lovely Technicolor and a superb lead performance by Dekker. As in the best traditions of such genre fare, the science is mad as a box of frogs, which here involves miniaturisation. Thorkel pushes the boundaries of his work and this puts his "guests" into grave danger as they enter a small world beset with everyday perils.It's never truly a horror film, as evidenced by the jaunty musical score that accompanies much of the "little people's" adventures as they strive to survive, and this is something that has taken first time viewers by surprise and disappointed them. This really is a picture asking you to enjoy yourself with a smile on your face whilst appreciating the super craft involved for the era.There's no brainy botherings or statements of metaphoric substance, while away from Dekker the acting is hardly high grade stuff. But transport yourself into this bonkers sci-fi adventure and a good time is assured at the very least. 7.5/10

John W Chance How many science fiction films were made in color before 1940? Unless we include 'color tinted' films from the silent era, the answer is ONE -- the recently released two-strip version of 'Dr. X' (1932). 'Dr. Cyclops' is an 'A' list SF film, it's in gorgeous Technicolor, and has state of the art special effects. It is highly recommended for those three reasons.Dr. Thorkel (Albert Dekker) has been using radium extracted from a rich underground vein to miniaturize animals. We see the shrinking room and machine (the 'condenser'), the deep welled vein and a strange looking extracting device-- and the green glow of them in operation, all nicely done. He invites three scientists to confirm some mysterious part of his work, and then after their having done so, dismisses them the same day. Outraged, they stick around, until finally Dr. Thorkel locks them in the shrinking room and miniaturizes them. They spend the rest of the film escaping and then trying to kill him.I first saw this in black and white on TV over 40 years ago, when few programs were shown in color. I didn't know it was filmed in color! While the movie had a great premise and effects, I was a little underwhelmed by the acting, and it didn't seem particularly exciting. Watching it today, it still has those weaknesses. Though Albert Dekker does a fine villainous job, as do Charles Halton (Rupert Bulfinch*), veteran of 186 bit parts in movies and TV, and Victor Kilian (Steve) with 139 to his credit, the rest of the small cast is flat, colorless, and uninteresting. (Paul Fix does get one great scene at the beginning.)The pacing is fine and the shrunken heroes are placed in a number of perilous situations. My 8 and 10 year old grandchildren were transfixed during those parts. You do enjoy watching the entire film; you just wish that Janice Logan, Thomas Colley, and Frank Yaconelli could have had a wider range of facial expressions and acting skills as well as better and richer dialog.Charles Halton had a long career playing professors, judges, lawyers and other 'stiff' types; Victor Kilian can be seen as the (uncredited) professor leading a crew inside the Earth in 'Unknown World' (1951), and as a featured player in the great TV 'soap' 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman' (1976-1977).The film has great Technicolor photography, matte shots, with mostly sharp rear projection that makes it seem as if the 13 inch shrunken humans are actually in the same room with Dr. Thorkel. We get the heroes filmed in giant sets, something done in other films such as the fantastic 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' (1957) with Grant William's great tortured face.We have to be grateful for large favors. The amazing Technicolor and effects place this one up high. Some less than scary music (for example, flighty flutes and staccato violins during running sequences) and 'B' list actors in an 'A' level production reduce my score down to a 6 and a half.* This presumably is a little joke reference to 'Bulfinch's Mythology' the standard work of the time on ancient mythology that included the story of Ulysses and Cyclops.

Robert J. Maxwell Albert Dekker is a reclusive mad scientist hiding away in a laboratory in the Peruvian jungle. Boy, are three scientists back in the states surprised to get an invitation from Dekker to join him. The three surprised scientists are Charles Holton, Janice Logan, and Thomas Coley. They make the arduous journey to Peru and are joined by a lowbrow miner, Victor Kilian, for reasons the script doesn't bother to deal with. At Dekker's laboratory they meet Pedro, Frank Yaconelli, a lovable and sometimes comic Peruvian peasant. I knew the minute I saw him that he was a tostada. That's the function of minorities in movies like this. Dekker, in a padded suit and thick spectacles, greets them and asks them to look through his microscope and tell him what they see. "Iron crystals." Thank you -- and good-bye. The visitors are aghast. They made this trip just so that they could spend 30 seconds looking through Dekker's microscope? Well -- yes. The scientists are offended and curious about what's going on. They discover that Dekker has built his lab next to a super-rich vein of radium ore, which he is using in experiments that shrink living organisms. When Dekker discovers that they have discovered the nature of his discovery, he shrinks them too. Alas, he finds that his now-shrunken five human beings are beginning to grow imperceptibly back to their normal size, so he asphyxiates one, blasts another with his shotgun, and pursues the remaining three until, with pluck and ingenuity, they send Dekker tumbling into a bottomless well. They grow back to normal size and return to civilization, vowing not to tell anyone because who would believe them? Who would believe them indeed? The set designer was obviously influenced by Universal's earlier monster movies because Dekker's lab is a crumbling stone affair like Frankenstein's castle. Most of the movie consists of the tiny humans running around, trying to escape. First they are dressed in white, toga-like strips of cloth, except for the Peruvian peasant who wears what appear to be diapers. Later, they appear in designer clothes of various colors, still modeled after the Romans, nicely tailored for Janice Logan, who looks awfully cute prancing around in her little ensemble.It's too bad she's not much of an actress, but then nobody in the story is particularly magnetic. Dekker huffs and puffs and does everything but cackle like a maniac. Thomas Coley, as the male lead, is a lankylooking galoot, to borrow a phrase, whose performance is actually embarrassing. To be fair, nobody could do much with the dialog. For some reason the main players don't use contractions when they speak, so that "can't" is always "can not", and "I'll" is always "I will." I don't know how important any of that is, though, or whether it was important at all to contemporary audiences. The special effects are the thing. And considering the period, they're not too bad: mattes, rear projection, over-sized sets -- sometimes a combination of effects. Not as good as "King Kong," but still an extravaganza for the 1930s. And it's in Technicolor too. (Supervised by the ubiquitous Natalie Kalmus, who never contributed anything to Technicolor except her name.) Winton Hoch, a real scientist, had a hand in the photography. He was later to win awards with films like John Ford's "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon." The runaways survive all kinds of threats or, in some cases, they don't. They're attacked by cats, alligators, a berserk blind man, and they're threatened by a chicken. Only Pedro's faithful dog plays it straight with them, man's best friend after all.One wonders if the people who made "The Incredible Shrinking Man" saw this film. It's difficult to believe they didn't. The improvised togas look familiar, and there's that pet cat, Satana, who tries to eat them in a frightening scene.An amusing diversion.