Nearly as long as there have been motion pictures, filmmakers have wanted to use
color. The earliest attempts featured simple tinting or painting individual frames by hand,
such as in A Trip to the Moon, but there were surprisingly early attempts to get natural color,
some even predating that seminal sci-fi classic.
This turn of the century demonstration by Edward R. Turner is generally considered to
be the first true color film, and after a few other experiments made their way into theaters,
the Technicolor company was founded to explore a wide range of different processes
of projecting color film onto movie screens. By the mid-twenties, the so-called two-strip
process was used for films like 1923's The Ten Commandments and 1925's Phantom of the Opera,
though the colorized versions of these films have almost entirely been lost to time.
A few years later, Technicolor debuted its three-strip process,
which made for a fuller spectrum and crisper image that was used in several films through the
late twenties and early thirties, including Walt Disney's animated Silly Symphonies.
When famed King Kong director Merian C. Cooper saw one of these full-colored shorts,
he said he never wanted to make another film in black-and-white. Cooper helped launch
Pioneer Pictures under the guiding principle of exploring how best to utilize Technicolor.
Still, color was seen as something of a fad in the industry,
and though it was used to good effect in films like 1933's Mystery of the Wax Museum,
it never really caught on until 1939's Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind,
which together cemented color's place in cinema history. It was one year later when Merian C.
Cooper produced his own three-strip Technicolor film with the help of his long-time collaborator
Ernest Schoedsack, an impressive and often overlooked little genre gem called Dr. Cyclops.
Deep in the Peruvian jungle, a scientist named Dr. Thorkel needs help with a mysterious endeavor.
With his eyes damaged by continued exposure to deadly radiation, Thorkel invites a few fellow
scientists to find the flaw in his work, but after their services are no longer needed,
they stick around, much to Thorkel's annoyance. They suspect something bizarre is happening,
and they quickly discover to their horror that they have now become subjects in Thorkel's twisted
experiments, that the madman has figured out how to shrink living beings and has done so to
them. Can they escape Dr. Thorkel before he kills them all, or will the jungle be their graveyard?
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Thank you in advance. With that out the way, let's get back to the subject at hand.
With the success of other horror films throughout the 1930's, most notably the
Universal Monster movies, Paramount was eager to produce an anthology horror franchise of its own,
what they envisioned as a "weird-chiller series." The first film on the slate was to be based on a
script by the little-known Tom Kilpatrick and would feature humans of various sizes sharing
the screen, as had been proven possible in films like Bride of Frankenstein and The Devil-Doll.
Knowing they'd need a talented genre director who knew how to handle effects,
they turned to Ernest Schoedsack. Whether Schoedsack was hired before or after Merian C.
Cooper became an uncredited producer is unclear. It is worth noting, though, that Cooper was then
working at MGM, not Paramount, and I couldn't find a lot of information as to how much of a role
Cooper actually had on Dr. Cyclops, outside of lobbying for the use of three-strip Technicolor.
Regardless, the film is typically seen as primarily belonging to Schoedsack, not Cooper.
The cast is made up almost entirely of virtual unknowns, including Thomas Coley as Bill Stockton,
Janice Logan as Mary Robinson, Charles Halton as Dr. Bulfinch--
"Size represents the chief difference among mammals."
--Victor Kilian as Steve Baker, and Frank Yaconelli as Pedro.
"I am me, Pedro!"
One neat cameo is Frank Reicher--who previously played Captain Englehorn in King Kong--who
in Dr. Cyclops plays this professor.
However, the star of the picture is easily Albert Dekker as the mad scientist,
Dr. Thorkel, also known as Dr. Cyclops.
"Cyclops? Is that a reflection on my vision?"
"No, on your intellect. Cyclops too thought size and strength were sufficient."
Schoedsack, himself measuring at an impressive six feet five inches,
probably chose Dekker in part for his height, as Dekker stood at six feet three inches.
The actor would later have roles in The Killers, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Wild Bunch,
but Dr. Cyclops would forever remain his most well-known performance, and for good reason.
He does a great job with the mad scientist role, chewing the scenery just enough to be fun while
keeping that touch of violent unpredictability that makes for a frightening villain,
highlighted by his unexpected killing of one of the heroes early on.
According to Hollywood lore, this is because the actor himself was a bit nutty, to put it mildly.
"Now you can call me Cyclops, because I have one good eye."
Without getting too graphic or descriptive and risking demonitization,
I would urge you to look up the grisly facts of Dekker's death in 1968, because
ho boy, it's something else. I'll provide a link in the description to get you started.
Due to the need for precise special and visual effects, Dr. Cyclops was heavily storyboarded
prior to filming, which though not unheard of, was a pretty uncommon practice in those days.
Certain sets were meticulously recreated at a larger scale,
and there are some fun process shots that include a charmingly silly giant hand.
An experienced animal wrangler for his films, Schoedsack also incorporated a
lot of animal action in the film, from a hungry housecat to a grumpy alligator.
As shrinking effects go, Dr. Cyclops stands tall against any other film of the era, though it would
eventually be challenged by the likes of The Incredible Shrinking Man and Fantastic Voyage.
As such, the film did earn an Academy Award nomination for its effects, ultimately losing
to the exceptional work of The Thief of Bagdad, which also featured an oversized individual.
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Dr. Cyclops released in April of 1940. It had a good start to its theatrical run,
but it petered out and was largely considered a failure,
resulting in the abrupt halt to Paramount's plan for a weird-chiller series of films.
Actual figures are hard to come by, but the movie didn't do terribly. It's just
that it was an expensive and time-consuming production, with the Technicolor process and
carefully crafted effects work no doubt making up the bulk of the film's budget.
While it is sometimes referenced by cinemaphiles and maintains enough of a cult following to
occasionally feature on classic movie channels, Dr. Cyclops is mostly forgotten today, lacking
the cultural staying power of Schoedsack's primate-focused efforts or The Incredible
Shrinking Man. Modern reviews tend to pan the subpar acting from the majority of the cast--
"Can't you even get mad about it?"
"What's the use?"
--and though the effects are still admired, the film itself is largely written off as a schlocky,
pre-50's relic that doesn't compare to the sci-fi horrors of the previous decade.
Personally, I think that's unfair. I don't deny the acting--outside of Dekker's performance--is
pretty lacking, but the movie was well ahead of its time, both effects-wise and thematically. It
has a family-friendly veneer that is offset by a couple of brutal acts of bloodless violence,
and it has a deeply unsettling atmosphere of panic and hopelessness that
happens to foretell the psychological horror of the coming atomic age.
The entire plot relies on the novel and dangerous use of radiation for pure,
untethered scientific advancement, and as such, it seems to accurately anticipate the bomb that
would make its terrible debut on the world stage a little over five years later, not to mention
the uneasiness about science that would carry the sci-fi genre through the 1950's. The villain is
a literally myopic scientist with a need to push the envelope beyond ethical and moral standards.
Sure, from a strictly formulaic standpoint, the story is a bog-standard Frankenstein knock-off,
but I maintain that, if you dig deep enough beneath the surface, you'll find a movie that
reflects the unconscious paranoia of the time, when World War II was starting to pick up steam.
I also can't help but find it endearing, not despite its flaws but because of them.
It manages to be both an earnest horror film and a campy thrill-ride, and sometimes you
just have to embrace that paradox. Because of that, I am convinced that Dr. Cyclops doesn't
deserve to be dismissed, that it should always be remembered as a sci-fi classic.
And that's all for today, my fellow Earthlings. What are your favorite forgotten films from
the years leading up to World War II? Let me know in the comments, and while you're there,
don't forget to like and subscribe if you haven't already. Thank you for watching,
and until next time, when we'll get ahold of some really good nyborg, this is The Unapologetic Geek,
telling you to never be ashamed of what you love, as long as you're not hurting anybody.
"Well, look out, Ulysses. There's a hen about to peck you."
"Go away, you ridiculous fowl!"