PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*
CYCLOPS was the first of two Maciste
films in which the hero keeps his real name, even in the English
dubbing, but is called “Atlas” only in the title. I reviewed the
other one here.
This is one of the more overtly
“mythological” of the Maciste films, not to mention its having a
somewhat better than average budget. According to an introductory crawl, the story
takes place “centuries” after heroic Ulysses’ conflicts with
the witch Circe and the cannibal cyclops Polyphemus. In the epic poem
the sorceress and the monster have nothing in common but Ulysses, and
the hero actually departs Circe’s island on relatively friendly
terms. However, the movie claims that a curse was passed down to the
descendants of Ulysses’s two enemies, obliging these descendants to
seek revenge on the line of Ulysses. Apparently Ulysses’s line has
prospered until the movie’s time, at which point Queen Capys
(Cuban-born beauty Chelo Alonso) sends an army to besiege the city
where Ulysses’s last descendants rule. The city is duly sacked and
its king slain by Capys’ general Iphitos, but the soldiers can’t
find either Queen Penope (like “Penelope,” I suppose) or her
never-named baby. (The rugrat would later grow to become none other than famed male supermodel
Fabio). A servant takes the baby into the wilderness, while Penope
hides in plain sight by masquerading as one of the women abducted and
taken to Capys’s city.
Capys plans to end the curse’s hold
on her by feeding the last spawn of Ulysses to the unnamed cyclops
descendant of Polyphemus. She keeps the big one-eyed critter in a pit
under her city, which makes him seem not a little like a Minotaur. Despite
her contemplating this dastardly deed, Capys doesn’t particularly
want to be an evil queen; she just wants to be finished with her
enslavement to Circe’s obligation. (Note: though in archaic
mythology “Capys” is usually a man’s name, the writer showed a
little mythic creativity, since both “Capys” and “Circe” can
mean “hawk.”)
Ever-wandering Maciste (Gordon
Mitchell) stumbles across the servant and the babe and immediately
decides to right all the wrongs. He chances across Capys, praying in
a temple for guidance, and she falls hard for him. He later wanders
to the city, gets in some fights with soldiers, suffers the torment
of a deathtrap, and finally gets succored by Capys. Maciste shows no
interest in Capys, though he does sweet-talk her a little for the
sake of his mission. Iphitos, though, figures out that the big hulk
is an enemy, and with the help of a black bodybuilder (whose build is
heavier than that of Mitchell), Iphitos drugs Maciste and finds out
the location of the hidden child. Though Capys is losing her
enthusiasm for the sacrifice, Iphitos, who loves her, wants to give
the child and its mother to the Cyclops to end the queen’s torment.
Eventually Maciste must seek to rescue the innocents from the
cannibal monster—filmed so as to make him look twice as tall as the
hero—and liberating the city from the villains.
CYCLOPS has no shortage of
muscleman-stunts. Maciste fights both a lion and the African
muscle-guy, and rows a huge ship across the ocean all by himself—but
the first two stunts are spoiled by listless direction. The standout
stunt is yet another one of those tug-o-war scenarios, but this time
the hero is forced to stand on planks over a pit of lions, with ropes
tied to each of his wrists—and on the other end of each rope, a
gang of muscle-guys competes, trying to pull Maciste off his perch
and into the pit. In an imaginative touch, one gang of guys is
composed only of black men, and the other, only of white men.
Mitchell acquits himself well enough
during the stunts, but otherwise he makes a very bland Maciste.
Alonso’s Capys is one of her best roles, and one almost wishes her
character had been allowed to reform—even though she’s possibly
eliminated because wandering Maciste could never be tied down.
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