Maciste contre le cyclope

Centuries after Ulysses outwitted enchantress Circe and blinded the cyclops Polyphemus, beauty Capys (Chelo Alonso), evil queen of Sadok, is cursed to take revenge, searching for baby Agisander, the last of Ulysses' descendents, who is being protected by muscleman Maciste (Gordon Mitchell).

Who doesn't enjoy a cyclops? Not me, that's for sure, and the one-eyed giant in this movie is a fun looking beast (not as great as the one in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, but certainly no worse than Bernard Bresslaw in Krull, or that kid in the Percy Jackson film). Unfortunately, the fearsome creature of Greek legend only appears right at the end of this sword and sandal flick, and even when on screen, it doesn't get to do a lot - it's killed way too easily and quickly by Maciste.

The build-up to the Maciste vs monster climax is mostly unremarkable peplum nonsense, as the strong-man rescues Capys from a cave-in and strikes up an unlikely romance with the queen, convincing her not to kill the child; meanwhile, jealous Iphitos (Dante DiPaolo), who is in love with Capys, tries to break the curse she is under by finding the kid and feeding him (and his mother) to the cyclops.

A tug of war between a team of white men and a team of black men, with Maciste in the middle, suspended over a pit of lions, is amusing, and the sight of Maciste single-handedly rowing a galley at ramming speed is certainly unique, but other 'set-pieces' are quite dire: Maciste wrestling with a lion is a poor copy of a similar scene in Hercules (1958), while a wrestling bout between Maciste and nubian slave Mumba (Paul Wynter) is one of the weakest, most boring movie fight scenes I can recall seeing. Mitchell saunters through the whole film with a cheesy grin that makes him look a bit simple.

4/10. I'm still looking for a peplum to really impress me.

Since the cyclops only appears in the last six or seven minutes (!) ,the title is a misnomer;this giant gives the most successful performance of a poor cast ;the actors ,from muscle man to wicked queen are so dismal you can have a good laugh!Vaguely based on Greek mythology :Circea's revenge on Ulysses' descendants;the queen will not be allowed to live in peace till the last heir is exterminated ;so she's got some excuses even though she shows some sadism .Macist fights against her to put back the true king on the throne and to save the true queen whose husband was slaughtered by the evil sovereign's soldiers.

There are ten-year-old pupils who write better essays than this screenplay.

Atlas Against The Cyclops finds Gordon Mitchell as Maciste battling the evil one eyed creature who together with the daughter of Circe is taking vengeance against the descendants of Ulysses. If you'll remember your classical Greek tales, Ulysses freed himself from Circe and blinded the Cyclops. Now their descendants are wreaking what they consider just desserts to the Ulysses family.

It might have gone all right for them except that Circe's evil granddaughter queen of Circe falls big time for Maciste and all those muscles. She forgets her mission with one look at the big guy.

There was a black body builder named Paul Wynter who was appearing in these peplums at the time and truth be told he was far better built than Gordon Mitchell. Why she was bothering with Maciste when she had Wynter's character Mumba in the palace is beyond me.

Still Maciste performs all the deeds required of him and even rides a horse into the sunset like a good cowboy hero would.

Nothing special here though.

This is undoubtedly one of the worst peplums I've ever watched: a hopelessly wooden and constantly grinning Gordon Mitchell is the he-man in this outing (which, despite the English title, is called Maciste even in the dubbed version)! The plot, dealing with the revenge perpetrated on Ulysses' family by the ancestors of Circe and the Cyclops, showed promise but the latter, besides being a disappointing creature, only appears in the opening and closing sequences! The laughably bad dialogue, amateurish fight scenes and many unintentionally funny moments certainly don't help in winning this film any champions - but it's the tenth-generation copy (with the color reduced to a brownish hue) via which I viewed the film that serves it the death blow.

Chelo Alonso is once again on hand in another cheesy muscleman movie. Sadly, she doesn't get to perform one of her seductive dance numbers in this one, an unforgiveable omission if there ever was one. As for the rest of the film, it's mostly Gordon Mitchell's show as he's asked to display his rugged physique in virtually every scene. Fun kitsch, even though Chelo was wasted.