I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

How sad is this?

Good movie but grossly overrated

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Strange «péplum», a bit on the sadistic side, made me feel terrible for the poor Cyclops, who is described as a captive freak, unlike the busy and aggressive creatures Ray Harryhausen created for «The 7th Voyage of Sinbad». For the proceeding, maestro Mario Serandrei's editing is rather lazy, especially in the action scenes, where the tempo of the cutting is not particularly inspired, and the shots linger on Gordon Mitchell's muscles. Even Chelo Alonso goes through a strange routine, from evil queen to woman in love, excluding the possibility of one of her sensual dance scenes; and Mitchell is one very strange looking fellow, with a gentle personality that seems at odds with his character, supposedly a lonely highlander. But «Maciste in the Land of the Cyclops» has ladies in distress chewing gum, «menacing» lions that resemble rugs, a villain (funny Dante DiPaolo) who is always smiling when he's saying his meanest dialog lines, and lights that follow the characters through kitsch settings and barren exteriors. So don't let it pass you: it has a lot to enjoy. Watch it!

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.

In the 1960s, the Italians made a variety of films starring the character Maciste. However, depending on who was terribly dubbing it, the character became 'Atlas', 'Samson', 'Goliath' or 'Hercules' or just plain ol' Maciste. This is really sloppy, as Atlas is a Titan and nothing like Hecules--a demigod (half human/half god). In fact their mythology is very, very different. And Samson and Goliath are Old Testament characters--and are absolutely nothing alike. Considering how cheesy the dubbing was, it's not surprising that they played fast and loose with the names of the character. By the way, what is the best translation of Maciste? Well, I did some research and found that it would be Maciste!! He was none of these other people--just a guy named Maciste who is a very buff hero of the classical period. And, oddly enough, despite the word Atlas in the title, he's referred to as Maciste throughout! Aye, aye, aye! The film begins with an attack by the wicked queen's men on a poor defenseless city. A man manages to escape with a child--a child the queen wants dead along with its mother (who is also a queen). The soldiers did try hard and even managed to wound the man, but the evil queen was a crazed idiot and killed the soldier who told her about the escape upon his return! You just can't keep doing that to your minions until eventually they rebel--good henchmen and minions are hard to find! And, to make things worse, she finds out AFTER she kills the guy that he was the only person who knew the identity of the lady the evil queen was also trying to kill!Maciste comes into the film when he meets the dying man with the baby. He takes the baby to a trusted friend to watch while he goes back to free the baby's mother and the other prisoners. But after kicking some butt, the evil queen drugs him and gets the secret of where the baby is hiding out of Maciste. Can our hormone-drenched hero save the day or will he and the baby end up as sacrifices to the evil queen's equally evil god?! Tune in yourself to find out--though the answer probably won't come as that big a surprise! So is this film any good? Well, yes and no. Yes--if you need a good laugh or if you want to see Gordon Mitchell's bulging muscles! No--if you want intelligent or well made entertainment! I personally like how silly and poorly made the film is. The sets are rather poor and the plot is very typical of one of these films. I loved such wonderful scenes as the fight with the lion where one moment it was obviously a lion and the next it was obviously a dead stuffed lion!!! Talk about cheesy. The very stilted dialog was also a hoot with such lines as:"Go. Free them from the cruel and perfidious queen. Go. Go now". My question is what does 'perfidious' mean?! I think it's bad. Well, actually I looked it up and it apparently means 'faithless'. Then why not just say faithless?!? "Forget what I said before. I am now a prisoner...a prisoner of your beauty." "How long the night is when one is alone." "Liar! I hate you!! (Machiste to the evil queen)" "Yes, and I love you, Machiste!"In addition to being a rather dopey film, the DVD copy is extremely poor (with the color completely lost in the final twenty minutes of the film) and the sound is the same--sounding, at times, like there is some sort of wind storm going on in the sound booth! Now remember that my score of 2 is for the version I saw. I better dubbed or better yet, the original film might be a heck of a lot better...or perhaps not.

If viewers can get by the crummy existing home video transfers currently available ATLAS IN THE LAND OF THE CYCLOPS, as this is know in it's English language form, is actually a superior example of the Italian Peplum sword & sandal genre. The problem with the existing versions isn't with the film, it's that a glorious widescreen (2:35:1 Techniscope) popcorn movie has been cropped and pan/scanned down to an abysmal, color rotted 16mm fullscreen reduction print meant for television distribution back in the 1960s. There should be a Crimes Against Humanity tribunal charged with tracking down those responsible for ruining this and countless other movies like it, perhaps forcing them to watch endlessly looped repeats of those old SnackMaster infomercials as punishment. The original elements are probably long lost and like a butchered scrap of an old Michelangelo painting, this is all we have left. It's a horrible loss.But even in such a miserable state this is quite the little Hercules/Samson/Maciste style adventure, with big grinning Gordon Mitchell at his finest as another he-man wandering the ancient world and righting wrongs. This production actually had a decent budget for it's time as well, with a huge cast of extras and some genuinely clever effects sequences and strong man spectacle moments -- at one point Mitchell even rows an entire slave galley at ramming speed, by himself -- along with the requisite eye candy Veil Dance naval gazing for the dads, slave mistreatment scenes, lots of Pizza Pizza guards running around in plumed helmets, the ubiquitous moment where the hero gets to flirt with all the serving girls or share wine & grapes with the evil sexy queen who is responsible for the misdeeds that he must set to rights.What makes this one stand out is that all of that happens before Atlas, as he is called here, even squares off against a genuinely frightful looking 18 foot tall Cyclops down in it's pit for a duel to the death to save both the pretty princess and the rightful infant heir to the throne. The Cyclops rulez and for once the muscle bound hero is presented with a monster that's quite worthy of his talents. Their battle is a doozie and actually somewhat graphic for it's time. You'd really have to be a cold heartless bastard not to get a kick out of it, and as usual the clever way it was filmed puts any CGI rendered special effects sequence depicting similar events to shame.And as usual the big lummox of a hero rides off into the sunset at the end while the adoring crowds cheer his heroism & derring-do, something that quite frankly the world could use a bit more of these days. I'd encourage anyone with a love for fantasy adventure/action films to seek this baby out, and you can: It's available on one of those 50 Movie Packs called "The Warriors Collection" easily found on Amazon.com for a few dollars, featuring forty nine other movies more or less just like it, which would take you about two weeks of non-stop viewing to get through it. And people say getting snowed in sucks, I call it an opportunity for cheesy Euro man-beef fantasy indulgence with an exceptionally cool monster to boot. Ignore the crummy picture quality, pop a bucket of popcorn and enjoy!8/10