User Reviews

"Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops" has two magnificent assets and her name is Chelo Alonso. She also has gorgeous eyes. Born in Cuba, Miss Alonso was a hit at the Paris Folies Bergeres before plunging into Italian peplum movies in the late fifties. Here she plays the evil, evil, Queen Capys, who starts the movie by sending out her army to slaughter a peaceful village, and then ruthlessly searches for a cute, gurgling, tyke so she can feed him to her pet cyclops. The purpose, we are told, is to remove an ancient curse. In a stab at depth, the movie reveals that Queen Capys frets about being so evil and when not understandably admiring herself in the mirror which she carries with her at all times, muses about how much better things will be after the cyclops devours the toddler and she can relax into being just another bloodthirsty tyrant.

Enter our muscular hero, Maciste, the staunch enemy of injustice and evil queens everywhere. Once Capys lays her doe eyes on his pecs, its lust at first drool, always dangerous for a wicked queen. Even an oversexed queen can not shuck her evil ways easily, and there is tension galore as she gets the hots for our hero and hits on him with a distinct lack of subtlety, all the while assuring her worried underlings that she is in fact planning to make him into a cyclopsburger.

Now for the fly in the ointment. Maciste is so pure, innocent, and naive, he makes Roy Rogers look decadent. He seems oblivious to Capys' abundant charms. Oh, my, is this frustrating.

In the meantime, an underling captures the toddler and heads to the island abode of the hungry cyclops. Finding a very, very, very deeply buried streak of decency, and also perhaps hoping that turning good might arouse the big fellow's slumbering libido, Capys leads Maciste to the island.

As veteran viewers of these type of movies can probably predict, nothing works out for her. Capys follows Maciste into the Cyclops' cave, only to see her newly found goodness go for naught when she has to jump in front of the big lug to block a dagger thrust by her own henchman. Life can be cruel for a cruel queen.

The movie dies when Capys dies in the indifferent Maciste's strong arms, although Maciste does finish off the cyclops and saves the toddler and his mother. The ending has the tyke on the throne and everyone happy a child will be governing the land. Why not?

All in all, worth it if you don't expect too much, have a sense of humour, and can get off on an absurdly beautiful, evil, evil, queen.

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.

In the decades after Ulysses killed the Cyclops, his followers lead a peaceful life until a vengeful queen sets out to capture his heir. Like all evil queens in these movies, she's a brunette, and the good queen is a blonde. But there's more to the evil queen, pre-destined by fate to seek revenge, and she longs to escape her evil heritage in order to find love and redeem herself. That comes in the form of handsome Gordon Mitchell whose only goal is to prevent the infant heir from becoming hoer devours for the surviving cyclops. The evil queen's obviously over-ambitious and jealous suitor (think "Aladdin's" Jafar in a toga) stands in the way and you'll spend the film's running time looking forward to his come-uppance.

Gladiator films are really comedys disguised as sword and sandal adventures. Go into these films with a razor-sharp tongue, because like midnight showings of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", you'll find yourself yelling sarcastic comments at the screen. That really is the only way to find fun in them as the quality is usually poor, dubbing terrible, and a predictability that some critics must have made a form critique for each of these and edited in individual comments appropriate for each film.

In Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops, our hero Maciste (Maciste, Atlas, Samson, Hercules - what's in a name?) must safeguard the life of a young prince whose father has been killed by the evil Queen Capys. The Queen wants the child so that she can break a centuries old curse by handing the baby over to the Cyclops she keeps chained in a pit. At first she attempts to use her womanly ways on Maciste, but to no avail. And as predictable as the sun following the night, the Queen ends up falling for Maciste. But there are others in the Queen's court who still seek the child and an end to the curse. Can Maciste rescue the baby and defeat the Cyclops before it's too late?

Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops is what I'll call an above average example of the peplums or sword and sandal movies being pumped-out of Italy from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s. Gordon Mitchell is on hand to provide the beef of the title role. He may not have been as big as Steve Reeves (who all Italian movie muscle men must necessarily be compared) or some of the others, but he's got a winning smile and a definite athleticism about him. Chelo Alonso as Queen Capys is a real beauty and quite good in her role. In fact, the whole cast is quite nice. The Cyclops is very well done and another example of the fine, creative work being done before the advent of CGI - even by low-budget Italian filmmakers. Lots of good fight scenes, very few long drawn-out dialogue filled moments, and plenty of guys running around with those scrub-brush looking helmets - what's not to love. I guess my biggest complaints are with the dubbing and the state of available DVD transfers. The dubbing is incredibly stilted. In a few scenes, Mitchell sounds a bit like Tonto from the old Lone Ranger series. As for the available transfers, I can only assume that my enjoyment of Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops would have been enhanced had it not seemed I was watching the movie through dirty dishwater. Even with these negatives, and I realize I may be overstating things a bit here, I'll go ahead and give it a 7/10 and recommend it to fans of peplums.

This is a peplum made during the heyday of the genre starring peplum regulars Gordon Mitchell and Chelo Alonso, and directed by Antonio Leonviola.

The plot has Queen Capys of Sadok sending her army to wipe out a neighboring village and murder King Agisandro, while also seeking to capture his only son to feed to the cyclops which lives in a cave on a nearby rocky island. The plan goes awry when a mortally wounded soldier escapes with the toddler and carries him to muscleman hero Maciste. After seeing to the tot's safety by leaving him with a shepherd, Maciste heads to Sadok to set things right. On the way he accidentally meets Capys, who he does not know, and saves her life. She falls for him at first sight.

The revenge motivation for Capys is that she is a descendant of Circe while Agisandro is a descendant of Ulysses, and the new cyclops a descendant of the old cyclops.

Director Leonviola took his peplum out of the rut by giving the usual wicked queen of these movies more complex motives than normal. Capys is utterly evil but is supposedly under a curse from which she desperately seeks to escape. This aspect was confusing to me. Several times she mentions she is a prisoner of an ancient curse, but at other times she seems willing to simply walk away from the curse and run off with Maciste. Whether Capys is on the up and up about her feelings for Maciste or cynically manipulating him remains in doubt until the end.

Gordon Mitchell hit his career breakout as Maciste, oddly called Atlas in the American title. He is stiff, and hard-faced for the kindly and naive Maciste, but does okay. He would later find his metier as a villain in all sorts of Euro genres. The sexy Chelo Alonso is Capys. Famed as a dancer, she does not dance in this movie, but has her best role as the conflicted villain.

Vera Silenti has little to do but scream as Agisandro's widow and the imperiled toddler's mother. Dante DiPaolo gives a good slimy turn as Capy's main henchman. The muscular Paul Wynter is another henchman.

This peplum provides what fans should enjoy. A sexy wicked queen. Despicable henchmen. A muscular hero doing all sorts of feats of strength, including killing a lion with his bare hands. A wrestling match between musclemen. A monster with solid make-up in the cyclops, played by a circus giant and photographed to look even taller. A final brutal showdown fight between the cyclops and the hero. A creepy lair for the cyclops. And of course slightly clumsy dancing girls.

This movie is obviously budget, but done with enough verve to be of solid interest to peplum fans.

Pardon my confusion, but I sat down to what this Spaghetti Epic, or Sword and Sandal as they prefer to be called, which was called Atlas In The Land Of The Cyclops, I didn't understand why Atlas was being addressed as Maciste.

This was nothing remarkable and not my taste at all, as the well and I mean well-worn story of a Greek hero saving the day and in this case, putting a baby upon his rightful throne. This was part of a huge series of films,. following Maciste, here played by Gordon Mitchell, credited here as Mitchell Gordon. Unfortunately, there was very little to recommended it if you're not already a hardened fan of the genre.

The sound dubbing was typical, with one particular moment standing out, as two characters are talking with the baby in the scene, and the baby's crying sounding like another baby had turned up during the recording session and had inadvertently supplied the echoy dub.

Personally, I find these films to be hard to watch or enjoy but there is certainly and audience for them. But do I feel that this genre is falling in to the abyss, not only of obscurity but most likely into oblivion. The print quality was appalling, leading me to believe that since these films have fallen out of copyright, that the negatives are but faded, decayed or outright destroyed.

This was a 2.35:1 widescreen print in its day I would bet that nobody has seen that print in 40 years and are likely to NEVER see it. The colour was almost gone, faded to the negative's native browns and the sound mix, only mono in the original instance, was also mushy. Granted this was a very cheap DVD, with a 1.33:1 print, clearly, based on the title, the U.S. TV print and no doubt, a 16mm one at that.

The Spaghetti Epics where always a cheap Italian alternative to Hollywood's Roman Epics, but with little demand and limited financial return for the genre, I can see the negatives disintegrating and these movies being lost forever. Is that a bad thing? YES: even though I may never willing watch one again, it is a crying shame that the art of these films may lost forever. NO film should be lost, as no book should be either, but unless remastering technology becomes cheap enough and the demand for what could be regarded as cult classics, as horror films such as Dawn Of The Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are, then I see little hope.

I watched the American print of this movie, where inexplicably the title was changed to ATLAS IN THE LAND OF THE CYCLOPS - despite the fact that the hero's name is clearly Maciste in the film, and Atlas doesn't come into it! Also, somewhat amusingly, the credits list Mitchell Gordon as the main star instead of Gordon Mitchell. Those crazy Americans! These oddities aside, whatever the title, MACISTE IN THE LAND OF THE CYCLOPS is a example of the peplum genre at its monster-slaying, boulder-throwing finest! Packed with incredible feats of strength and action throughout, plus a mythical creature for Maciste to battle at the end, this would be a brilliant film if it wasn't for a few pacing problems in the second half, where nearly nothing happens for around half an hour. As it stands, it's still a very good and highly recommended film which all fantasy lovers should seek out.

The rugged and dependable peplum stalwart Gordon Mitchell (The Giant of Metropolis) leads the way as strongman Maciste here, and he looks like he's having a great time. Mitchell is given lots of material to work with and is hardly ever given time to stand still - he's just too busy righting wrongs or fighting evil! This gives the film a frenetic pacing which makes it more than watchable and also makes the time fly by. The supporting cast of Italian actors and actresses are fairly undistinguished, although it's interesting to see fellow American black bodybuilder Paul Wynter as another strongman, this time on the opposite side (and yes, they do fight). One exception is the actor playing the baby in the film - it's none other than Fabio, apparently a quite respected male model these days. What a way to start a career! Director Antonio Leonviola (just credited as "Leonviola" in the American release) is no Mario Bava, or even Riccardo Freda, but all scenes are well-shot and competently handled. The skillful editing also hides the low budget of the film, thus by splicing frames of a model ship quickly with images of people supposedly inside a ship (although you never actually see them above deck from a distance) you get a realistic effect. The plot is simple but packed with incident, as is the way with the best of the genre like MACISTE AGAINST THE VAMPIRE.

As an aside, the Cyclops himself is pretty good, thanks to a neat makeup job which gives him the solitary eye and some snappy editing which makes him look three times the size of the not-inconsiderable Mitchell. At the end of the film, they have a titanic battle, Maciste blinds him with a sword (ouch) before pulling off his final trick, causing a cave-in. Ta-da! Everybody is saved, the evil have been punished and Maciste lives to fight another day. The end. One other thing: we learn that apparently the name "Maciste" means "made of rock", an apt description if ever I heard one for Mitchell's granite-hewn, super-human muscleman. As you may have already guessed, I give this film the thumbs-up!

Brave and kind he-man Maciste (a winningly sincere portrayal by the brawny and cheerful Gordon Mitchell) must save both Queen Penope (fetching Vira Silenti) and her infant son from the evil clutches of the ruthless and wicked Queen Capys (a perfectly nasty turn by ravishing brunette stunner Chelo Alonso). Director Antonio Leonviola relates the eventful story at a steady pace, maintains a serious tone throughout, and stages the thrilling action scenes with a reasonable amount of vigor (stirring highlights include Maciste wrestling a lion, a fierce rough'n'tumble fight with one of Capys' hulking goons, and the tense and gripping climactic battle between Maciste and an impressively grotesque and monstrous 18-foot-tall cyclops). The cast all give admirably earnest performances, with especially nice contributions from Giotto Tempestini as helpful shepherd Aronio and Massimo Righi as the noble Efros. Carlo Innocenzi's robust, rousing score does the trick. Riccardo Pallottini's expansive widescreen cinematography offers several striking shots of the lovely verdant countryside. The campy dialogue adds plenty of extra unintentional humor to the mix while the bevy of lovely ladies supply lots of yummy eye candy (Alonso in particular is an absolute smoking hot fox!). A fun romp.