Greenes
Please don't spend money on this.
ThedevilChoose
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.
Lidia Draper
Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.
bensonmum2
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.
Woodyanders
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.
Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic)
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
jim riecken (youroldpaljim)
This film was retitled to ATLAS AGAINST THE CYCLOPS when it was released in the United States, but our hero is still called "Maciste" in the film. In this one Maciste battles an assortment of bad guys and monsters including the cyclops of the title. Maciste rescues an infant from the cyclops before he dispatches with the one eyed menace. As far these spear and sandal epics go, this one isn't too bad. It has enough action to hold one interest. It isn't as "talky" as many of the other bigger budgeted entries in the genre. Flashback scenes from this film turned in up in the later Maciste adventure, THE WITCHES CURSE which started Kirk Morris. I would like to see this film in colour, but for some reason all video versions that I have found are in B&W.
