Okay, there obviously wasn't much of a budget to begin with (this has to be the most bizarrely costumed movie 'Rome' I've ever seen), much of the 'acting' is wincingly bad and the direction is so pedestrian that the entire 90 minutes is devoid of any hint of tension, but what really makes 'Cyclops' so stunningly terrible is the woefully stupid script. Rule number one with a monster movie is 'don't show the audience the monster right away.' One would think this a very wise course of action for movie makers to follow, and especially so if their monster is as unconvincing as the titular creature here. Good enough for Spielberg, good enough for everybody. Nope, a scant minute or so into the pre-credit sequence and there he is in all his poorly-animated (he seems 'weightless' and walks like an arthritic robot) glory. Add to this the most useless Roman army ever depicted in the history of cinema. All twelve or so of them. Honestly, the 'archers' are worse than useless and the spear-toting footsoldiers adhere strictly to their frankly insane and invariably suicidal strategy that the Cyclops be engaged by no more than one man at a time. The other IMDb reviews here catalogue a great deal more ludicrous details which abound in 'Cyclops'; suffice to say that even bored kids on a rainy day would give this one around five minutes before giving it the flick. I could forgive 'Cyclops' a little of its awfulness if the thing had a sense of humour about itself, but this whole preposterous-yet-straitlaced mess doesn't even have that. There is no fair reason that a movie turns out this bad; the likes of 'Cyclops' appear simply because its makers cared more about quantity than quality.
Review of Cyclops
