ATLAS IN THE LAND OF THE CYCLOPS (1961)

Years ago, Odysseus outwitted Circe and blinded the cyclops Polyphemus, and ever since, the descendants of both have been saddled with the task of seeking revenge against members of Odysseus' bloodline. Generations later, Queen Capys of Sadok, who has a cyclops descendent of Polyphemus locked up on an island, has sent soldiers in search of the last male heir of Odysseus, a mere infant. They raze a village (a very small low-budget village not worthy of the name of "village"), kill the King and capture the townswomen, looking for Queen Penope and her child. Capys plans to sacrifice the baby to the cyclops but Penope manages to deliver her child to a shepherd for safe keeping before she is rounded up with the other women. Unaware of the queen's identity, Capys has all the women thrown into a dungeon until the queen is outed, so to speak. Meanwhile, a hunky muscleman awakens on a beach; his name is Maciste (we are told it means "from the rocks"), and though his background is not fully explained, it seems he is a Herculean demigod sort of fellow, and when he saves the baby from a lion, he takes on the task of saving Penope and the child. But on his way to Sadok, he comes across Queen Capys, pleading with an oracle in a cave to be delivered from Circe's curse. The oracle's answer is to cause the cave to collapse and Maciste saves her, taking her back to Sadok. Eventually, we get the plot whittled down to the basics: muscleman gets cozy with the villainous queen (who doesn't really want to be a villain) while he tries to help the good queen and stop the sacrifice of the baby to the cyclops.

The first thing you may have noticed is that, despite the title, there is no character named Atlas. Many of the peplum films from this era were made in Italy about a character named Maciste, but when they were brought to the United States, the title character's name was changed, in the title and in the dubbing, to something assumed to be more marketable, like Hercules, Samson, or Atlas. Here, however, no one told the dubbers about the title change, and Maciste retains his real name throughout the film, which for me is a plus. Two other pluses are Gordon Mitchell (pictured) as Maciste and Chelo Alonso as Queen Capys. Mitchell's physique is almost perfect for a sword-and-sandal hero, not too bulbous like Steve Reeves could get, but more impressive than, say, Michael Forest who played another Atlas the same year. Alonso, from Cuba, is a bit more exotic than the average peplum queen, with a nice figure and decent acting ability, and her character is a bit unusual in that she changes from evil to not-so-evil over the course of the story. The film has a noticeably small budget which hurts when it comes to spectacle (there is very little) but the director, Antonio Leonviola, manages to give us a couple of good muscle hero setpieces. In one, Maciste takes over the rowing of a huge boat that usually requires a dozen or more rowers. In the other, Maciste is placed on thin wooden planks over a pit of lions, then is pulled from both sides by many men apparently hoping to make him fall into the pit or be pulled apart. He survives both incidents, of course. The cyclops is kept offscreen until the last ten minutes, probably because he's not that impressive. The worst scene is an early one in which Maciste wrestles a lion, or, I should say, a big stuffed lion. Mitchell's name in the opening credits is presented as Mitchell Gordon. Peplum fans will enjoy this, but avoid any pan-and-scan versions out there. AKA Atlas Against the Cyclops. [YouTube]