Films centered around shrinking humans have proven popular for those who love science fiction movies. The first sci-fi horror motion picture filmed in Technicolor's recently-developed three-strip process was April 1940's "Dr. Cyclops," displaying the latest in special effects technology. Producer Merian C. Cooper teamed up with his 1933 "King Kong" directing partner, Ernest Schoedsack, to showcase a colorful portrayal of a 'mad scientist' whose experimentation in shrinking animals at his Peruvian jungle laboratory extends to miniaturizing a handful of visiting scientists.
"Dr. Cyclops" belongs to one of the many sci-fi films centered around reducing humans to create a fantasy world where people are forced to co-exist with objects, vegetation and animals previously much smaller than they were. From 1936's Tod Browning's "The Devil Doll" to 1957's "The Incredible Shrinking Man" to Matt Damon's 2017 "Downsizing," cinema loves plots showing the horrors humans experience undergoing their smaller transformations. Based on Henry Kuthner's 1940 story of the same name, "Dr. Cyclops" features Dr. Alexander Thorkel (Albert Dekker), a nut job who suffers from bad eyesight. He summons a team of scientists to his jungle lab to examine what he feels is a unique specimen never seen before. One of the scientists making the long, arduous journey scoffs at the doctor's supposed discovery, deducing it as an obvious simple identification of a well-known specimen. This diagnosis upsets Dr. Thorkel so much he brusquely sends them on their way. Before they go too far, however, the doctor, who has developed a process of shrinking animals by mixing uranium with radium, exacts revenge by using his invention to make them small.
"Dr. Cyclops" is not the masterpiece like "King Kong," ruled film critic Greg Klymkiw, "but in its own special way, it was definitely ahead of its time in terms of both special effects and political/historical considerations. The picture's exploration of a foreign enemy wanting to experiment upon and ultimately subjugate American interests also pre-dates that attitudes so prevalent over one decade later in the sci-fi pictures made during the Cold War."
Previous horror movies such as 1932' "Doctor X" and 1933's "Mystery of the Wax Museum" used the older two-strip process Technicolor film stock. "Dr. Cyclops," whose title points to when the shrunken scientists break one lens of Dr. Thorkel's thick eyeglasses, was deemed "a triumph of the process screen and the department of trick effects" by The New York Times film critic B. R. Crisler, while film historian Phil Hardy called it "gloriously photographed in Technicolor and imaginatively directed by Schoedsack." There were some limitations in the early 1940s technology, with a lack of depth-of-field focal clarity. "Foreground people and objects in the background are often in focus while the middle ground between them goes soft, like the riverbank in front of the alligator," noticed film reviewer Glenn Erickson. "That just doesn't happen in normal photography." The ingenious construction of giant objects to make the viewer think these unfortunate shrunken people were living in a real world compensates for the blurring effect. Because of the use of the latest technology, "Dr. Cyclops" was nominated for the Academy Awards Best Visual Effects, and added greatly to cinema's love of miniaturized people.
"Dr. Cyclops" belongs to one of the many sci-fi films centered around reducing humans to create a fantasy world where people are forced to co-exist with objects, vegetation and animals previously much smaller than they were. From 1936's Tod Browning's "The Devil Doll" to 1957's "The Incredible Shrinking Man" to Matt Damon's 2017 "Downsizing," cinema loves plots showing the horrors humans experience undergoing their smaller transformations. Based on Henry Kuthner's 1940 story of the same name, "Dr. Cyclops" features Dr. Alexander Thorkel (Albert Dekker), a nut job who suffers from bad eyesight. He summons a team of scientists to his jungle lab to examine what he feels is a unique specimen never seen before. One of the scientists making the long, arduous journey scoffs at the doctor's supposed discovery, deducing it as an obvious simple identification of a well-known specimen. This diagnosis upsets Dr. Thorkel so much he brusquely sends them on their way. Before they go too far, however, the doctor, who has developed a process of shrinking animals by mixing uranium with radium, exacts revenge by using his invention to make them small.
"Dr. Cyclops" is not the masterpiece like "King Kong," ruled film critic Greg Klymkiw, "but in its own special way, it was definitely ahead of its time in terms of both special effects and political/historical considerations. The picture's exploration of a foreign enemy wanting to experiment upon and ultimately subjugate American interests also pre-dates that attitudes so prevalent over one decade later in the sci-fi pictures made during the Cold War."
Previous horror movies such as 1932' "Doctor X" and 1933's "Mystery of the Wax Museum" used the older two-strip process Technicolor film stock. "Dr. Cyclops," whose title points to when the shrunken scientists break one lens of Dr. Thorkel's thick eyeglasses, was deemed "a triumph of the process screen and the department of trick effects" by The New York Times film critic B. R. Crisler, while film historian Phil Hardy called it "gloriously photographed in Technicolor and imaginatively directed by Schoedsack." There were some limitations in the early 1940s technology, with a lack of depth-of-field focal clarity. "Foreground people and objects in the background are often in focus while the middle ground between them goes soft, like the riverbank in front of the alligator," noticed film reviewer Glenn Erickson. "That just doesn't happen in normal photography." The ingenious construction of giant objects to make the viewer think these unfortunate shrunken people were living in a real world compensates for the blurring effect. Because of the use of the latest technology, "Dr. Cyclops" was nominated for the Academy Awards Best Visual Effects, and added greatly to cinema's love of miniaturized people.