Dr Cyclops

Marvellous performance by Dekker as the villainous Dr Cyclops - as bald as Lorre's Dr Gogol and going blind behind his pebble glasses, hence the echo of Homer's Polyphemus in his name and his ultimate fate - who lurks in the Amazonian jungle conducting experiments in which he shrinks people to manikin size. An engaging fantasy with brilliantly executed (though mostly rather unimaginative) special effects which look back to The Devil Doll and forward to The Incredible Shrinking Man. Let down by a dull supporting cast, but retrieved by the attractively pale, tremulous Technicolor. Based on a fine story by Henry Kuttner, writing under the pseudonym of Will Garth; beware the novelisation, also published as by 'Garth' but unmistakably the work of a hack.