Cyclops (Japan, 1987)

 

Yes, this isn't a gangster film but it is hard edged and hard boiled, so it gets covered. As far as I'm concerned, anything tonally that fits under our blog description can get a look in. 

This era of Japanese gore cinema is especially interesting to me, you get film makers basing short run time movies around ideas of showing off practical gore effects and wild ideas on probably very limited budgets. The usual outcomes might be flawed but they are usually very unique.

With that said, Cyclops is a weird little slice of originally made for VHS odd balls sci-fi horror directed by George Iida , more famous for Spiral and Another Heaven. Cyclops is a very strange experience.

The story, as far as I could figure out, was to do with the control of human evolution. That is, scientists were creating babies born with mutations to help them survive in a world damaged by heavy pollution. Most die from these mutations while still in their infancy, but due to the work of of one scientist Keiichi Takozawa, who the film tells you at the start had died in text on screen, some mutants have managed to live and grow. So then it starts proper and there is an apprentice of the scientist who is determined to carry on the dead egghead's work. Then there is a woman pregnant with his child who he is filling with all sorts of chemicals and drugs to make a mutant, I guess. He himself is a mutant, maybe, and he has an adopted sister, who is also possibly a mutant. There is also a big Jaws meets Terminator type guy with sunglasses and a duster coat who runs around and seems intent on not letting the baby be born. The Jaws type guy seems to work for or with, some whiny yakuza types who want mutants of their own. Why? I have no idea. Jaws also seems to be the brother of the apprentice scientist. Jaws is also a Cyclops.

Get all that? I didn't and the film is only 50 minutes long.

But I don't watch these things for the plot. I watch them for the gore and carnage and boy, the last fifteen minutes are pure crazy gold. There is a sequence in a lift that it is like two creatures from the Thing had a fist  and straight razor fight and just ended up as a big mass of heaving, seething mutant tentacles. Then there is also a disgusting birth sequence and some mild mutant face hugging to finish the picture.

Not a classic of its type, its no damn Biotherapy, but Cyclops passes the time and the lift scene alone makes it worth a watch.

The Cult Of Muscle podcast is covering this in October so give them a listen.