Cyclops (1987)

directed by George Iida

Japan

52 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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George (sometimes spelled Jôji) Iida is such an underrated horror director, having made two stand-out films (Spiral, Battle Heater) that only make the scarcity of his others all the more irritating. He's also a screenwriter, television director, and novelist, but none of his work in those fields is any more well-known than his films. Cyclops is something that had been on my radar for a long time, but was unavailable to watch with anything better than auto-generated English subs, so finally finding it with good subs in what I must say is some of the clearest, crispest quality I've ever seen a pre-2000s film in was a delight.

The main concept of the film, as explained through on-screen text at the beginning, is that some time in the past a scientist was doing research towards proof of his hypothesis that babies born with severe deformities (like cyclopia, hence the title) are not medical anomalies but actually a new stage in human evolution, equipped to handle increasing pollution and adverse circumstances. This is kind of ridiculous, but when you consider that one of the main causes of birth defects is environmental pollution or chemical side-effects, it's an interesting idea. This specific scientist is offscreen for the whole of the film, but a ragtag team of weird guys is continuing his research.

There's not much in the way of humor in this, but what of it that is there comes from the mismatched group of bad guys. There's an identifiable leader and an identifiable "heavy", but then there's a couple of henchmen who pop in and out of the story and seem to have defined identities, even though those identities don't ever get fleshed out. I think one of the best things you can do if you're going to have a large cast who don't get much spotlight time is give them mannerisms that immediately distinguish them as an individual - like the one guy repeatedly glancing towards his subject as she's laying nude on an operating table, or the other guy feverishly praying (?) aloud.

This movie is known mostly as a splattery, gory type of thing, but it's actually a really slow burn. The cinematography is top-notch for something this compact and definitely speaks to Iida's proficiency in mainstream, feature-length films, unlike most splatterpunk directors, who cut their teeth on weird indie shorts, and it shows if they ever produce anything more formal. This is basically a normal movie for about 40-45 minutes, with some really artful framing and lighting - even a character brushing their teeth is shot in a remarkably thoughtful, deliberate way - and then the stuff we're all waiting for happens.

I appreciated the unusual clarity of the video file I was watching very, very much when it got to the finale, because it meant I got to see the practical effects in all their slimy glory the way they were meant to be seen. This is a movie with mutation at its heart. Because it takes so long to get to the payoff, I won't spoil it by describing it too much, but there's a lot of really beautiful fleshy blobs and sticky, gooey transformation sequences. I particularly liked the sequence in the elevator because I think having an action scene take place in an elevator is inherently an interesting way to set something up on film: the time it takes for the action to unfold is limited by how long it takes for the elevator to get where it's going, so you have a guaranteed payoff whenever the door opens, and cutting away to another character watching once the elevator gets to its floor adds a sense of anticipation. Again, this movie is really artful and shows a definite mastery of scene and framing that is a rare addition to something this yucky.

I wonder why shot-on-video films of less than an hour's running time never became a thing in the West. There are some, but they don't really achieve even cult status the way Japanese splatterpunk movies like this one do. It seems like the phenomenon of a short movie that gets everything done within less than an hour is just not something that ever became part of Western filmmaking tradition. 

Weirdly, Kai Ato, the actor playing the head bad guy who gets super-mutated, was in nothing but very serious, well-regarded films, such as Station, Lady Snowblood, Ballad of Orin, and Kagemusha, of all things. I think this is the only time I've seen an actor who's been in a Kurosawa movie also be in a movie where he has an arm burst out of his stomach and strangle someone.