Speaking of Cyclopses...
You may have noticed a smaller version of this illustration on my blog header and thought: "That looks familiar... Is it a spoof of, or an homage to, the iconic image from the 1902 silent classic Le Voyage dans la Lune by George Melies?"
If you did, you know your silent classic iconic images!
And here's a still of the iconic scene from the 1902 silent classic Le Voyage dans la Lune by George Melies (his last name has an accent over the first "e" and a backwards accent over the second "e", but I don't know how to do that), to which I pay homage.
I vividly remember this image from somewhere back in my childhood memory fog. No--it wasn't a new release then. I remember, because it is unforgettable: an actor's face made up to look like the man in the moon, the drippy stuff being cheese, or fromage, and the spaceship has made a crash landing into his eye.
Whether or not you like silent movies or don't like silent movies or think you don't like silent movies or black and white movies or any movie that doesn't include explosions or a puking scene, I implore you, nay, I require you to watch "Le Voyage...." or "A Trip to the Moon" right now, before we continue. It's very short (less than 20 minutes), for you with deficits of attention, and has a rockin' soundtrack.
The restored version below has re-discovered scenes thought lost for all time, and is hand-colored... that's HAND-COLORED, my friend, and it's absolutely delicious-looking.
Now that you've had a good swig of this rare vintage from France, let's pack our bags and move on to some other instances of one-eyed creatures from around the world and throughout history... and their numbers are legion. Or at least a hundred. Don't worry--I only list about 8.
Numero Uno is the cyclops, from Greek mythology, and later Roman mythology, and later cartoons, who hailed from a race of giants with a single eye in the middle of their forehead (remember reading the Odyssey in high school?). The stories are complex and interesting, and you can google Wikipedia as well as I. But if you like quests, awesome monsters, tridents, thunderbolts, epic journeys, and possibly a puking scene (shepherds can be pretty indigestable), you should definitely go a-googling.
This is Polyphemus (artist's depiction, not a photograph),
from the Odyssey, by Homer (not Simpson):
Hitotsume-kozo, from Japanese lore.
The title of this is "Boy with His Tongue Out Licking a Tofu". I kid you not.
From the Hindu, the nasty-looking Kabandha:
Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons:
From 1957, one of my childhood's most favorite scary movies (it was on TV--I wasn't old enough to have seen it in the theater), poor irradiated Glenn Manning, from The Amazing Colossal Man, becomes a giant cyclops-like misfit. He was even more anti-social in War of the Colossal Beast, also know as an amazingly bad sequel and colossally huge flop:
And, of course, the cyclops created by the master of special effects, Ray Harryhausen, in
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad:
John Goodman... a cyclops? Yessirree! And a darned scary one, from Odyssey-inspired
O, Brother, Where Art Thou? by the Cohen Brothers.
Here are a few of my own eye-related images.
You Can't Hide Your Lying Eye
Runaway Moon Bride
Eyebrella Plant
E.R.F., Wind and Fire
The Walls Have Eyes
One Eye
Finally, a friendly cyclops: my version of the
One-Eyed, One-Horned, Flying Purple-People Eater from the 1958 Sheb Wooley song of the same name. (The most important thing I learned all week was that the people eater was NOT purple itself, but, rather, ate purple people.)
You know, I think "Sheb Wooley" would make a great name for a cyclops.
See you!
NOTE: All my images are protected by an invisible force field. If you wish to use or maybe even purchase an image, please contact me. For should that barrier be breached, all the above cyclopses, and all the cyclopses on Wikipedia, in both color and black and white, will be unleashed into your subconscious, so that you will have bad dreams until the day you die and anywhere you go after that.
