LAND OF THE MINOTAUR - A.K.A. THE DEVIL'S MEN (1976)

DIRECTED by Kostas Karagiannis

SCREENPLAY by Arthur Rowe

STARRING  - Donald Pleasance as Father Roche,  Peter Cushing as Baron Corofax,  Luan Peters as Laurie Gordon,  Kostas Karagiorgis (credited as Costas Skouras) as Milo Kaye,  Fernando Bislamis (credited as Dimitris Bislanis) as Sgt. Vendris,  George Venlis as Max,  Vanna Reville as Beth,  Nikos Verlekis as Ian,  Robert Behling (credited as Bob Behling) as Tom Gifford,  Anna Matzourani as Mrs. Mikaelis, Anestis Vlachos as Shopkeeper,  Jane Lyle as Milo's girlfriend,  Jessica Dublin as Mrs. Zagros

PLOT - When a group of students go missing whilst visiting an ancient Greek archaeological site, the local pastor - Father Roche - vows to find out what happened to them.

Enlisting the aid of hard nosed private investigator Milo Kaye and Laurie Gordon (the girlfriend of one of the missing students) Roche uncovers a conspiracy involving the entire local community. The entire population of a nearby town are members of a devil worshipping cult led by the evil Baron Corofax. The cult has been kidnapping unwary travellers and using them as human sacrifices to thier demonic God - The Minotaur.

Can Roche and his friends rescue the surviving students before they are sacrificed ? Before thier innocent blood reawakens the Minotaur...

DIALOUGE  - Father Roche - "We are up against a force that no traditional weapon has the power to destroy ! There is one force that has the power to stop them, otherwise they would have ruled the world from the beginning !"

PERFORMANCES  - You'd think that a film starring Donald Pleasance and Peter Cushing  - two of the finest actors of thier generation, both of whom where at the top of thier game in the mid 1970's - couldn't possibly fail wouldn't you ? You'd be wrong - as Land Of The Minotaur proves - even legends can have thier off days.

Obviously neither Cushing or Pleasance give a "bad" performance as such (even a bad performance from either of these two heavyweights is better than some actor's "best" performances) but theres just something a bit "off" with both of them in this film.

Donald Pleasance plays Father Roche - the heroic preist who pledges to get to the bottom of the mysterious disappearances. The character of Roche is a sort of proto-Loomis. Like Sam Loomis, Roche has a single minded determination to stop evil in it's tracks. Roche also shares other traits with Pleasance's most iconic role - the main one being his propensity to come out with doom laden monologues concerning the evil force that is currently holding sway over the small Greek town that the film takes place in.

Pleasance delivers these ominous speeches with the same grim relish that he would go on to do in his role of Loomis in Halloween just two years later in 1978. Its these scenes where Pleasance shines the most. 

However, the problem is that Pleasance is hampered by having to give his character a fake Irish accent which...he struggles with for some reason. Throughout the film his accent is all over the place - in some scenes he talks with a thick Irish brogue, in others he speaks in his normal English accent. Its like he couldn't quite make his mind up how to play the character so took two different takes - one as an Irishman and one as an Englishman and then the director (or editor) got the two takes mixed up and spliced them together hoping nobody would notice. Its really distracting and ruins what would otherwise be a good performance. If Pleasance was struggling doing the accent that much wouldn't it have made more sense to let him speak in his own accent all the time ? It's not like the character's nationality has any relevance to the story anyway.

Peter Cushing plays the evil cult leader Baron Corofax. Cushing also isn't his usual self here. He still gives good value for money and is just as suave and sinister as ever but for some reason he just doesn't seem as engaged with the role as he usually does. He seems distracted and a bit bored to be honest. Maybe he was going for cold, aloof arrogance with the character or maybe he just didn't like the script - we'll never know. He's still good (I like how you never see Corofax even blink throughout the entire movie) but there's just something...I dunno...lacking.

The other two main characters don't fair much better either. Luane Peters plays Laurie - a student who is looking for her missing boyfriend (who looks like he's auditioning for a Bee Gees lookalike band - well it WAS 1976), Peters gives a perfectly fine performance but doesn't get a lot to do other than wear a succession of increasingly tight blouses and sweaters, scream a lot, get kidnapped and need rescuing.

Then we get Kostas Karagiorgis as private eye Milo Kaye. Milo is your typical 70's man of action - he's a ladies man, drinks, smokes, fights and likes to slap hysterical women to calm them down. Karagiorgis is OK but I had a hard time taking him seriously because with his prematurely grey hair and jet black eyebrows he reminds me too much of Father Ted. Maybe they should have made him do the Irish accent...

SFX - Good grief... In this film we get the horror that is the Minotaur  (or Satan - the film can't seem to make up it's mind as to what the demon actually is. Isn't Satan supposed to be the king of all evil, whereas the Minotaur is some kind of half-man, half-bull mutant ? How could you possibly get the two confused ?)

Anyway, the Minotaur (or Satan) is portrayed as a giant statue with glowing eyes which shoots "hellfire" out of it's nostrils and speaks in an echoing "spooky" voice. It doesn't help matters that the so-called "hellfire" just looks like someone's lit a couple of Bunsen burners and shoved them up the statue's nostrils...

Baron Corofax must have had one hell of a gas bill to pay after this. No wonder Cushing looks so pissed off.

VIOLENCE  - We get to see a couple of ritualistic murders where the victims are stabbed in the heart whilst tied to a stone altar, nothing too extreme really. The most worrying thing is that all the cultists look like they're auditioning for the KKK.

Probably the most explicitly violent scene is when we see Father Roche get stabbed in the heart by Baron Corofax...but that's OK because this is all just a dream sequence anyway so it doesn't really happen.

At the film's climax the Minotaur and his evil minions are all destroyed by Father Roche throwing holy water over the Minotaur statue. For some reason this causes Baron Corofax and his cult members to all explode in a completely non-spectacular and bloodless fashion. You'd think watching a bunch of KKK rejects blowing up would be a satisfying thing to see but it just looks like somebody blew up a bunch of department store dummies with cheap fireworks. Also - was that the best climax they could come up with ? This evil from the dawn of time thats capable of destroying the entire world just BLOWS UP WHEN YOU SPLASH A BIT OF HOLY WATER ON HIM ???? A bit of an anticlimax if ever I saw one.

RATING  - Overall The Land Of The Minotaur (or The Devil's Men - even the two titles can't decide what the villian actually was) is a bit of a mess. 

It's got a lot of promise (especially considering the pedigree of it's main actors) and there's some lovely looking location shots of the dusty Greek landscape that at least manage to be atmospheric but its all a bit lackluster really.

Its mainly down to the script I think. Its paced very slowly and starts to get a bit boring. Theres some charm to it and bits of it are unintentionally funny but don't go into this expecting much.

3 Calor Gas demons out of 5. It could have - and SHOULD have - been a LOT better.

ART -