Land of the Minotaur - 1976

Also known as "The Devil's Men"

I'm sort of glad I'm sticking to the basic idea of having a 1976 marathon.  I didn't really intend to keep it going nor did I intend to start it to begin with, but it gives me a fun time searching, and it does make the movies easy to compare.  IMDb has a total of 2,956 titles that come up when I click on the year 1976 link.  Isn't that insane? That's 8 movies coming out ever single day of the year.

The Devil's Man would be a fitting title, more accurate.  Now, sure, there is a minotaur thing in the film.  But what I mean is a statue of a minotaur.  It does breath fire out of it's nose, however it doesn't move nor does it ever get shown actually killing anyone.

What this is, I formulated in my head as I was watching it, is a mystery movie without the mystery and a horror movie without the horror. Which leaves it in general as a suspense.  But wouldn't it be better if the suspense had some mystery or horror to back it up?  Yes, I will go ahead and answer that for you.  Yes it would be.  So you as the audience will know what's going on from early on then you'll just have to wait for the end.

Donald Pleasence plays a priest, and he is in town to help out with some recent disappearances that have been going on.  Peter Cushing is Baron Corofax, a mysterious and ruthless individual who later turns out to the be cult leader.  That's not a spoiler - they tell you that at like minute 30.  Also, we are well aware the minotaur statue is basically satan and that the culty religion has been sacrificing people to the minotaur statue.

I wanted a live minotaur, obviously.  I wanted some 70's costume which was shrouded in black and looked positively badass.  Now, the statue thing is pretty neat I'll say.  But we're never shown it actually killing anyone, and all it does therefore is sit there and have fire shoot out of it's nose.  It does "speak" meaning we can hear the voice of supposedly satan while the camera lingers on the minotaur.  However, normally it speaks through Cushing as the leader or it speaks through some children.

It goes as expected.  It's very over long and dialogue heavy.  Not much happens for a lot of the movie, and this is a classic example of a movie I wanted to like but couldn't.  Despite the great casting of two actors I like, and despite the obviously decently budgeted look.  I don't know.  Could clearly have been a case of:  it wasn't what I was looking for.

I will give it a 2.5 straight down the road rating.  Hm.  You know what, make that 2.