Wednesday 12 February 2014

Land of the Minotaur (1975)



I blame The Exorcist.

I blame it for the many talky, tedious horror movies that oozed out in the 70s after the aforementioned film's massive success. Films that aped the obvious themes and style of their progenitor, but understood none of what made it work.

This is one of those films. It features a secret cult of Minotaur-worshippers (why do they worship a bull-headed man? who knows). These folks like to kidnap tourists and sacrifice them. The film starts with one such sacrifice, which comes across mostly as rather hokey. About the only interesting idea in it is that the actual killings are conducted by a girl of about 12 years age.

After this, a new group of tourists wander into the firing line, despite the efforts of a local priest to warn them off. When his young friends vanish, the priest calls in a private investigator (who singularly fails to successfully investigate pretty much anything for the whole film, or indeed achieve anything), as well as the girlfriend of one of the missing folks. Her role appears largely to be 'wear very short shorts'.

Lots of desultory 'scary' or 'gothic' scenes follow, most of them quite tedious when they aren't goofy, before a splash of holy water saves the day.

Yawn. Give it a miss.

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