Minotaur cult in Greece is performing human sacrifices of itinerant hippies. Donald Pleasance, a priest, investigates, then eventually explodes Peter Cushing, the cult leader, with religious relics.
There's your spoiler.
It would seem to take a lot of serial failures to screw up a film with Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasance, with Brian Eno handling the soundtrack, but this fails on every level.
It is too boring to be funny in a bad movie sort of way. There's almost no plot here and they stretch this out to excruciating extremes. There's no slow burn either: the pacing is horrible and they show you the ritual room and the stupid Minotaur statue right out of the gate (seriously, this is a bush league mistake - how can anyone mess this up?).
You know what's coming minutes in and you sort of don't care.
The setting is mostly underutilized. You're in Greece: use it. There's a little bit filmed around old ruins. There's a lot you could do here with curses or somehow link these Minotaur enthusiasts back to their ancient ancestors.
The cult, its beliefs, and its practices are goofy and uninteresting. A talking Minotaur statue with gas jets shooting flame out of its nose was probably, on paper, a lot scarier than the ludicrous thing it turned out to be in the movie.
What a waste of Cushing and Pleasance, and it's a waste of your time too even if you like cheesy horror. That the move is tedious is a far larger offense than its goofiness, and man this really, really long and really, really boring.
However, stick around for the Spinal Tap meets Emerson, Lake, and Powell theme that runs over the closing credits. It's the best thing about the film by far.
Terrible film by conventional horror standards, terrible by camp standards, terrible by MST3K standards. This movie has no redeeming qualities.
Except that closing theme -- man, what a gas!
There's your spoiler.
It would seem to take a lot of serial failures to screw up a film with Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasance, with Brian Eno handling the soundtrack, but this fails on every level.
It is too boring to be funny in a bad movie sort of way. There's almost no plot here and they stretch this out to excruciating extremes. There's no slow burn either: the pacing is horrible and they show you the ritual room and the stupid Minotaur statue right out of the gate (seriously, this is a bush league mistake - how can anyone mess this up?).
You know what's coming minutes in and you sort of don't care.
The setting is mostly underutilized. You're in Greece: use it. There's a little bit filmed around old ruins. There's a lot you could do here with curses or somehow link these Minotaur enthusiasts back to their ancient ancestors.
The cult, its beliefs, and its practices are goofy and uninteresting. A talking Minotaur statue with gas jets shooting flame out of its nose was probably, on paper, a lot scarier than the ludicrous thing it turned out to be in the movie.
What a waste of Cushing and Pleasance, and it's a waste of your time too even if you like cheesy horror. That the move is tedious is a far larger offense than its goofiness, and man this really, really long and really, really boring.
However, stick around for the Spinal Tap meets Emerson, Lake, and Powell theme that runs over the closing credits. It's the best thing about the film by far.
Terrible film by conventional horror standards, terrible by camp standards, terrible by MST3K standards. This movie has no redeeming qualities.
Except that closing theme -- man, what a gas!
