Land of the Minotaur

"Land of the Minotaur" aka "The Devil's Men" (1976, Kostas Karagiannis, Crown International Pictures) is a horror film set in 1970s Greece.


A group of archaeology-loving tourists begin to go missing when visiting a particular site. Could the shifty Baron Corofax (Peter Cushing) be involved? Could the whole town be in on it?! It's up to Irish Priest, Father Roche (Donald Pleasance), Milo Kaye (Mr Director himself, Kostas Karagiannis - billed here as Costas Skouras) and Laurie Gordon (Luan Peters) to uncover the mystery and put a stop to the worship and sacrifice to the Minotaur.


Both Cushing and Pleasance have led varied and extensive careers and were extremely supportive of the horror genre and its many aspiring creators, being game to appear in a true variety of quality of films. But, in spite of this, the biggest mystery by far is how they ended up in this one with so much screen time considering the other larger budget pieces they were in around the same time! Truly, we did not deserve them.


This film is a delightful piece of B-movie nonsense that includes;

• Donald Pleasance doing an Irish accent and wearing (and losing!) several hats,
• a few females in short shorts and other skimpy outfits,
• a creepy teenaged girl,
• a leading character resembling a young 70s Father Ted (I dare you to not think of it whilst watching Milo) who is nude quite a lot,
• cult worshippers in multi-coloured outfits (it seems the Baron got a discount on several metres of coloured satin at Remnant Kings - and those bejewelled eyeholes, dahling!),
• lots of shots of a convertible driving quite sensibly around Greece coupled with Donald Pleasance berating the driver for being careless,
• people haplessly digging up things on sites of archaeological interest with their bare hands,
• a mysteriously deserted town where the few townsfolk like to enjoy a beer with breakfast,
• Peter Cushing drinking beer and shooting a grandfather clock, and,
• lots of cult sacrifices to a statue of the Minotaur with a bad case of the fire sneezes and a dislike of people in his special room. 

At only 95 minutes long, it's also not too taxing a spectacle and is currently on Amazon Prime in the UK under it's UK title.

[Image: Crown International Pictures]

Hani

Manhattan Baby

"Manhattan Baby" aka "L'Occhio del male" (1982, Lucio Fulci, Fulvia Film) is an Italian giallo horror film from 'godfather of gore', Lucio Fulci. That makes it sound good. Don't get your hopes up too much...

The film serves as one of Fulci's weakest in my book, and certainly a far cry from his masterpiece, and a personal favourite of mine; "The House by the Cemetery".

We follow young Susie (Brigitta Boccoli) who, whilst in Egypt with her parents, Professor George Hacker (Christopher Connelly) and Emily Hacker (Laura Lenzi), is given a mysterious amulet by a strange, blind woman. Upon Susie receiving this unusual treasure, her father is struck blind whilst in an unexplored tomb and the family have to return immediately home to New York city.

While her parents fret over George's temporary blindness, Susie shows her new shiny thing to her younger brother, Tommy (Giovanni Frezza), and both siblings begin to fall under the amulet's power. This includes the ability to pop off on adventures to Egypt whenever they like, bring back poisonous creatures, ship off people who annoy them to the desert and summon the shambling undead.... Kids stuff, really.

As well as suffering from being very slow and somewhat dull, the plot jumps randomly from scene to scene making everything hard to follow and becoming a chore to watch. The characters also don't behave quite human enough: no one seems to notice all the missing people for starters!

One thing I did enjoy was watching George walk around with his glasses on over his massive eye bandages. Truly weird.

The film just lacks atmosphere and coherence and not even a zombie bird attack scene can save it from that!

I do love the DVD cover art, though

[Image: Fulvia Film]

 

Hani

The Pyramid

"The Pyramid" (2014, Grégory Levasseur, Silvatar Media, Fox International Productions, 20th Century Fox) is a found footage film set in Egypt.

The film is set in 2013 during the time of the Eqyptian protests against the then Egyptian president, Morsi. A father-daughter team of archaeologists, Dr. Miles Holden (Denis O'Hare) and Dr. Nora Holden (Ashley Hinshaw), have discovered a lost, submerged, pyramid, near the Great Pyramid. They assemble a team to film the discovery and plan to investigate it further. Upon opening the entrance, however, a noxious gas emits killing one of the workers.

With this news and with the impending uprising in Giza, the team are ordered to leave their discovery and return home. An instruction that they obviously ignore. Instead, they send in their rover robot secretly, which is quickly destroyed by whatever is lurking in the tomb...

Naturally, they decide to go in anyway to retrieve what remains of the expensive rover kit, quickly get hopelessly lost and are soon faced with the perils of the labrynthine tomb and its murderous inhabitants.

Fristly, I'll mention that this film has not been loved by the critics and I can see why: its dialogue isn't the best; it is unclear whether it's a found footage film or not - jumping from the cameraman's on-screen camera to normal film view all too often; the characters are annoying and fatally flawed; and we are shown way too much of the big bad.

But, to the film's credit, it's got a few nice jumps and at least they had the guts to try making an Egyptian themed horror not about a rampaging mummy! If only they had shown a little more restraint in how much of the baddy was shown, I think that this little plot nuance could have made a more successful film.

For me, it was too similar to some much better 'lost in an ancient place' movies that I've seen recently ("The Descent" and "As above, so below" spring to mind), which were just more successful in creating their atmosphere. It also smacked a little much of a bad "Indiana Jones" wannabe film.

However, yes, it's corny but it delivers the goods to a point, and is definitely not the worst film I've seen recently. So, while it's not a masterpiece, it shouldn't be completely ignored.

[Image: 20th Century Fox]

Hani

As Above, So Below

"As Above, So Below" (2014, John Erick Dowdle, Legendary Pictures, Universal Pictures) is an American jump scare, found footage horror based in the catacombs of Paris.

Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) is a student of alchemy, following her father's works after his death. She is obsessed with finding the Philosopher's stone, which is meant to grant eternal life, healing powers and, of course, the ability to turn base metals into gold. Oh alchemy, you weird 'science', you.

She, her ex, George (Ben Feldman) and their cameraman, Benji (Edwin Hodge), enlist the help of local urban expert, Papillon (François Civil), and his girlfriend, Souxie (Marion Lambert) to guide them into and around the Catacombs of Paris.

As they go deeper in the Catacombs, they come across some freaky sights. They also come across a small door which none of the locals will go through, stating that a friend of theirs had gone through, never to return.

Eventually, they have no choice if they wish to progress, so they go through the door and that's when they begin to question if they have accidentally opened the teensy tiny doorway to hell.

A fun little flick that manages to add a small charm to found footage that found footage hasn't had since Troll Hunter. Jumpy, kind of daft scenes and good timing make for a fun, rollercoaster experience.

While it's not for everyone, I actually found that I enjoyed this film which came as a surprise because I am not usually one for found footage.

There are a lot of horror tropes in there, granted, but I thought that they were used remarkably well and, although the film leaves you a bit disorientated and a little seasick from all that shaky cam, it's certainly not one of the worst I've seen this year.

There is, however, an awful scene that jumps into Lara Croft single player POV for a while and I just found that weird and a little dumb. Surely, if it took them a whole film to reach that point, going back would not take five minutes? Pah!

Regardless, it's not a ground breaking experience but I've seen worse.

[Image: Legendary Pictures]

 

Hani