Thésée et le Minotaure

After having seen The Minotaur I'm surprised that no one recognized the plot elements from Alessandre Dumas's Man In The Iron Mask. Maybe there was no mask for Rosanna Schiaffino to wear, but she plays the twin princesses of Crete as both good and evil.

The star of this peplum epic is Bob Mathias two time decathlon champion and he gets to show off some of the prowess that got him that gold. He's a visiting prince from Greece who rescued good twin Schiaffino where she's been brought up by peasants to keep her safe from the Minotaur. He's one nasty looking 7 foot tall dude with the head of an American bison and teeth like a shark. Virgins are sacrificed regularly to him and royal virgins are his special delicacy.

Evil Schiaffino has overthrown dad with her boyfriend Alberto Lupo and they run things. Mathias as Prince Theseus from Athens is our hero.

I kind of liked the makeup done for the Minotaur. It's not Ray Corrigan in a gorilla suit, some care went into the creation of the beast.

Nothing too special in this peplum. It's a combination of the myth of the Minotaur with the plot The Man In The Iron Mask. Take it fromm there.

The legend of Theseus finding his way through the Cretan maze in order to battle the Minotaur and rescue Ariadne is one of the great tales in Greek mythology. Alas, this version takes the tale and dilutes it into the standard "sword and sandal" plot. You know how it goes. The coldly-beautiful but evil queen lusts after the handsome, muscular hero. He already has a girlfriend and is a foe of tyranny and so spurns the queen. She's outraged, has the girlfriend imprisoned, and subjects the hero to a torturous trial. He triumphs, frees the girlfriend, and overthrows the tyrant. Grateful citizens cheer the happy couple. The End.

Steve Reeves might have been able to lift this mixture to a higher level but in his place we have ex-Olympics champion, Bob Mathias. Mathias is an affable sort and he's given an opportunity to show off his athletic prowess by engaging in a display of javelin throwing, pole vaulting, and discus throwing. He also looks pretty good with his shirt off, though not quite as good as you'd hope and he seems a bit self-conscious about baring his chest. On a more troubling note, however, his personality is bland, his acting ability no more than passable, and he lacks the swaggering sexuality needed to give his character that necessary edge.

Rosanna Schiaffino gets to play the evil queen as well as her virtuous twin sister. She's good at being bad but bad at being good. As for the Minotaur, traditionally represented with the head of a bull, it's poorly depicted here as a stunt-man dressed in sort of a King Kong suit, and the climatic battle between Theseus and the Minotaur doesn't deliver the expected thrills. Also, little is made of the strand of yarn which leads Theseus out of the maze, and the Minoan culture is only vaguely hinted at in the sets and costumes.

And once again, the movie bungles the torture scene. Theseus winds up in the queen's torture chamber, chained to a wall, but he's modestly allowed to keep on the top of his tunic! So when the torturer approaches with the red-hot iron, he must reach out and make a discreet rip in the hero's shirt in order to expose a bit of bare flesh next to the hero's left nipple. Hey, this is a "sword and sandal" movie featuring a muscular actor as its star. Why not rip that shirt all the way off and put the hero's sweaty torso on proper display?

This Italian peplum genre film can be missed but has enough going for it to make a screening pleasant and amusing. First, there's a LOT OF MOVIE here: many sets, big outdoor battle scenes, decadent court and temple scenes, perhaps as many dancing girl scenes as any such movie offers. Whole lotta shakin' goin' on. The music meets the moment. The wine goblets look like they'd hold a liter.

Trade-offs too in those areas. The film's visuals never provide any large sense of the labyrinth itself. When the monstrous title character finally appears, it's for only a hurried minute or two of indistinct action, cut-rate camera angles, and shifting scales for the creature's size. Also, how did a man-bull hybrid grow teeth more appropriate to a baboon?

Continuing on esoteric details, to stay family-friendly the opening narration skates over the Minotaur's origin story, i.e. Born from Minos's wife Pasiphae's lust for a particularly handsome Cretan bull. Credit to the scenario for depicting Ariadne providing a thread for escaping the labyrinth (like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs), but then the film doesn't show her and Theseus using it after he finishes off the minotaur.

Back to positives, Olympian Bob Mathias is appropriately big, buff, and handsome to stand in for Theseus (Italian Teseo), and an early generic games scene show him and Demetrios competing in decathlon events. Rosanna Schiaffino looks great as good and evil identical twin princesses and plays both stock characters well enough.

History retells mythic stories in so many variations that it's futile to complain of infidelities to the versions we learned in school. In any case, the plot tirelessly makes twists and turns to keep things moving--maybe a few too many, as some characters and their plotlines disappear for too long. Through it all Theseus looks as good as Bob Mathias on a 1950s box of Wheaties, and you could find many worse films with which to while away an afternoon or evening indoors.

In ancient Crete, a monster called the Minotaur can only be satisfied by virgin sacrifices. The evil ruler of Crete is determined to keep the monster happy by sacrificing as many of the island's virgins as he can, but a pair of friends determine to kill the monster and stop the sacrifices.

Director Silvio Amadio is unfortunately not well known, perhaps best remembered for "Wolves of the Deep" (1959), and even that is rather obscure. Star Bob Mathias has a much more fascinating biography -- he was a two-time Olympic gold medalist, a Marine Corps officer, actor and Republican Congressman representing the state of California.

For movie buffs, the most recognizable might be Paul Mueller, who would go on to appear in a few 60s and 70s horror films by Jess Franco, including his version of "Count Dracula".

Anyway, that was all just to full space. You should watch this.

Theseus of Athens (Bob Mathias, an actual Olympian) and his companion Demetrio (Rik Battaglia) rescue beautiful Ariadne (Rosanna Schiaffino) from brigands, only to discover that she is the twin sister of wicked Phaedra, princess of Crete (also Rosanna Schiaffino), who has no filial love for this potential rival for the throne. The malignant princess' power in Minos is maintained by fear of the Minotaur, a fearsome beast imprisoned in a labyrinth beneath the palace in Minos, a God to whom Phaedra sacrifices dissenters and their families. As Italian sword and sandal quasi-epics go, this one is not too bad. Decathlete Matthias has a heroic physique (although not quite as impressive as that depicted in the posters), the fight scenes are entertaining (despite numerous unconvincing armpit stabbings), and the women, especially Ariadne have skimpy outfits and very big...hair. The final showdown with the titular monster comes very late in the film and is somewhat anticlimactic as the film's Minotaur does not much resemble homo-bovine hybrid of myth. The film is a simple adventure that would appeal to kids but does contain some grim scenes of torture. I watched an adequately English-dubbed version on TCM which was OK, but there were some very abrupt cuts (when a woman's blouse is pulled off during the attack on Ariadne's village or when a character gets a red-hot poker in the eye) that suggests that a more 'adult' version may have been lensed. Entertaining but not great (but 'great' is not what the genre is known for).