THE DEVIL'S MEN

CONTAINS SOME BIG SPOILERS

An Anglo-Greek horror quickie from the 70s that makes not a blind bit of sense and contradicts itself all over the place, this has the undeniable pleasure of pitting two British genre veterans against each other to commend it, but sadly not much else. Not even a half-decent title. Was The Devil's Men really the best they could come up with?

An exiled Carpathian baron (Peter Cushing) leads a gathering of robed nutbags sacrificing tourists to a firebreathing stone Minotaur in the catacombs near a Greek village, and Oirish priest (Donald Pleasence) tries to stop them. To assist him, Pleasence calls upon the services of a P.I. moron from New York, who steadfastly refuses to accept anything he's told, and the dimwit girlfriend (Luan Peters) of one of the missing tourists: she keeps on doing the usual horror bimbo things like wandering off into the woods by herself even after being spooked in the bath by black-robed weirdos, wearing the tightest and shortest shorts imaginable.

Well, it could be okay.....Except why is one of the cult's victims told that her destiny is to sacrifice Pleasence to the Minotaur, when her actual destiny is to be sacrificed to the Minotaur herself? Why do Pleasence and the dullard 'tec repeatedly ignore a woman who has significant information for them? Indeed, given that Pleasence knows exactly what to do to stop the cult, why hasn't he done it before? And why did he bother roping in the idiot American in the first place?

Plus points: the final confrontation has a few nifty effects as the villains get theirs, there's some thoroughly unnecessary nudity, and Peter Cushing is always great, even when stuck in unmitigated tosh (see also the insanely dull and cheap The Blood Beast Terror). And Brian Eno, of all people, got to do the music. Overall, though, it's a failure.

**