Peter Cushing gives one of his icier 1970s performances in the Greek devil-worship thriller THE DEVIL’S MEN.
makes a watchable heroine, but the level of acting across the board is nowhere near so impres- sive as the actors’ sumo-like abil- ity to throw themselves, like pit bulls and rag dolls, into the ac- robatic requirements of the vio- lent bedroom scenes. The film’s most intriguing aspect is Ami’s fatalistic relationship with the one man she doesn’t sleep with, an aging vagrant to whom she gives her first professional earnings (moreso out of self-disgust than real charity), which he in turn uses to pay for a young whore of his own, leading him into a simi- larly punishing relationship and, in time, a second date of destiny with Ami.
Written and directed by VAM- PIRE GIRL VS. FRANKENSTEIN’s Hidehiro Ito, this is presented in anamorphic 1.78:1 with reason- able grain and realistic skin tones. The original Japanese audio track is provided with removable English subtitles. The only extras are a trailer (1m 32s) and useful
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liner notes by BEHIND THE PINK CURTAIN author Jasper Sharp.
THE DEVIL’S MEN / TERROR
1976/1978, Scorpion Releasing, $14.95, 94m 12s/84m 13s, DVD By Shane M. Dallmann
Scorpion Releasing has is- sued a handy double bill of two familiar titles. While the films fea- tured here were previously paired for BCI’s OOP “Crypt of Terror” series, they now arrive in presen- tations that can finally be consid- ered “definitive” for the American video market.
Kostas Karagiannis’ THE DEVIL’S MEN has been known on television and home video for decades as LAND OF THE MINOTAUR in its cut, PG-rated Crown rendition. Mind you, this is no peplum: under either title, the film involves priest Donald Pleasence attempting to rescue a clutch of foolhardy students from a Satanic cult presided over
by Peter Cushing in sunny Greece (the Minotaur appears only as a flame-snorting statue that lords it over the cultists in their secret cavern). Scorpion happily trum- pets the first-ever uncut Ameri- can release of THE DEVIL’S MEN, which restores several sequences of previously-scissored nudity but does nothing to improve the film’s glacial pace—this effort remains best recommended to those seeking an attractively- photographed travelogue. Also missing from the MINOTAUR ver- sion (and replaced by a reprise of Brian Eno’s electronic score) was the would-be-funky end title song—we now get to hear “The Devil’s Men” for the first time, but while the credited singer is Paul Williams, it doesn’t sound like that Paul Williams. The anamor- phically-enhanced 1.78:1 master transfer is sufficiently sharp to pick up the papier-maché origins of the Minotaur and certainly does justice to the remaining scenery.
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