Starring Bob Mathias, Rosanna Schiaffino, Alberto Lupo, Rik Battaglia, Carlo Tamberlani and Susanne Loret. Written by Gian Paolo Callegari, Sandro Continenza and Daniel Mainwaring. Directed by Silvio Amadio. Produced by Giorgio Agliani, Gino Mordini and Rudolphe Solmesne.
Gino Mordini/Giorgio Agliani Cinematografica/Illiria Film

The kingdom of Crete, ruled by Minos, regularly feeds young maidens to the fearsome Minotaur to keep the gods happy. But Princess Phaedra of Crete is far from happy when her mother’s deathbed confession reveals that she actually has a twin sister. This sister, the dying queen explains, had been given away to strangers in a far-off village because the queen had feared that one of the two sisters might have been given up to the Minotaur as a sacrifice. The king sends men to bring his long-lost daughter home, but Princess Phaedra (Schiaffino) sets plans in motion to have her sister bumped off so that she will have no future rivals for the throne of Crete.

The twin sister, Ariadne (also Schiaffino), seems doomed as Phaedra’s goons ravage her village, killing the local men and abducting any women who could be the forgotten princess, but she’s saved by the fortuitous arrival of two heroic warriors: Theseus (Mathias) and Demetrios (Battaglia). 

Theseus, the son of Aegeus, king of Athens, has been away on various adventures with his friend Demetrios, who is a Cretan citizen. Demetrios is amazed by Ariadne’s resemblance to his country’s princess, Phaedra, whilst Theseus finds himself falling in love with her.  

As the plot unfolds, we follow events in Athens and Crete, with Princess Phaedra’s ruthless right hand man, Chirone (Lupo), relentlessly trying to deal with Theseus and get rid of Ariadne. He is quite willing to use the threat of torture and a pit of hyenas to achieve his aims, and the story eventually leads, of course, to Theseus venturing into the Minotaur’s lair…

Also known as THE MINOTAUR, THE WILD BEAST OF CRETE in the US and WARLORD OF CRETE in the UK, this is an Italian peplum that is typical of many of this genre’s releases in that the filmmakers focus more on the colourful human conflict and drama, keeping the fantastical elements to a minimum. We do get an interesting sequence, though, where a badly injured Theseus, who’s just fallen off a cliff with an arrow in his back, is saved by Amphitrite, the Goddess of the Sea, who has the hots for him. Theseus’s heart belongs to Ariadne, however, so Amphitrite has to make do with helpfully filling him in on events that’ve happened on the surface world while he was recuperating (including a war between Crete and Athens, which Crete won).

Though the fight scenes are rather lacklustre, the production has some handsome sets (including a bull-headed entrance to the labyrinth), there are lots of leggy, scantily-clad women, and the film features male leads who are not the muscled bodybuilder-types usually cast in these roles (Bob Mathias was an American decathlete who won gold medals at the 1948 and 1952 Olympic Games). Rosanna Schiaffino is quite striking looking, resembling Sophia Loren in some ways, and her acting skills are decent enough to enable her play the two sisters as quite different characters. 

But… what about the goddamn Minotaur I hear you ask?! Well, this is where the film becomes increasingly frustrating, because (after an opening shot of the Minotaur’s hand grasping for a nubile victim) the movie keeps you waiting and waiting and waiting for the moment we finally get to see the beast. This eventually occurs at the very end of the film, when Theseus gets around to actually venturing into the labyrinth (which is pretty much a cave system), where he encounters the mythical monster. At last!

The Minotaur in this swords-and-sandals flick is an odd-lookin’ critter. It sports a pair of horns, but the decision was made, it seems, to not give it the visage of a bull. Instead, this Minotaur (created by Carlo Rambaldi) has a bear-like body and a grotesquely large, toothy, almost simian head. I assume the creature’s oversized cranium was made so big to house the mechanisms used to give it a bunch of goofy-but-quite-effective facial expressions.

Though Theseus’s skirmish with the monster is rather brief, the Minotaur’s downfall is memorably grisly: Theseus burns out both of its eyes with a fiery torch and then bashes its head with a rock!

The film, as a whole, is certainly watchable, but it really needed more scenes of hyena pits and sea goddesses. And it definitely required more footage of the titular Minotaur!

Finally, here’s a US newspaper ad…