Minotaur came
out in 2006, but is only just now being released on DVD – presumably to cash in
on star Tom Hardy’s meteoric rise. This may tell you everything you need to
know. But if it doesn’t, and to save you some time, here’s a quick questionnaire
to determine whether or not Minotaur is for you:
- Are
you going to be drunk, high, stoned or under the influence of heavy
medication while watching this film?
- Are
you slightly more stupid than a brick?
If you answered Yes to either question, then have I got the
film for you. I figure I’m slightly more intelligent than a brick because I
don’t get pissed on in alleyways for a living, so I got through Minotaur by
turning it into a drinking game. To do this at home yourself, you’ll
need booze. Tasty, tasty, booze. Filmwerk recommends Martin Miller’s gin and
Oyster Bay (NZ) sauvignon blanc, although other alcoholic beverages are
available.
It may also help to draw up a bingo checklist. Since Minotaur
was obviously trying to ride the coattails of 2004’s Troy and Alexander, the
first few items on my list were:
- Babes
with suspiciously great hair, given the period setting
- Expository
dialogue (double chug for narrative voice over)
- Men
with long hair (double chug for long hair and facial hair)
- Boobs
- Blood
spray
ALL of these things came up in the first two minutes – before
the name of the film appeared onscreen. This meant I was well squiffy
before the movie even got going! Before five minutes was over, I had also
crossed off “talismanic pendants”, “drug rug shirts”, “plaits” and “father/son
conflict”. As a result, I am happy to report that Minotaur is the
greatest film ever made, provided we’re only talking in terms of films that
will help you get right off your tits.
Although my handwriting deteriorated as the film went on and
the liquor flowed, I’ve pieced together my notes as best I can. In no
particular order:
Tom Hardy Everybody
has to start somewhere. Tom started here and now he’s doing actual Hollywood films with actual budgets. (He’s not in Prometheus,
though. You’re thinking of his doppelganger, Logan Marshall-Green.) In Minotaur
Tom plays Theo, aka the classical Greek hero formerly known as Theseus, who in
this version of the minotaur story is a shepherd sent to save the world from a
false god. I have no idea what the subtext there is. Theo’s not a very good
shepherd – of the nine people he tries to lead out of the labyrinth, only three
survive and at one point he has to chase a wolf that kills one of his actual sheep. I
think he intends to capture the wolf, drag it back to the flock and make it
apologise to the surviving sheep. Instead he winds up in the cave of The Leper,
played by Ingrid Pitt.
Ingrid Pitt
The late Hammer Horror legend is cruelly treated in one of her final roles.
Buried beneath layers of grotesque prosthetics is the woman whose gorgeous
blonde locks, voluminous cleavage and come-hither eyes spurred legions of young
men through puberty. Every time someone sees her, they gasp “The Leper!” I
think she’s called The Leper because she has leprosy, but since the script
didn’t have anyone actually say that, I can’t be sure.
Tony “I’ve been in
every film ever made, but you’ll only remember me from Candyman” Todd
crops up as the gas-huffing, sister-bothering Deucalion, King of Minos. You can
tell he’s evil because his cape has a big collar on it and he looks terrific in
a floor-length leather skirt and acrylic talons. He has all the best lines,
like “Inhale the sweetness!” and, my personal fave, his exhortation to Princess
Raphaella once she’s plunged into The Beast’s labyrinth: “Sister! Flee from
this place!” Yah, bro – I think she’s on it.
The Minotaur and his labyrinth The
labyrinth is smaller than you’d think. The Beast can be in every bit of it at
once, but hasn’t worked out that all that’s keeping him from rampaging through
the palace is a rickety wooden door right beside his bed. The Minotaur is as
smart as he is ugly, and he’s a hideous freak of nature whose mere existence is
an affront to heaven. The creature effects capture this quite well. This Minotaur
is not so much a half-man/half-bull as it is a hairless, slavering
prehistoric-looking carnivore with horns – I fondly nicknamed it “The
Dino-Moo”. Good work, special effects team.
Science is
very hard done by in Minotaur. The labyrinth is apparently the source of
some sort of flammable gas that lights the palace above, and Deucalion likes to
inhale it through an animal skull to get a bit of a buzz. Some people who
inhale it cough to death, others have no reaction at all, and some get horny.
When the gas is ignited, the resulting fireball is sometimes hot enough to dry
out pools of water and sometimes not – it depends on which pools the main
characters are hiding in.
On the biology front, Princess Raphaella explains how The Dino-Moo
came to be. This is not strictly necessary, as the opening scene has already
done it. Anyway, she’s trying to reassure Theo that The Dino-Moo is not, in
fact, a supernatural and immortal entity. Unfortunately, her explanation raises
more questions than it answers. In “Ancient Times” the “Old Ones” had commanded
her mother, the Queen, to lie with a bull in order to beget a living god. The
result was The Dino-Moo. “So don’t freak out, Theo. The Beast is just a genetic
aberration, not a divine being, so you can totally kill it. I mean, pfft. A god
born of a woman and a bull! That would be ridiculous. A mating between two
utterly different species resulting in viable offspring is far more plausible.
And don’t spend too much time thinking about the fact that that the Minotaur is
my half-brother, or that according to the chronology I’ve just given you I’m,
like, centuries old.”
Michelle van der Water is
really pretty and copes well with playing a princess of antiquity who
gallivants about in false eyelashes, body paint, high heels and precious little
else. Bonus points for kick-starting the tamest girl-on-girl scene ever filmed.
A cheesy themed nightclub is
as good a place to film your palace scenes as any other, and is an entirely
apropos location for the tamest girl-on-girl scene ever filmed.
Rutger Hauer
gets co-top billing on the DVD box. He has about two seconds of screen time,
during which he’s dressed up like a hobo Santa. Then he does the sensible thing
– he takes his cheque and fucks off.
Lex Shrapnel His
name is Lex Shrapnel.
Snow-covered Wales does
a poor job of looking like an island in the Mediterranean.
Nutrition There
are many close-ups of rats as the kids are dropped into The Dino-Moo’s lair, so
when Theo encounters a crazed survivor of a previous sacrificial group I
thought it was obvious that he’d been eating rats. “I’ve been living on hope
and rats!” he confirms. Two minutes later, when asked what the Minotaur eats
between sacrificial groups of youths, the crazed survivor holds up a few dead
rats. Then, in case Theo has poor eyesight, he helpfully says “Rats!” If I were
a more cynical person, I would suspect that Nick Green and Stephen McDool had
only written Minotaur to promote rats as part of a healthy diet.
The script and direction As
you may have gathered, both are perfect for an audience that is both
heavily intoxicated and deeply stupid. For example, when Theo finds a gigantic
hoof print in the sand of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, he reverently traces it
with his finger and breathes “The Beast!” – you know, in case the viewer
thought some other massive cloven-footed creature was about to hove into view
during a movie called Minotaur.
Don’t get me wrong – although it may seem this film is
out to insult your intelligence, it’s really not. Director Jonathan English
(Johnny English!) is smart enough to know that any audience able to sit the
whole way through Minotaur sober needs all the help it can get following
a very basic storyline. I will eat a rat if you can find me a better Sci-Fi
Channel production about a group of people in Ugg boots running away from a deformed
cow. A triumph.
