I never knew Ted Crilly was working as a Private Investigator in New York until I saw this film! Ted, called in by the local Greek Irish Priest (Donald Pleasance) who suspects a series of disappearences are down to a Minoan Death Cult (you find a lot of them about) soon brings over his girlfriend with him to investigate, who shall be formally known as Bird With No Acting Ability from here on in.

Ted's investigative skills are a bit crap: in fact he has trouble at least once opening a door the correct way (pull it out, mate, not in!). His dismisses Donald's theory of Devil cultists with ease, and flies out 5000 miles to tell him so face-to-face. Perhaps he borrowed Father Dougal McGuire's brain.

When it comes to action, Ted's fighting skills can best be described as 'Round House," or, in other words, they couldn't afford a stunt co-ordinator on this movie, The film crew somehow manage to make Greece look horrible. I shudder to think what they would have done with Watford on a wet afternoon.

There is a bit of narrative interest, for a while, before you start to riff on the movie. The Calor-Gas blasts out of a really poor Minotaur statue on regular intervals, which gives orders to cult leader Peter Cushing such as "All who enter the forbidden cave must die." Might be a good idea to stop bringing them there, then, including Bird With No Acting Ability.

Poor Mr. Cushing. He dons a red outfit that wouldn't have looked out of place on one of the ABBA ladies, and his cult are similiary attired in 70s Glam-rock Klan outfits.

At the end, Donald's priest turns out to have Indiana Jones level climbing skills, and he leaves Ted to take on the cultists at ground level - with predicatable results. Ted is soon tied to the sacrificial stones with his mates. But Donnie P saves the day by chuckjng holy water around like Arnold Swarzenegger, causing everyone, including Cushing, to explode. Christian symbols work well on Minoan Death Cults. For some reason.

Still, I hope Peter and Donald had a nice holiday out of it, and Father Ted survives to occupy Craggy Island...

The Devil's Men. A Satanic cult led by horror legend Peter Cushing are committing human sacrifice to a Minotaur figure in rural Greece and it's down to priest Donald Pleasence (another horror legend) and his friend from New York to put an end to it. I've read mainly negatives about this movie and it certainly has flaws. For a start Cushing looked to me like he was merely going through the motions. Pleasence played an Irish man but his accent kept slipping. Having an interest in the occult I felt that there was a lack of information about the cult, it's beliefs, origins, etc. And the finale was rather sill, but entertaining. However, on the positive side it is visually very good, plenty of colour and great use of Greek locations. The musical score, by Brian Eno, is effectively menacing. Some reviewers found it boring but I did not. Being a 1970's Euro horror movie we get some nudity, plus a fair amount of blood and gore. It's really not too bad.

This is the strangest episode of Father Ted that I've ever seen. It seems to be some sort of prequel starring Donald Pleasance as a younger Father Jack, who is situated on an island in Greece. Jack isn't doing too good a job of stopping tourists he meets from being sacrificed by the local Minotaur cult run by Bishop Brennan (played by Peter Cushing). Jack so far has:

1) Let two tourists be sacrificed at the start of the film then gets ignored by the police. 2) Fails to warn three further youngsters, then just watches as they sneak off into the night. 3) Waits until one of those three people escapes capture, then after she gets captured he phones New York to get help from a young Father Ted!

Ted does actually seem to be played by Dermot Morgan, so that's good. He gets to Greece and Father Jack is whining about how the devil and the Minotaur are the same needs to be stopped but Ted is giving the glad eye to a young Mrs Doyle who is looking for one of her friends. It's around this time that we realise that just about everyone in the town is part of the Minotaur cult, but it takes Jack and Ted an awfully long time to figure this out, after:

4) They totally ignore the one villager who was going to tell them the whole deal. She gets murdered not long after. 5) Leaving Mrs Doyle alone while the Minotaur cultists play 'peek-a-boo' at her bedroom window. 6) Leaving Mrs Doyle alone so she can be captured by the cultists.

Periodically Peter Cushing turns up as the local Baron/Head Cultist so he can pulls faces at the two of them and say 'What's up bitches?" before getting into his Rolls Royce and driving off. Things come to a head during the ceremony to kill Mrs Doyle, but will good win against evil?

This is pretty dull, unengaging stuff from start to finish. I've heard there's a version with slightly more gore and nudity in it, but then the version I watched had the 'people exploding' bit at the end, but no nudity. It just needed a kick in the arse action wise from start to finish, as Jack and Ted mostly wander about retracing the steps of the people who were captured and glaring at the locals.

Brian Eno did the soundtrack, however. I do recognise one track from Music For Films, but the rest was new to me. Not bad.

You can avoid this one though.