The Minotaur (1960) Movie Review

So you want to watch a movie about the mythology of Theseus and the Minotaur in the labyrinth. Is this the movie for you ? Let’s find out.

The Minotaur (IMDB) (Amazon)

The Minotaur.png

Also known as The Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete or Teseo contro il minotauro in Italian so as not to think this is the terrible Tom Hardy film Minotaur from 2006 which thought it was so special it could drop the ‘the’.

Anyway this film follows the story of the town of Crete which sacrifices virgins each year to the Minotaur in the labyrinth to appease him. If you have more than one child the gods may select one of them to be sacrificed. This puts the king and queen in an awkward situation when they have twin girls. They decide to send one of the girls to be raised in a faraway village so she will not someday be sacrificed. However, many years later she is found. Now this is a movie, so the princess is evil and the twin from the village is good. There are fights, are mermaids and very very very little of the Minotaur. So the movie is named after a mythological beast that isn’t really in the movie much, although his presence in the background does serve to move the plot forward. Overall this is almost an ok movie.

Fun fact, the actor who plays Prince Teseo is 2 time Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon Bob Mathias. Later he was a 4 time member of Congress in the US House of Representatives. I can safely say that his life was much more interesting than this movie.

I would rate it 5 / 10 and if you find it when changing channels I would keep flipping - you can do better.

Here is a link to “ruin” the movie. This is the key scene at the end:

If you like this story, in this post I compare 4 different comic book versions of it :

Maze Comic Book Reviews - Theseus and the Minotaur

Other Movie posts you may like:

A Collection of Maze and Labyrinth Movies

The 18 Best Maze Movies