1976 occult horror picture The Devil’s Men checks a few boxes which put it in my wheelhouse.  It stars (allegedly) Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence.  It has a touch of folk horror, as an entire village in remote Greece are devil worshippers.  It, inexplicably, has a score by Brian Eno.

Alas, it actually stars Kostas Karagiorgis, who is apparently a legend in his native Greece, yet all but unknown outside the country.  There is a good reason for the latter, as his performance here is stunningly, memorably bad.  Maybe it was just the subpar script or acting in a film in a language that was not his native tongue.  Maybe I just haven’t seen him in the right films. 

Honestly, I don’t care.  We see too much of the guy here, and I don’t just mean the amount of screentime.  His first minutes in the runtime are in the altogether, where he is lounging around in his “New York City” apartment (which is an obvious set) with girlfriend Jane Lyle, whom we never see fully clad.  This is a guy who is way too comfortable with his own body.  That is especially jarring, as he closely resembles Dermot Morgan from Father Ted.  Odd how I’m not going to call out Lyle for also being so comfortable showing so much skin.  Huh.

Karagiorgis plays Milo, and I am going to address him as such for the remainder of this essay, as I am tired of typing his last name.  He is a detective who was originally from Greece and is still in contact with Pleasance’s priest.  When the priest needs help finding young people who has mysteriously disappeared, Milo catches a plane back to his home country.

Now, there is something about Pleasence’s character which grated on me, and that the script’s failure to address how he came to be in a remote part of the country and even where is he in relation to the village from which people keep disappearing.  He is far enough away that he apparently never goes into the village, but close enough that the most recent bunch of people who disappeared don’t seem to travel far to get to the forbidden temple in the village.  I was also baffled by that group of people first going to Pleasence to tell him of their intention to go there, very well knowing he would disapprove and then they just sneak out of his house in the middle of the night, regardless.  Why not just ditch the subterfuge and go straight to the Satanic temple without telling him first?

And about that temple, it predates the already ancient ruins atop of it.  Set deep in a cave, it is on the property of Cushing, a baron who is an exile from Carpathia.  But if he is from somewhere else, how is this property in Greece his ancestral lands?  Also, he is the leader of the cult, so how handled this job duty before him?  It isn’t like he brought the religion with him from somewhere else—it was already there long before his arrival.

I’m not sure why I’m asking any of the questions, as it is obvious the filmmakers put the minimal amount of thought into this endeavor.  It is a lousy film, even failing with some fundamentals, such as focus.  Speaking of focus, I had to overlook so many continuity errors that I found it increasingly difficult to remain interested.  Even the devil worshippers are laughable, as they look like ye olde Inquisitors, if they had been able to afford satin.  Maybe somebody confused “Satan” with “satin”.  Hail, satin!

I thought I would struggle to find positive things to say about the film, except this one is pretty easy.  It comes down to how you don’t have to spend money on sets for your main scenes, when you have the natural wonder of a cave system and ancient ruins readily available.  I can’t imagine what this film would be like if shot in the U.S. and trying to make sets that look like the remains of ancient Greece.  I’m imagining something as close to the country’s real culture and legacy as that meandering “Greek” border on takeout coffee cups in NYC. 

Conversely, that may be about the closest the guy playing Milo in this ever got to The Big Apple.  It may not be fair to judge a person solely on movie, but The Devil’s Men cemented him in my mind as a horrible actor.  Even worse, his character is jerk to everybody, not the least of whom is Luan Peters.  She gets chased by villagers in full costume who have the intention of making the next victim.  He dismisses her with this: “It’s probably a cow loose in the woods, or something.”  So, he doesn’t believe a woman when she says she fears for her life, and he thinks what she describes as satin-cloaked figures is a cow.  I demand somebody write a parody of The Moody Blues’s best known song and change the title to “Cows in Black Satin”. 

Dir: Kostas Karagiannis

Starring Donald Pleasence, Peter Cushing, Luan Peters, Kostas Karagiorgis

Watched on Powerhouse/Indicator blu-ray (region-free)