You may know the story of Theseus and the Minotaur from your high-school reading: the Minotaur, the result of an ill-advised bull/human coupling, lives in a labyrinth beneath the island of Minos and feeds on the flesh of captive human sacrifices. Eventually a hero volunteers to be among the sacrifices in hopes of slaying the beast. The Sci-Fi Original Picture, Minotaur is based on this myth. However, the fact that viewers are treated to some nudity within the first two-minutes of the film is a good indicator that Minotaur is not the Edith Hamilton style mythology you read in school. And twenty minutes in, when the movie throws in a little PG girl-on-girl action, it becomes clear what Minotaur actually is: a run-of-the-mill teen slasher flick set back in the Iron Age; and an uninspired one at that.

All the standard slasher characters are about the maze: Theo the hero; Ffion, the estranged girlfriend he wants to win back; Tyro, the angry jock (and rival for the girl's affection); his buffoon sidekick; Didi (who loves Tyro); Danu, the naive, good-hearted friend; Nan, the religious zealot; Morna, the girl who isn't-as-helpless-as-she-seems; and Vena, the whiny, bitchy one. (You may note that the "slutty" stereotype isn't listed, but fear not, she turns up later). In this case, the hapless youngsters with a predilection for splitting up the party are not trapped in a house with an ancient evil intent on skewering them with a razor sharp butcher's knife; instead they are trapped in an underground system of caves with an ancient evil intent on skewering them with its razor-sharp horns. And in the grand-slasher tradition, the deaths are executed with well-timed camera cutaways and blood liberally thrown against the sets. Well, those, and a few good, juicy gouging.

And whereas it is occasionally gory, Minotaur just isn't scary.

Unlike most monster movies, the monster isn't to blame for the lack of scares. For one thing, it is the monster of the most insidious type - one that kills without ego, remorse or reason (it is suggested that it impales it's prey for food, but some of the corpses littering the caves seem too intact for that to be true). It is a killer that can not be taunted, tricked, or reasoned with: it is simply a beast. What the titular monster lacks in witty quips he makes up for with his single-minded ruthlessness. Additionally the monster effects are fantastic. I'm hard pressed to say any creature that resembles a snarling, elephant-sized, hairless, demonic bull is realistic, exactly, but it definitely looked real. I would not want to meet this beast in a dark alley. Or a dark cavern, for that matter. Luckily for the heros of this picture, they don't have to. It's not so much that they don't meet the beast; it's more that for being underground, the caverns are surprisingly well-lit. And here's where Minotaur falls short of it's promise...it lacks atmosphere, and consistently fails to build tension. It may be the uneven pacing, or indeed, the fact that the main characters in the film seem more worried about their interpersonal relationships than they are about their predicament that makes it difficult for the audience to care whether or not they end up on the business end of the Minotaur's horn. For some characters, their most interesting moment is their demise.

However - Minotaur is not without its enjoyable characters. Tony Todd (Candyman, Final Destination 3) is absolutely camp-tastic as Deucalion, the lascivious, drug-addled Prince of Minos, a human half-brother of the Minotaur who revels in corruption, lives in a constant paranoid state that everyone is out to destroy him and all the while strutting around in a fantastic long leather ensemble. Michelle Van Der Water, as his seductive sister Raphaella, literally licks her way through the first half of the film (see, I told you they didn't forget the "slutty" one), and brings what little urgency there is to the underground scenes. As with all Sci-Fi Original Pictures, Minotaur also boasts some familiar names: Ruteger Hauer plays the bristly-bearded Cyrnan, father to Theo; and horror movie maven Ingrid Pitt plays The Sybil who sends the hero on his quest. For fans who remember Pitt as the classic Hammer Horror vamp, seeing her transformed into the gnarled, deformed crone in the woods may be the biggest fright of the film.

The DVD, which will be available from Lionsgate this June, will include deleted and extra scenes, a look at animatronic and prosthetics, and a behind-the-scenes making-of feature.