Medusa (1973)

Trailer: 

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: The director also made KISS Meet the Phantom of the Park. Need I say more?

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• This flick has a very James Bond-style opening song. Sung in Greek of course. Medusa! She’s the Gorgon…A Gorgon with the stone-hard gaze…
• Cameron Mitchell! SCORE!
• From the acclaimed director of KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park! ACK!
• I think it’s legally imperative to have at least 2 fishermen in a film if it’s set anywhere around Greece.
• Narrator claims he’s dead but only his body and that the soul is immortal and he may or may not believe in reincarnation and yap yap yap yap yap. Something about running a successful mining company with his sister. Yada yada yada.
• Is this the Greek Neil Diamond? Nikos Diamandos?
• Hahaha. I thought that this dude with the dog was Elvis! Look, this video is really grainy.
• Is that George Hamilton dressed as Elvis? And he’s drunker than a fiddler’s bitch!
• Suffice to say, he’s making quite the scene. In fact, it’s fair to say that he totally ruined the wedding.
• It also may have been his sister’s wedding.
• Greek Zorba dancing with obligatory plate smashing! Opa!
• I was just at Greece and hate to break it to you but we have not witnessed one intentionally smashed plate! I don’t blame them in this economy.
• Are the married couple now at a restaurant called The Rhodian Cellar dancing and drinking the night away?
• Sweet Jesus those plates don’t grow on trees you silly Greeks!
• OK this is George Hamilton for sure. Not sure who the drunken Elvis was now. But George Hamilton is making gaga eyes with the bride (who I thought was the sister of whoever was narrating this). So I’m less than 12 minutes in and already this film is confusing and appalling the hell out of me.

• Is George Hamilton smuggling in Mercury into Rhodes? He said it was mercury and there was a shady money exchange. Weird. Maybe he supplies all the thermometer dealers on the island.
• Maybe Mercury can kill Medusa. Kinda like silver kills werewolves?
• There he is…Cameron fucking Mitchell. Man, I thought he was playing Medusa. At least I hoped he would.
• Oh that was an engagement party. Not a wedding. Thought you needed to know as well. Didn’t want to mislead you fine folks. That makes most of what I previously nitpicked moot.
• I should’ve known it wasn’t the actual wedding since it wasn’t Big and Fat.
• So this important diplomat or businessman Edwards arrives in Rhodes and en route by car, he is hijacked by Cameron Mitchell. Not the best security detail.
• It’s a shame when a movie has a scene where a car that rolls violently down a steep hill doesn’t explode. Damn shame.
• Cameron is threatening Edwards into changing a will or something to get money from him. And this somehow ties into George Hamilton too. I don’t know it’s all Macedonian to me.
• Mitchell is now drowning Edwards with a garden hose. The garden hose is his Achilles heel.
• Kinda strange that George Hamilton’s sister speaks with a heavy Eastern European accent and George is talking in his normal American accent.
• Hamilton meets up with Mitchell and his goons who are still torturing Edwards for the location of the will and Hamilton is super pissed that they killed Edwards while Mitchell is nonchalant about the whole event. Just like how Cameron Mitchell would react in real life.

• They got the name and location of the poor sap that has the will at a nearby hotel and Hamilton goes and kills the guy for the will. When I think of cold-blooded killers, George Hamilton is always top of that list. I’m not kidding.
• Meanwhile Hamilton’s sister and her fiancé arrive at the same hotel to see the same poor sap. The fiance is the only one who goes upstairs and finds the poor sap dead. The plot thickens!
• It’s been over a half-hour. Where is the freakin’ Medusa?! There better be a fucking gorgon in this flick or I’m going to lose it.
• Police find the poor saps’s body in the bay. Maybe they will assume a Medusa killed him?
• Usually in these thrillers, the police will approach a suspect and size them up, maybe intimidate them somehow. But in this movie, Hamilton approaches the detective and starts the cat-and-mouse himself.
• Why is Hamilton doing all these bad celebrity impressions for no reason?
• The poor sap didn’t have the will after all?! Now Mitchell and Hamilton think a stewardess on the flight Edwards arrived on might have it. It was in the plane’s lost & found.
• Mitchell just cold-cocked Hamilton right in the kisser! Then helps him up and punches him right in the gut! He’s a very versatile actor ya know.
• Never thought I’d see a naked Cameron Mitchell covered in thick lathered soap in a public bathhouse. In a movie or in real life!

• So apparently Nikos, Hamilton’s sister’s fiancé, is also in cahoots with Mitchell. It’s a triple-cross!
• Hamilton flirting with girl on beach (the stewardess) with his dog: “She’s a cocker spaniel. And a poodle. Some call her a cockapoo. But I call her a Spadoodle.” 
• I’m starting to give up on ever seeing Medusa in this flick.
• Hamilton is now making out with probably the most attractive flight attendant in all of history.
• Hamilton berates the stewardess for the will (the one she has no idea about) while making out with her instead of having sex with her first. Maybe he’s gay? Just kidding, he totally has the hots for his sister.
• Hamilton creeps out the stewardess with Buddhism mumbo jumbo, corners her by the window but she pushes him down and runs towards the door but is killed there anyway.
• I’d tell you who killed her but it was all in shadow and this film’s video transfer was remastered only once 40 years ago.
• Getting through this flick is by all definitions a Herculean effort.
• For some reason Hamilton is super upset about the stewardess and won’t break his funk when his sister comes to get him. Maybe he’s traumatized by seeing the Medusa kill the stewardess.
• This movie is really fucking dull. Even if it did feature an actual gorgon it probably wouldn’t help whatsoever.
• Being chastised for something sophomoric and someone calls it out as being “not sporting” has to be the worst insult to a man. Such a shameful gut-punch. This. is. not. SPARTA!
• Sorry but I was just taken-aback by Cameron Mitchell taking off his leather coat and having no shirt underneath but wearing an ascot. Wasn’t expecting him to just go swimming in the Adriatic from this boat.

• While Mitchell is swimming, another person shows up in the boat and quickly drives the boat away, stranding Mitchell in the middle of the sea. The other person is revealed to be the stewardess?!?
• Two killers?!?! Can one please be a Medusa?!
• “Is it really from Atlantis?” Ding-bat. She’s no Rhodes Scholar.
• Wait is Hamilton seducing the stewardess? So the girl on the boat earlier wasn’t her? Was it his sister? I’m trying to pay attention but the film is so grainy and dark.

• The detective confronts Hamilton’s sister at home playing like he knows the whole plot and solved the case. He could be right, I don’t know, because I stopped caring like 32 minutes ago.
• He’s still going on and on about Atlantis. He says he can take them both there as they walk into the ocean at night but then she screams and only he walks back out.
• His sister finds him on the beach and he again, goes into hysterics and starts yelling “Sarah made love with her brother!” Over and over again. She only has one brother.
• I’m still waiting for Cameron Mitchell to return all covered in barnacles and seaweed with Medusa by his side to help him seek revenge. 
• Somehow, Hamilton is now being chased all over town by an angry mob. They’re going to tan his hide!
• Now Hamilton has a little girl hostage and has climbed up a tall bell tower ready to jump!

• Hamilton’s sister goes up there to talk some sense into him. The little girl is saved but Hamilton and sister are on the lam! Lamb Souvlaki sounds good right about now actually.
• There was like 5 seconds of tension when Hamilton and sister arrive at a boat ready to flee and Nikos is there too. But then wordlessly, he helps her up on the boat and unmoors the boat for them. 
• For some reason, Hamilton poisons his own champagne and lets his sister watch him die on the boat. Me and my brother used to prank each other like this all the time.
• But not before he hams his performance up with impressions and weird quips about life and death. An asshole til the end.
• The detective approaches Nikos still staring off into the sea where Hamilton left and says “C’mon let’s get a cup of Greek coffee.” (Which is weird considering they ARE in Greece—why not just call it coffee?) and then Nikos turns to face the camera with a tear running down his cheek and says the Schlocktoberfest motto: “All I want to do now is get drunk.”
• It’s then revealed that both Hamilton and his sister are the dead bodies on the boat in the beginning of the film (I totally forgot about that). I guess the loss of her brother was too great to live for her. Whatever.

Final Thoughts: Damn. This wasn’t what I was expecting. Not really a horror flick but a murder mystery thriller. Oh well. At least it had Cameron Mitchell so that counts enough. But seriously, this was one dull and wacky flick. in some regards it tried to push the envelope with the incest angle as well as the idiosyncratic Mitchell and his weird character and wardrobe but on the other hand the murder-mystery was weak and bland as Greek beer. I would not recommend this unless you’re a Cameron Mitchell completist or an aficionado of George Hamilton celebrity impressions. 

How Greek 🇬🇷 is it: Set in Greece (island of Rhodes). Greek music; lots of Greek food and celebration. Plenty of broken plates; fishing. Also enough philosophical insights from George Hamilton that would make Aristotle proud! 95% Tariff

Score: 3 Spanakopitas! (out of 10)