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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
It’s no secret by now that Arrow Video worships the ground
upon which Nico Mastorakis walks.
Between films he’s either written such as Blood Tide or Bloodstone
and/or directed, the United Kingdom based boutique releasing label catering to
DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD consumers have released nearly his whole filmography
all by themselves. Save for the couple
of Vinegar Syndrome titles Grandmother’s House and In the Cold of Night
and Scorpion Releasing’s disc for The Greek Tycoon, Arrow Video have pretty
much released everything under the sun from Mastorakis save for six films
ranging from 1984 to 1992, all of which have been comprised into this
limited-edition boxed set aptly named The Nico Mastorakis Collection.
Spanning six features, the Arrow Video boxed set more-or-less
scoops up the loose ends of the Greek exploitation B-movie director’s
filmography by curating everything into one set. While the quality of these six films ranging
from screwball “comedies” to action/sci-fi thrillers is decidedly low on the radar
with only two really emerging as watchable standalone features, they do track the
director’s career starting in Greece before moving to Hollywood. A kind of Menahem Golan by way of Andy
Sidaris from Greece, the prolific cult B-auteur in spite of his checkered
output has hobnobbed with numerous big movie names including but not limited to
Adrienne Barbeau, Keir Dullea, John Vernon, Little Richard, Gerald Okamura, M. Emmet
Walsh and even Zsa Zsa Gabor. His own
master with his production company Omega Entertainment supplying the 4K
restorations from Athens, Greece, like or loathe him Nico’s filmography is
always curious conceptually.
Beginning with 1984’s The Time Traveler aka The
Next One, we happen upon Adrienne Barbeau who grieving the loss of her
astronaut husband happen upon a naked young mystery man with metaphysical
powers played by Keir Dullea.
Effectively a microbudget Starman in Greece, the sci-fi romance
doesn’t have a lot of forward momentum but is interesting and a nice vacation
spot. Continuing on with Sky High a
year later following three American jocks also in Greece who while vacationing
are given access to a mysterious tape which, when played, creates a shared
psychedelic experience in all listeners.
Wanting to be a kind of Weird Science film it doesn’t really work
and goes on some bizarre editing tangents but once again shows off the director’s
homeland. Third in line is 1987’s Terminal
Exposure, an action-comedy involving two chauvinistic beachgoers snapping
up illicit guerilla photographs of women in bikinis when they inadvertently photograph
a murder. It’s Brian De Palma by way of
John Hughes and is notable for being an early compositional work by Hans
Zimmer.
Number four is where the set really starts to test the
stamina of staunch Mastorakis fans with 1988’s Glitch!, a “comedy” film
concerning two petty thieves bumbling about a luxury home of a Hollywood
producer they’ve broken into. However
when the angry mobsters show up to collect unpaid debts, the burglars are
forced to disguise themselves as the producers and embark on a casting party
for a movie involving lots of hot young women.
It should be noted through most of Mastorakis’ later comedies, there’s a
time-honored Eastern European tradition of mistaking nudity or close-ups of
cleavage or backsides equals comedy.
Number five Ninja Academy from 1989 picks things back up with
ostensibly a martial-arts academy comedy featuring Big Trouble from Little
China’s Gerald Okamura and it is effectively a dress rehearsal for
Mastorakis’ next and arguably best film Hired to Kill. Last but not least is The Naked Truth,
an ode to Some Like it Hot involving two young men posing as female
makeup artists to evade mobsters chock full of so many cameos it feels like a Stanley
Kramer or John Landis epic comedy.
Varying in quality from picture to picture, some ranging
from mature and thought-provoking knockoffs to truly bottom feeding lowbrow “comedy”
that also thinks offending any and all potential demographics equals laughter, The
Nico Mastorakis Collection for good or for ill is perhaps Arrow Video’s
most confounding if not aggravating chore of a Blu-ray boxed set from the
boutique label since George A. Romero’s Between Night and Dawn box. While Arrow Video have gone above and beyond
the call of duty with this tectonic box of films comprising the remainder of
Nico Mastorakis’ filmography including 4K transfers provided to the boutique
label by the director himself, by the fourth movie these certifiable, peculiar,
nutty exercises in B-movie satire/genre filmmaking started to become something
of a chore. Despite my own difficulties
with these offerings, Arrow’s box is glorious with an illustrated booklet
featuring detailed writings by Mastorakis aficionado Barry Forshaw. Each disc comes housed with two films with
reversible art on each side of the sleeve and each film comes with a new
interview by Mastorakis reflecting on how each film came to be.
If you’re not already a fan of Nico Mastorakis, this won’t
do his reputation any favors. But if you’ve
seen the others around these films such as Hired to Kill, The Zero
Boys, In the Cold of Night or Nightmare at Noon (avoid his
debut like the plague), you’ve a pretty good idea of what’s ahead. Completist cinephiles keen on Eastern
European or particularly Greek cinema won’t find unsung masterworks here but
for those keen on all things B movie related, its an alright smattering of his oeuvre. That said, your best off checking out some of
his others first before diving into this blind.
Even for yours truly, there were times The Nico Mastorakis Collection
made me resent my position as a film critic. But as a collection, Arrow Video have done a
good job as always and Mastorakis fans will be overjoyed by the boutique label’s
canonization of his work with this release.
