The Nico Mastorakis Collection (1984-1992) (Review – Part One)

For those of you who don’t know who Nico Mastorakis is allow me to fill you in with a bit of context. Mastorakis is an 83-year-old Greek filmmaker, radio DJ, and journalist, who was responsible for a slew of cult genre titles like The Zero Boys (1986), Hired to Kill (1990), and most (in)famously, the controversial Hellenic video-nasty Island of Death (1976). A quick glance at his Wikipedia page should be enough to clue you in on what kind of a fascinating character this man is, his life peppered with enough names of 20th-century celebrities and political figures to put Forrest Gump (1994) to shame.

He’s also the central focus of a bizarre phenomenon in the world of boutique Blu-Ray, a mystery I’ve been trying to solve for years now. Though beloved film distributor Arrow Video describe Nico on their website as “one of the most infamous B-movie maestros to have ever sat in a director’s chair”, Mastorakis is relatively unheard-of outside his home country of Greece. Even stranger, the majority of Nico’s titles don’t have a large cult following, with select exceptions being the aforementioned Island of Death and the Wings Hauser-starring cat-and-mouse slasher The Wind (1986). Bearing all that in mind, I’ve never been quite sure why British Blu-Ray labels such as 88 Films, and especially Arrow Video, have seemingly fought tooth and nail for the distribution rights to Mastorakis’ entire filmography – which includes obscure titles that he didn’t even direct, like Bloodstone (1988) or Darkroom (1989).

Arrow’s latest release, The Nico Mastorakis Collection, is possibly the most fascinating development in this whole affair, not least because of its place as an outlier in the realm of cult Blu-Ray distribution. It’s a three-disc boxset that contains new, digitally-remastered editions of Nico’s six remaining feature directorial efforts that had yet to receive a HD home-video release – all of which are incredibly niche even by Mastorakis’ standards. Quite frankly, I’m fascinated and amazed by the work that Arrow have put in here as it’s not often that the cinematic marginalia of a genre director’s work gets given this kind of treatment. There’s less demand for offbeat kids’ films or variably-aged smut-comedies than there is for, say, ‘80s action and horror, especially on the cult film collection scene, and for all the love that icons such as Fulci and Martino get, I wouldn’t expect their earlier comic works to get pristine re-releases anytime soon.

As the film with the earliest release date in the set, The Time Traveller (1984), is an outlier both tonally and stylistically to the rest of the collection – and it’s also my personal favourite of the six. Also released under the title The Next One, this was seemingly Nico’s attempt at an Amblin-esque family feature in which a single mother (horror icon Adrienne Barbeau), and her son (Jeremy Licht), take in a stranger suffering from severe amnesia (played by none other than 2001: A Space Odyssey star, Keir Dullea), who they find washed ashore on their Greek island home. Fantastic and potentially religious revelations abound in this surprisingly dark and melancholy Mediterranean answer to Starman (1984), and it’s the film that made me realise just how skilled Mastorakis actually is as a director. Say what you want about his scripts, he’s a director with a keen eye for visuals, and his love for the geography of the Greek islands shows in every frame.

For most viewers, it’s likely that The Time Traveller will be a hard sell, and there’s a good chance that this was a film made for Nico alone and nobody else. Its content and tone are likely too dark and existentially challenging for younger audiences, yet the film also carries feelings of childish whimsy that could potentially be off-putting to those seeking a traditionally mature, adult-oriented supernatural drama. The Time Traveller’s constant fixation upon faith, religious iconography, and at times explicitly Biblical narrative are unlikely to appeal to most secular viewers. Its usage of said elements is occasionally subversive in ways that would have the typical audience of most Christian cinema crying blasphemy – even though it’s not nearly as critical of religious fundamentalism as, say, Island of Death. Nico’s conflicted perspective on religion is clearly felt here nonetheless, and “family film” or not, it’s a compelling little curio that intrigued, and even rather moved me – which is something you don’t often hear about a movie featuring a dog named Chewbacca.

Sky High (1985), is the only other Greek-set offering from Nico to be featured in this collection, and it’s a slightly more conventional affair than The Time Traveller – but even then, only by Mastorakis’ standards. Sold as an all-guns-blazing action-adventure flick, but in reality more of a goofy travelogue sex comedy, Sky High follows a trio of American college students vacationing in Athens who hope to see the sights, and hopefully hook up with the local ladies. These plans are cut short (well, sort of), when the boys witness an assassination, uncover a potential KGB conspiracy, and come into possession of a cassette tape capable of producing vivid, music video-esque hallucinations.

The movie is exactly as of-its-time as it sounds, and is basically just your average chauvinistic dude-bro romp – for what it’s worth, though none of Nico’s ‘comedies’ have aged gracefully, Sky High is the one which retains the most semblance of dignity, if it ever had any in the first place. The gorgeous location work on display here adds a great deal of production value to the piece, particularly an early sequence filmed at the actual Acropolis in Athens, and a high-speed motorbike chase during the latter half of the movie is proof enough that Nico can stage the hell out of an action set-piece – a strength he would later showcase in the incredibly stunt-heavy, and legitimately enjoyable, genre-bender that is Nightmare at Noon (1988).

That isn’t to say that Sky High is a particularly great movie, or even “good” to anyone who isn’t a die-hard Mastorakis fan. At almost two hours in length, it’s far too long, and even though it isn’t as wildly dated and sexist as some of the other films in this set, that’s extremely faint praise to shower upon a movie with typically dubious ‘80s gender politics. During the earlier portions of the film I did find a fair amount of entertainment in the (presumably), unintentional homoeroticism of the dynamic between our three stereotypical male leads. There’s an energy that’s unfortunately deflated during the latter half of Sky High by token nerd Bobby (Clayton Norcross), an ostensibly closeted gay character by the film’s own admission, who receives a makeover more infuriating than Ally Sheedy’s in The Breakfast Club (1985) – a sequence which feels about as queer as conversion therapy. Aside from those complaints, this is probably the second-best film of the lot – which can be taken as either a recommendation, a warning, or both.

Switching up Greece for Venice Beach, Terminal Exposure (1987), is notable for being one of the earliest films scored by composing legend Hans Zimmer and, uh, not much else. It’s essentially an attempt at crossing noir with a boner-comedy (a “bonoir”, if you will – coined by Vinegar Syndrome’s Justin LaLiberty), or a reboot of Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966), with more gratuitous butt-shots and awful, short-lived ‘80s slang terms. Terminal Exposure follows two snap-happy peeping toms who accidentally capture a murder on film whilst on a coastal upskirting spree, which results in them traveling to L.A. in search of a tattooed sex worker (played by Hard Ticket to Hawaii actress and Playboy model, Hope Marie Carlton), who might be responsible for the killing.

With all due respect to some of the talent involved, Terminal Exposure is both direly unfunny and deeply disagreeable viewing. When I described Sky High as being less dated and sexist than some of the other films in The Nico Mastorakis Collection, this is decidedly one of those “other films”. Even if you manage to get past the fact that the film’s leads are voyeuristic creeps who love nothing more than taking photos of women’s bodies without their consent, Terminal Exposure is a movie which runs almost entirely on horrendous misogyny. Every feminine figure in this movie, Hope Carlton as female lead Christie included, is treated as nothing more than a sex object (frequently to disturbingly absurd degrees), and it doesn’t help that the movie also features a shockingly large number of very uncomfortable racial jokes – a trend that unfortunately pops up in a handful of these laugh-free Mastorakis comedies.

All things considered, though, there’s an occasional hint of direction, clever camerawork, or surprisingly intelligent plotting that proves this isn’t the worst that the ‘80s comedy scene had to offer (though it’s still dangerously close to the bottom of the barrel). A brief turn from talented character-actor John Vernon during the third act brings a faint whiff of quality to the picture, even if it does leave you wishing that you were watching the infinitely-better Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) instead.

Stick around for part two of this review, in which I cover the three remaining titles in this wild, frequently confounding collection.

Robyn’s Archive – Nico Mastorakis (Part 1)