Notis Pitsilos
Man (Gianis Aggelakas), a mysterious man of the underworld, small time grifter and big time hard-man, who has an anarchic tendency to mumble and comment on the system, society, police, the underworld itself and other things, along with his beloved bird, Bellafonte, meets up with an odd posse consisting of kid, who is a young songwriter, a prostitute who gathers money in order to open o bookstore, an alcoholic girl haunted by the relationship with her dead mother, and the grudgey bar-woman-ex-girlfriend. The five of them get caught up in a scheme involving the media, the mob, politicians and the police. And they definitely want to get the hell out of the city, probably to some Caribbean paradise.
In this offering, Kostas Tsakonas (a champion of the SOV comedy of the era) as a wimpy poor guy & petty thief who lives with his nephew, is chosen by the arch-Dracula to rule Greece, since he's a long lost relative of the vampire family, and since the current Prime Minister has sucked the Greeks dry (yes, there's some awful not-so-subtle dated attempts at political satire in there as well). What follows is Tsakona's transformation and consequent attempts to adjust to his new vampiric lifestyle, while a clumsy exorcist and some of his fellow villagers are after him.
A masseur whose son is a student in Germany learns that he has become a member of the Neo-Nazi party.
At a luxurious hotel various women spend their summer holidays trying, each one in her own way, to find the love of their life or solve the problems of a love affair. Through various misunderstandings and amusing incidents, the women find what they are looking for, with the help of luck and their female instinct.
Three stories everyday madness. A retired headmaster angers me when I see the marks of his granddaughter and soon discovers that most education is dominated by bribing. A civil servant who lives a boring life with his wife and his mother in law, and a woman who has been trying for years to get its land in the city plan!
A criminal gang operating in Greece hides a large shipment of heroine inside a statue. During transportation the statue is stolen, and a member of the gang is sent to discover the culprits.
The film "O Drakos" is about a mousy, timid, bespectacled guy in Athens who sees a newspaper photo of a fugitive criminal mastermind called "The Fiend". It's the spitting image of the harmless nerd. A gang of starstruck crooks sees our hapless hero, mistakes him for the Fiend, rescues him from imminent arrest and more or less forces him to lead a desperate criminal scheme they've got going. And finally, the poor little man becomes enamoured of the idea, decides for once in his sad life to be a tough guy and a hero. He surrenders to his bizarre destiny, to be "The Fiend of Athens"... O Drakos is brilliant: a dark, satirical noir masterpiece... is like a French New Wave picture crossed with a British Ealing comedy, with something of Fellini in its zinging energy, and Carol Reed's Odd Man Out and The Third Man. The stark, dramatic key-lighting in the "arrest" scene gives the imagery a Weegee-type crime-scene aesthetic...
