Cult cinema is a guilty pleasure that no one can resist, no matter how cultured he is in his cinematic tastes.
And Greece loved the cult spectacle very much, dedicating an entire decade to it, as it were, to the golden age of videotape! Although the good did not stop nor was it limited there, alas.
Only "cult" is very comprehensive as a term, including so many different things that all that seems to have in common is the emotional reaction of the viewer. Ranging from crying to laughing, often both at the same time.
The bottom of Greek seventh art but sometimes it is the top, since you often have to roll in the mud to find diamonds. And this is today the scars of the past, small and big screen legends that have to show huge fan bases and almost religious obsession with them.
Part of our popular culture, marginal and extremely underground, these films today are deified based on the slogan "so bad that it becomes good"…
As the guilty cinematic 1980s drew to a glorious end, it was time to videotape to deal with an unrecognized species in Greek territory: science fiction. And when he did, he changed his lights!
So we move to 2080 AD, where our hero and hardcore gamer Paris Velis (Akis Florentis) is experimenting with an innovative program that makes the real man part of the videogame. "Hellenic Matrix" is characterized today by the armies of the ordered fun as the pioneering film that was definitely ahead of its time.
The "prophetic" goodness of Michalis Lefakis junior with the innovative 8-bit soundtrack and the special effects of the electronic world explores the themes of the omnipotence of informatics and the fears of virtual reality. Hair! It is a visual creeper from foreign pop culture, effects for crying, bad taste and local cheap futurism. The very materials of the cult masterpiece, that is, 75 enjoyable minutes of modern Greek avant-garde…
You do not say childish, nor is it for adults. But you would hardly call it a movie in general. His production, however, wants it to be a children's musical, a local version of them Smurf with Greek actors and Greek songs. In other words, a real misfortune that was loved a lot in its time, acquiring the cult status since the years of the video.
And the truth is that despite the bad script, if there is such a thing, the costumes that seem to have been sewn by a child and are worn by the actors because of the cursed heat (you really see their faces under the masks), the messy and crooked of the whole thing , "Smurfs on the Moon" have something addictive, an atmosphere of their own that you love to hate.
Makis Antonopoulos' musical turns Alsos Kaisarianis into a smurf village (and the neighboring damari into the Moon) for the most decisive smurf answer to Dracumel.
Enjoyable dialogues, music that sends you unread and a Greek Dracumel taken from a poem. Cheap overproduction of five actors that would have a lot to teach Hollywood if it had the courage to see it to the end. Ή to listen to her without earplugs…
The local cult epic is an 87-minute horror diamond that you can't get enough of seeing and seeing again. The visual poem of Nikos Zervos has it all and in fact in abundant doses: the crazy scientist who arrives from the Carpathians to settle in Exarchia, the paranoid plan of creating a rock band with cut members of dead musicians… What, to continue?
How do you think the Music Brigades of Tzimis Panousis came about? And when has the domestic political, social and artistic establishment been satirized so demonically and marginally? Do not look for it, such diamonds are difficult to obtain and even completely unintentional.
A film that was shot "completely for the havale", as Zervos confessed, with a script of some bird carvings by Panousis, ended up being a great improvisation, an anarchist film that even has a zombie revolution!
Adored by the Greek public, light but also sharp at the same time, our "Dracula" has a few references in world cinema and the bad texts of modern Greek society. And if it does not have Christopher Lee, has Panousi, Poulikako, Asimo, Boula, Vavoura, Tzuma and Kafetzopoulos! And the "Lost Lieutenant of Albania" of course…
In something that no one understood why it was made or why it was released anyway, the one man show of Dimitris Vogiatzis, who holds the roles of producer, screenwriter, director and protagonist (!), Remains the biggest trace of the Greek spectacle. Of all time, of course.
The film follows a rapist and kleptomaniac factory owner who rapes a few women during the project. Well now, he "rushes" do not take it for cash, the scenes of sexual violence are so badly turned that it looks like a dog riding his boss's leg. And he does not even bother to open his pants.
When he does not lead blunt women to sexual ruin, the rapist suffers from terrible attacks of conscience manifested by paranoid laughter, tremors of earthquake 9,5 Richter and itching in the arms. These and many more turn "Rape" into the best of the worst Greek b-movies.
But also the fact that the victims and those around them are suspiciously getting over him quickly rape. The model Teresa, let's say, after her rape comes out with the old group on the bouzouki, saying about the horrible things she lived before "okay, these things happen"! But her friends also admit: "it was a bad experience, but let's say something else"…
Exactly 25 years after his emblematic "Pontians" with Voutsas and Tsakonas, Homeros Efstratiadis returns to familiar cult waters, delivering an even bigger trasila's immune creation. The new generation of Pontians is here to bring stereotypes and prejudices into the 21st century, with Kontogiannidis, Mitrousis and Leze as their vehicle this time.
Two debt-ridden adults remember the mob fight they had seen as children and that treasure the gangsters hid and decide to look for it. Only on the spot a monastery has been built over the years, so they have to devise a way to enter the monastery. How did they find it?
With jokes reminiscent of elementary school kids (once a Pontian), a script that would not even pass for an inspection sketch and an amateurism that pervades the film from beginning to end, "Pontians 2", as it is unfortunately known, shows that the Greek cult did not end in the 80s. Equally, he lives and reigns!
Ridiculous without being funny, boring to death and a "grabber" that is very reminiscent of videotape, however, the film gained its audience. On his trump card, his appearance Panagiotis Psomiadis...
"Greek Karate Kid", as its crazy fun has rightly described it, is a film-tribute to Daniel San of Greece, the little Chris Sfetas. Not exactly Bruce Lee's childhood, this particular attempt to make a martial arts film in our country did not exactly go well in terms of mainstream spectacle. But it went extremely well in the territory of Trasila!
Another Greek analogy, something like an unexplained "Greek Rambo", Kidnaps a school full of children and when everything is going well, the kidnappers are confronted with the almost murderous carats of Sfetas. You can even cry with the falsity of all this or the complete lack of any attempt at a little plausibility, but you will probably laugh at the Greek ninja who proves too hard to die.
92 minutes may seem like a century, but it can also be a moment. The adventure of George Sfetas with himself, Chris Sfetas and Charlie Sfetas in the leading roles (somehow they will all be connected, he can not), remains something completely idiosyncratic in our cinematic things…
Greek cult is not possible without Harry Klynn. Only here it is cult with meaning, cult with intention! Kaltia turns into a form more than a content, an exercise in style that wants to satirize the dude Neo-Greek.
The modular diamond tells three stories about Greece that turns the page, that adopts change (the slogan of the day), and has the multi-talented siphon Harry Clyne in high spirits. And the graphic figure of the modern Greek of course, who wants the modernization right and the tradition full.
His own policeman Bekas is of course unprosecuted, as is his printer who goes to see something cultural, feeling obliged to applaud it without much understanding. Especially when he turns into a shopkeeper from the city who brings the TV to a secluded village, there he is laughing to tears.
Cult yes, but multi-layered and inventive, exquisite in every event. That's why it has been justifiably adored for decades.
Epic right, these are 2,5 hours, and a key name of the cult space: Giannis Floriniotis! Everything else, if there are others, necessarily come into the background. So a bartender of the infamous bars falls in love with the really famous singer Floriniotis, but her ex-partner and drug lord stands an obstacle in their marriage, a gloomy figure played by Zafeiris Melas.
A long series of literally tragic ironies later, you do not even understand how we got here. What do you understand; The epic 80s atmosphere, with the quilts, the lacquer with the tones and the fancy baubles. In all, even the moral lessons of the film, which range in level of drugs are bad and white dust kills.
On the plus side of the film, that it is written by Giannis Floriniotis himself, revealing his talent in the script. The dramatic script, as "The Girl at the Bar" is a bitter movie, with a sad ending and dramas and sufferings and all the evil of the world. What do you want, no one escapes from his sinful past…
Nikos Zervos strikes again, cauterizing the modern Greek reality in the style of a provincial inspection. Sex and hysteria, the building blocks of every self-respecting beauty, are provided here in generous doses and it also has an all star cast to give the cat more to this raging salad.
A lamb psychiatrist, a nymphomaniac patient, a rejected director, an active businessman, a mother in a frenzy, a father in the not-so-better phase of his life, a secretary who wants to become a nun and such characters take on the script of Roma-Chatzisofia.
A colorful mosaic of our crazy society that makes the movie cult because that is exactly how the special modern Greek everyday life seems to be. Social cult is, after all, our cult diamond, a creative delirium of psychographs, philosophies and sociological references.
The "Women" even won an award at the State Quality Awards Thessaloniki Festival, award… makeup. Valeria Christodoulidou's "come on grandpa" remains unsurpassed!
The masterpiece good that made us see the XNUMXth of August differently listens to the name "Chiou", a substance user who spends the summer in Athens and tries to find his dose, finding along the way a whole mosaic of people, situations and ideas.
Fresh and timeless, funny and melancholy at the same time, "Chiu" is a film that does not take itself too seriously. And this is its great power, that everything happens here simply and relaxed. Even if everything is just a constant search for identity.
Makis Papadimitratos signed a conscious and conscious goodness that is not afraid to look at itself in the mirror. Inexpensive and uncomplicated, spontaneous and immovable, it even transforms its amateurism into a point of view. Even nonsense in a movie theater.
This underground, continuous and circular chain of meetings was even honored with the award of screenwriter, audience and debut director at the Thessaloniki Festival. The public is still crazy about its obvious cult nature…