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O Komis ... Tsakonas
Komis ... Tsakonas Kai oi Drakoulines Tou / Enas Nomotagis Kleftis
Greece 1989
produced by CAS Cine Video
directed by Takis Simonetatos
starring Kostas Tsakonas, Vera Gouma, Franco Alonso, Giouli Iliopoulou, Giannis Smyrnaios, Antonis Yakovakis, Kostas Dagas, Dimitris Koukis, Giorgos Mattheou, Notis Pitsilos, Katerina Ioanidou, Dimitris Katsimanis, Giannis Koulouris, Rania Nikolaidou, Maria Palaiologou, Fani Spanou, Tzortzia Theodorou, Alexia Vani
idea by Kostas Tsakonas, screenplay by Giannis Sklavos, music by Sakis Tsilikis
review by Mike Haberfelner
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The daughter of Dracula wants to inherit the family fortune - but
according to her father's will, she needs a vampire mate to do so. But
since male vampires are hard to find these days, she hooks up with
Tsakonas (Kostas Tsakonas), a bumbling chicken thief who somehow got stuck
with raising his nephew and who is more than happy to help out in exchange
for the fortunes Dracula's daughter promises. And the role of the vampire
really grows on Tsakonas too, as he soon starts to sleep in a box - which
might be a bit too short for him, but then again a coffin apparently
wasn't able on short notice -, has his dentist fit him vampire teeth,
starts sucking women's blood and making them his soulless slaves, and he
even starts a blood bank for constant supply. However, what he doesn't
know is that there are a bunch of vampire hunters after Dracula's
daughter, and when they catch up with Tsakonas instead, they mistake him
for the real thing - but seeing him lieing there in his box sleeping, they
can't bring themselves to stake him and instead send his box (and him
inside) off to Africa ... The vampire lore as such is of course
among other things a source for an endless series of good jokes, as are
all sources as iconographic as the vampire. Unfortunately, O Komis ...
Tsakonas, an intended vampire spoof, is unable to track down even one
good joke the genre so willingly provides. Instead, the film plays like
"(British comedy series) Only Fools and Horses meets the vampires", but
Kostas Tsakonas sure is no David Jason to carry a story like this one -
and he hasn't got any of Jason's sharp dialogue either. But what destroys
the film even more than the lack of good comedy/good comedians is the
total lack of atmosphere - the film is shot in such an indifferent way
that one wouldn't even begin to guess it's about vampires if it wasn't for
some capes and the occasional flashing of vampire fangs. Hell, there are
hardly any night-scenes in this one. What we're left with is a series
of bad jokes about nothing in particular, and they add up to nothing else
but a total waste of time.
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