Tales of mistaken identity are a feeding ground for all genres in cinema. There’s action (Galaxy Quest), comedy (The Big Lebowski), horror (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil), thriller (Lucky Number Slevin), and drama (El Mariachi) — and these are just semi-modern examples. Often, they are opportunities for the central character in their terrible situation to confront weaknesses of self, coming out of the experience stronger and better able to exist in the world. But, for those familiar with some of the examples, that isn’t always the case with tragedy of one type or another following them, whether they survive the experience or not. Coming off of his debut feature The Magic City (1954), filmmaker Nikos Koundouros released thriller/dramedy The Ogre of Athens (Ο Δράκος) and, although winning critical acclaim, it bombed spectacularly. Despite this, the film has persisted and, now, through Radiance Films, The Ogre of Athens is being released on Blu-ray for the first time, accompanied by several supplemental materials to help express why this dark comedy of the Greek New Wave deserves to be pulled from the abyss of forgotten tales.
On New Year’s Eve, mild-mannered and introverted accountant Thomas (Dinos Iliopoulos) heads home from his job not with an expectation to gather with friends and loved ones to ring in the new year, but of a battle with his landlord over whether or not he’ll be evicted. Fate, it seems, has different plans as Thomas notices a newspaper article claiming to have the first photo of the notorious criminal The Ogre and everyone, including Thomas, notices the striking resemblance to his own personage. Now, with pedestrians and law enforcement on his tail, he hides inside a cantina thanks to the benevolence of performer Carmen (Marika Lekaki) only to discover that he’s left the frying pan and is headed straight into the fire.
The following home release review is based on a Blu-ray retail copy provided by Radiance Films through MVD Entertainment Group. Because we have a retail edition, we’re going to start with the packaging and move inward.
As with other Radiance Films individual releases (not sets), The Ogre of Athens is packaged in a clear plastic case so that owners can easily see the front cover art and OBI strip on the front and release information on the back. Additionally, as with other titles, the OBI strip is completely removeable, enabling owners to see the new, minimal artwork on the front and back. The front displays a hand-drawn version of The Ogre standing on cobble stones with a sun beating down, the title of the film on the left and image on the right, whereas the back features Iliopoulos as Thomas in profile with a version of the title card (the film poster we observe being adhered to a wall prior to the narrative start) prominently displayed in the middle. The primarily tannish color of the front and back leans into the isolation and interior thematic elements of the film, especially the fact that the figure on the front bears no distinguishing features yet could easily be Thomas, thereby feeding into the mistaken identity element. The reverse, however, is predominantly black with mostly white text (red text for the film title in Greek) and Iliopoulos on the front, his form a mix of black and white, feeding into the noir elements that The Ogre borrows and subverts. Between the two choices, the former certainly does convey the lightness that’s more prevalent throughout while the second places the looming darkness of the story at the forefront.
The initial release is limited to 2,500 copies which includes the OBI strip and booklet containing release information, stills, and essays. The few stills used are beautifully included, highlighting Thomas’s increasing isolation as he tries to extricate himself from each worsening situation such as the inclusion of the two agents who appear at the cantina and, without a word, navigate the dance floor, snag someone, and move them outside. It’s a moment that demonstrates that those looking for him outside are not totally gone from his radar, meaning that until he’s back at his apartment is there a chance for peace. Like past releases, there are two pieces of writing within the booklet: a new piece from Andréas Giannopoulos and an extract from author Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. Giannopoulos’s essay contextualizes the disquiet and violence of the film by examining how Iakovos Kabanellis’s (Stella) script uses, without explaining to the audience, how the Axis occupation into the Greek Civil War created an environment wherein all the people of Greece exist with an element of fear. Thomas is himself quite timid, our first scene with him informative in how he’s scared to buy a new coat and be out rent money, creating an excuse for his already volatile relationship with his landlord to be a bit of a time bomb Thomas must tiptoe around. Then, as the film continues, we start to realize how each person has been touched by violence, such as Margarita Papageorgiou’s Baby/Roula who is an employee of the cantina and fascinated with Thomas believing he’s The Ogre, but she was a rescue by the cantina’s owner, Giannis Argyris’s Hondros/Fatso, who took her in upon the death of her parents. Giannopoulos explores this, as well, the notion that all those touched by war continue to do well past accord filing. The inclusion of an excerpt from Franzen’s Freedom serves a bit of a dual purpose as Franzen saw the film as a young man and found himself returning to it later in life, his different perspective causing the film to motivate a different reaction and creative inspiration. The reason I describe it as a dual purpose is that Franzen discusses the Ogre/Freedom relationship in the included interviews.
The on-disc supplemental materials include three brand-new pieces. First, Franzen provides a seven-minute interview recorded in August of 2025 that can be viewed individually or just before the start of the film as an optional introduction. Here, he discusses his first viewing and response to the film via a charming anecdote and then how he came back around to seeing the film again later in life. It would be this second viewing that would create the influence for Freedom, the novel from which Franzen takes an excerpt for the booklet. Second is Christina Newland, a writer and historian who sat down with Radiance in July of 2025 for this release producing an 11-minute interview. Newland creates a context to explore the historical significance for and legacy of The Ogre of Athens by discussing the theme within the film, offering insight into the production, and more. The third and final on-disc interview is 26 minutes with Greek film expert Dimitris Papanikolaou recorded in July of 2025. Like Newland, Papanikolaou seeks to create context for The Ogre of Athens by giving a country specific perspective regarding the film’s role in Greek’s film history. This means discussing socio-political elements that went into making the film, the reaction to the film, how it generated more influence than one might expect given its financial disappointment, and a great deal more.
Regarding the transfer, the notes state that the process of preserving The Ogre of Athens has been on-going since even before Koundouros passed in 2017. Ultimately, the final on-disc presentation is a 4K resolution presentation created from the original negative, which was found by happenstance after work had begun off a 35 mm print. The audio, however, required reworking, which was done with coordination between Filmtrade and Koundoro’s family. Speaking as someone who read the booklet *after* viewing the film, while the video presentation has its issues, the audio has none that the uninformed could recognize or acknowledge. The video elements, however, do have a few obvious appearances of wear so knowing that the source materials did go through a few iterations creates an appreciation for what we get to see, regardless. The presence of aging arises at random and varies, including scenes that are meant to be black and white having a brief, slight appearance of blue or red while others have a heavy flicker. The latter will be more troubling for photosensitive viewers, but not so frequent that it deserves its own trigger warning. Ultimately, while the restoration is not immaculate, it doesn’t matter as much as the act of preservation creating the opportunity for a wider audience to experience the film.
In terms of the genre and the execution, to call The Ogre of Athens a comedy is less due to it inducing heavy laughter and more to do with it playing with the conventions of mistaken identity through noir through escalating oddball situations. Each time that someone tries to call Thomas The Ogre, he does attempt to dissuade them, but no one believes him, requiring him to have to figure out how to navigate the situation to either get away to safety or play along so as not to endanger himself further. This nebbish, quiet man discovers that the allure of The Ogre earns him respect from men and attention from women and it’s not until he has no choice that he embrace it, yet, and this is where the film is darkly comic and when Kabanellis’s script demonstrates its power, the whole tale ends in tragedy. Unlike the examples at the start of this review which involve protagonists who get to go home at the end of their films, The Ogre isn’t really about whether or not Thomas will pretend to be The Ogre for his own benefit and is more about examining how the community responds to violence. The film even makes a point to show Thomas being stripped and aggressively questioned by the police, all of whom are laughing at the stripped man, and, upon realizing he’s not The Ogre, push him out the door without his pants on and don’t even apologize for the confusion — Thomas is, even in that moment, insignificant. Remember, as explored in the Giannopoulos essay, these people have become accustomed to violence and exist in a certain fear, so the fact that Thomas is forced into this world, ripped from his quiet life into criminality by sheer happenstance of having a physical similarity, there is no going back for him from this. The irony is that the moment he decides to embrace things, it ends because he’s discovered as a fraud and becomes beyond saving despite the relationships he forms in the 24-hour period. Once a quiet man no one knows, he dares to step into the light and is returned to anonymity through death almost immediately. The choice to begin the film by having the title card be a film poster we see being glued to a wall overtop a Bogart poster and The Magic City poster, Koundouros informs the audience that what we’re seeing isn’t just a film, it’s a parable about violence and the things that entertain us. Much like the characters in the film, we did not know Thomas before the start, but will we remember him after? How doomed are we if we don’t remember who we’ve lost?
Dark comedies are notorious for playing with expectations, often leaving one more depressed than elated by their conclusion. This does describe The Ogre of Athens quite a bit as one keeps hoping that Thomas will find within himself the means to make it soundly into the new year instead of perpetually looking over his shoulder in one way or another. That the film possesses no happy ending doesn’t make it any less worthy of a watch as understanding how a community’s scars from history inform their art makes someone a better citizen of the world. To that end, between the rarity of the film and the supplemental materials, The Ogre of Athens is a title easily worth recommending, even with the few noticeable traces of wear on the visuals. A story doesn’t have to look perfect and pristine to move you and the signs of age only reinforce that some lessons still need to be taught, some wounds still need to be healed.
The Ogre of Athens Special Features:
- High-Definition digital transfer
- Uncompressed mono PCM audio
- *NEW* introduction from Jonathan Franzen (7 mins, 2025)
- *NEW* interview with critic Christina Newland (11 mins, 2025)
- *NEW* interview with Greek film expert Dimitris Papanikolaou on the ‘Golden Age’ of Greek cinema (26 mins, 2025)
- *NEW* improved English subtitle translation
- Reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters
- Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Andréas Giannopoulos and extract from Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom
- Limited edition of 2500 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings
Available on Blu-ray November 18th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Radiance Films The Ogre of Athens webpage.
To purchase, head to the official MVD Entertainment Group The Ogre of Athens webpage.
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Categories: Films To Watch, Home Release, Recommendation
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