Kostas Karagiannis

“Tango of Perversion” is a wild, greasy Greek sleaze-fest that sees loner weirdo Joachim (Vagelis Voulgaridis) hanging out at hook-up joint, the Tango Club. He’s from a rich family and has a nice house that he allows people at the Club use for sex. The house, however, is set up with two-way mirrors in the bedrooms that Joachim uses to film couples having sex. Drug-dealing, ladies-man Stathis (Lakis Komninos) is a feature at the club and a sort of friend to Joachim. When one of Stathis’ girlfriends heads of for a lesbian dalliance at the house Joachim films it all. He also films an angry Stathis arriving and accidentally killing one of the women. After Stathis departs Joachim proceeds to have sex with the dead woman before disposing of the body. Things then proceed to spiral grimly out of control. Written by Lazaros Montanaris and directed by Kostas Karagiannis, “Tango of Perversion” is a gloriously grubby, sleazy, mean and nihilistic effort. The story manages to incorporate everything from voyeurism, drug-taking and murder through to necrophilia, while populated by a set of totally unsympathetic self-obsessed characters – don’t think I’ve ever seen so much slapping in a movie. Karagiannis’ direction is relentless and full of momentum which helps it transcend its low budget and basic production values. There are some interesting shots, some inventive, jagged editing and cinematographer Vasilis Vasileiadis proves himself something of a dab-hand with the camera’s zoom function. The performances are offensively enjoyable rather than good – Lakis Komninos makes for a decent scenery-chewing bad guy, while Vagelis Voulgaridis is pathetic and grubby, but with hints of something more steely and dangerous underneath the veneer. This being an early ‘70s effort there are some plenty of superbly bad fashions on display as well as some wild choreographed dancing going down at the Tango Club. This is all overlaid by a groovy, psych-like soundtrack that swirls and shimmy’s around the unsavoury action to great effect. Overall “Tango of Perversion” is a powerful piece of sex-orientated exploitation. It is sleazy, grubby, gratuitous and relentlessly nihilist all the way to its appropriately downbeat conclusion – can’t say better than that...!… (more)