in London, for the weekly magazine Epikera, he was arrested and detained at the ESA (Military Police) headquarters for a day. Later on, publisher Georgios Athanassiadis, hired Mastorakis for the daily Vradini (which had been shut down by the junta and was about to be published again) only to find out from Dimitrios Ioannidis (head of the Military Police and later the dictator who replaced instigating a bloodier junta) that the newspaper's permit had been withdrawn because "Athanassiadis had hired anarchist-communists like Mastorakis". Junta controversy In the aftermath of the 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising, the regime made use of Mastorakis' popularity to repair its public image. An interview was set up and broadcast, during which he interviewed, in prison, a number of students who had been arrested during the events. Mastorakis claimed that he had guarantees from Minister of Press Spyridon Zournatzis that the interview would not be censored and that the students would not be prosecuted for speaking freely. After the fall of the regime in 1974, the students were released from prison and stated that they had been beaten and threatened with legal and extra-legal punishment unless they cooperated in the interview. Nico Mastorakis himself claimed that he had been coerced into making the show, but his popularity had evaporated, and the new management of the Greek TV stations wanted nothing to do with him. Later career Unable to work in public television after the junta, Mastorakis turned to commercials and features and eventually left the country in 1975 to pursue his career as a B-movie-maker overseas. He had already made two low budget movies, one of which later became a cult classic (Island of Death) and while living in London he wrote the screenplay for The Greek Tycoon (1978), a roman à clef based on his encounters with Aristotle Onassis. The movie, financed by Allan Klein, starred Anthony Quinn and Jacqueline Bisset and was distributed by Universal. Mastorakis landed a two-year contract with Paramount but he turned independent with Blood Tide (1982) which he wrote and produced. He has since written, produced and directed 17 features, mainly low budget but with awards attached (Blind Date, Nightmare at Noon, Grandmother's House) and distribution by major studios and mainstream TV networks. He wrote two published novels (Fire Below Zero and Keepers of the Secret) with Barnaby Conrad and was instrumental in the careers of Hans Zimmer (his first music