Here we go, it’s the trailer for our Early April Fools’ Special! Get your first look at some of the terrible things we’ll be playing on the night. Come and join us!
Early April Fools’
Early April Fools’ Special 2015
The Duke Mitchell Film Club presents: Early April Fools’ Special 2015
It’s that time of year again, the time when we pay tribute to all things bad that cinema has to offer! We’re spent the last 12-months searching for the worst, strangest and downright odd films, trailers and clips that we can find and we want to share them with you at our Early April Fool’s Special.
Our main feature for the night is the super obscure shot on video thriller ‘Mountain Fury’, this ultra-low budget Canadian oddity from 1991 sort of tells the tale of a greedy developer who wants to trash a forest to make way for a new city, but somehow the film doesn’t seem to want to stick with that story. It’s one of the strangest films we’ve ever seen and we want you to experience it with us.
We’ve also got a face melting selection of terrible trailers, some super weird shorts, an awful quiz with prizes you won’t want, plus a super bad preshow pop video mix to make you hate yourself.
How could you want to be anywhere else on Monday 30 March?
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John S. Rad’s Dangerous Men
This is an interesting post to write in our April Fools’ Special series, in that neither of us has actually seen director John S. Rad’s action thriller Dangerous Men, it’s one of the hardest films to see as it’s never had a home video release in any form, at least that we’ve been able to ascertain. Its reputation stems from a select few theatrical screenings in the USA, which make it sound like a huge amount of fun, there’s also an utterly fantastic trailer which you can see on YouTube. I’ve always tried to avoid finding out too much about the film itself; I’ve not read any of the in-depth reviews or even the synopsis, the trailer and the films reputation does enough for me, so we’re not going to talk about the film itself, but we will look into its history and the events surround this very elusive film.
Though listed on IMDB as being released in 2005, the film actually started production back in 1985 with filming happening on and off until it saw the light of day in the mid-2000s. Director John S. Rad was born in Iran and had made numerous films there before fleeing the country on the eve of Khomeini coming to power. Relocating to LA he started work on Dangerous Men and would seemingly carry on working on it until he self-financed its short theatrical release at a handful of LA cinemas in 2005. With barely any promotion the film vanished quickly but like many cult films word of mouth began to circulate about how bizarre this supposedly action thriller was.
The Dangerous Men Trailer
Rep cinemas in LA started picking up on it with both The New Beverley and the Cinefamily putting on screenings and attracting great word of mouth audiences. The film also made the jump over the Atlantic and had a screening in the UK at the Bradford International Film Festival back in March 2007. Things were looking up for this wild film; that is until the very sad news that director John S. Rad had passed away in 2007 of a heart attack at the age of 70.
LA Weekly obituary for director John S. Rad
Screenings continued for the next couple of years but then Rad’s family withdrew the screening prints and it’s not been seen since. With no sign of the film surfacing again for screenings, or even a DVD release, all we currently have to go on it the trailer and the last two minutes of the film, which someone has uploaded to YouTube. Watching the ending completely out of context really makes the film look so odd and entertaining, it just serves to make me want to see the film even more.
SPOILER: This is the last two minutes of Dangerous Men
I’ve been able to find two interviews online with director Rad, both of which do a great job of filling you in on his background and how Dangerous Men came to be made. Rad himself comes across as a super stylish gentleman, one who seemed quite happy with the course that his film ended up taking.
One final point is that the Dangerous Men website is still live and online, head there and you’ll find a fantastic caricature of director Rad and a truly amazing semi-rap song about how great Dangerous Men is, apparently the rap was actually written by Rad himself, which makes us love him even more!
The amazing Song For Dangerous Men as written by John S. Rad
The main theme for Dangerous Men
So add Dangerous Men to The Duke’s Most Wanted Films List, we’d LOVE to see this and we’ll keep digging away trying to screen it at the Duke, we hope when do finally get to see it that you’ll all come and join us, we know you’ll love it just as much as we will!
After Last Season
If there’s one film that causes an ongoing dispute in The Duke world its After Last Season, you see I think we should screen it, but Evrim is vehement in his disapproval to ever let it grace our screen. And here’s the interesting point, we both like and dislike it for the same reason: it’s boring!
After Last Season hails from 2009 and managed to gain a modicum of notoriety when its trailer mysteriously debuted on the iTunes Movie Trailers website one day. This unique trailer featured a seemingly random collection of scenes which were badly acted, badly filmed and gave no clue as to what the film was actually about, which lead to people speculating that it was actually a promotional stunt by Spike Jonze, whose Where The Wild Things Are was due to be released around the same time.
But no, After Last Season is a real film, one that just happens hold the record for being the most mind-numbingly boring thing we’ve ever see. Having only watched this once, and that was a few years ago, it’s still etched into my memory just how terrible this film is, which for me is a sign of truly great bad film. I’d try and explain the plot to you, but I don’t think I really understood it at all. It’s something to do with medical students, using some sort of cutting edge technology to try and track down a killer, or something like that, seriously I don’t really know what it was about even after having seen it.
What I can tell you though is that it’s one of the shoddiest films I’ve ever watched, the sets are made of paper, the CGI seems to float in mid-air, the lighting looks like they used prison spotlights on the sets, it’s hard to know even where to begin with this film. And for me that’s the beauty of it all, the utter madness that creates a truly one off experience, I’ve only watched this film once but I’ve never forgotten it, which in the end is really what anyone creative is trying to do, leave an impression on their audience.
Now as a counterpoint to my views here’s Evrim’s take on the film:
“After Last Season – The View From My Porthole:
It might make me sound like some sort of draconian madman but there is a very good reason as to why I kept shooting down any desire to show ‘After Last Season’. Yes, the film is fun. But for only about five minutes. Then it dissolves into the kind of monotonous drone that no audience should ever be subjected to in their entire life.
There are long stretches of what I dread to call animation in the film created by someone who is clearly non-adept at Paint and these sequences might just be the most soul-sucking, hope-crushing sequences in film that I personally have encountered. If you gave me a choice between a lobotomy and watching ‘After Last Season’ again I’d reach for any thin and long object to shove into my brain gladly. It is a portal to a boredom hell just waiting to consume others.
So make sure you go looking for it. Dig it up. It’s one of a kind. Truly.”
A great bit of trivia about the film is that it actually had a theatrical release at four separate cinemas around the USA. Once it had stopped running the distributor informed the cinemas that they should throw away the prints as it was cheaper than sending them back!
Digging around online for this feature I actually discovered a brand new trailer for this had surfaced, which would bring the trailer total to four for what’s really an obscure film. This more recent one seems to try and address the story problems of the script by having a narrator spell out what’s actually supposed to be happening, great idea, but DON’T get a guy with a super creepy voice to do it!
So that’s After Last Season, easily one of the most boring and logic defying films you’ll ever see, we promise it’s worth the effort to track it down, but just don’t watch it on your own!
The Duke Mitchell Film Club 