Our History
How Kamikaze Stunt Films was Born
In 1973 many years before the MTV show “Jack Ass,” and before the movie “Hot Rod,” Janner asked her 13 year old son Saki Caan what he wanted to buy at the church rummage sale. Much to her chagrin, the 8th grade boy from the North Shore in Illinois bought a crude Panasonic 8 millimeter camera and matching TV. So crude and early were these home movies that whatever you filmed on the video cassette you put in this TV which developed the film and then showed it; no editing! Saki recruited his best friend up the street, Fuji and his brother Quasi, and Kamikaze Productions was born.
We made a pledge to make a homemade stunt movie/action movie every Summer.
Inspired by Burt Reynolds movies like “Hooper,” “Cannonball Run” and “Smokey and the Bandit,” the trio recruited neighborhood kids and friends in order to make homemade stunt movies. From what little information was available to Midwest kids in the 1970’s. I picked up stunt tips on TV specials seen on “ABC’s Wide World of Sports.” We made home made blood bags out of plastic baggies and a mixture of Janner’s ketchup, Fruit Punch and water. We did our car stunts on the public streets. We even ran out of bank buildings with a fake gun on Saturday afternoons! This was pre-911, different times. This stuff would not fly now!
Our slogan was ‘Get it on the first take.” Because we had no other choice, editing was not an option. Since the movies were silent we would dub the voices and music over on a cassette tape and play it in synchronization with the film (crude but it worked). Our audience was friends, family and local pool.
In 1984, with the breakthrough of the VHS players now our video could have been played. Only one problem; the films were trapped inside the hard plastic cassettes. Saki called all over the country and finally found a film laboratory in California that was willing to take the film out of the hard plastic cassettes and transfer the films to reels.
In 1986, Saki attended an “official” Stuntman Clinic in downtown Chicago run by Canadian stuntman, Ed Heller. Heller had hoped to put together his own troop of Chicagoland stuntmen and Saki was in his first class. The Chicago stuntman career never materialized (maybe for the best) but the experience created more Kamikaze Stunt Films which went into the vault.
The films lay dormant in the vault until 2009 when Saki transferred the short action movies from VHS tape to DVD. With the speed and popularity of the internet friends and family who remembered the home-made stunt films from over twenty years ago encouraged that they get posted on websites. After much research it was decided that there was no site dedicated to the art of home stunt movie.
2012 will launch the site with Kamikaze Productions movies serving as the nucleus. In addition to our films we offer a home for viewers to send in their own home stunt videos and compete for a chance to win the annual “Kammie Award.”
