{"id":2203,"date":"2012-04-02T14:04:50","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T20:04:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=2203"},"modified":"2012-04-02T14:04:50","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T20:04:50","slug":"danger-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=2203","title":{"rendered":"Danger 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nHITLER’S plan has been foiled again. His mutant lizard soldiers lie dead all around him. The Danger 5 team have him in their sights, but as they raise their guns, the villain escapes by throwing himself through a window.<\/p>\n

A week later though, and Hitler is back with a vengeance.<\/p>\n

This time the Danger 5 squad have to battle through his Moroccan pleasure palace to uncover his scheme to craft deadly super guns made from pure gold. The next week, they’ll be up against Kill-Men of the Rising Sun, or storming Hitler’s sex kitchen.<\/p>\n

From the first moments it\u2019s pretty clear that this latest Australian TV series is no Packed To The Rafters.<\/p>\n

It’s Danger 5, and the people who like it quickly learn to love it. And thanks to YouTube, it\u2019s not just the SBS audience tuning in at 9.30pm on Monday nights.<\/p>\n

On the phone from Adelaide, co-creator Dario Russo says: \u201cPeople all over the world want copies of the DVD, which, of course, is only available in Australia at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

All this, from what started as Russo\u2019s final-year 16mm project at Flinders University.<\/p>\n

Russo and his friend David Ashby made a short film called Italian Spiderman, with Ashby playing the title character.<\/p>\n

It purported to be a trailer for a 60s Italian Eurotrash film, the kind you sometimes see on TV in the small hours of the morning – badly dubbed, melodramatically acted and shot on wobbly sets with lurid lighting.<\/p>\n

Italian Spiderman was partially a parody of Mario Bava\u2019s 1968 film Danger: Diabolik, and it had the kind of bad fight scenes and ridiculous amounts of gun violence which a generation reared on cheesy TV thrillers took to its heart.<\/p>\n

Uploaded to YouTube, Italian Spiderman became an online hit, with several million viewings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt went cult viral,\u201d Ashby told news.com.au, \u201cand on the strength of that, Dario went to the South Australian Film Corporation and we acquired a small investment, $9500, to expand this non-existent movie into a web-series, to move it into an existing movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t too long before SBS came calling, but legal problems intervened and eventually, Italian Spiderman was no more. The team set out to write a replacement – Danger 5 was the result.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t seen it yet, Danger 5 is probably easiest to describe as the sum of its influences: 60s B-movies, according to Dario Russo.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh-style, fake sets, big wigs, lots of make-up. Sixties Godzilla films and even Power Rangers all play a role in influencing Danger 5\u2019s style\u201d.<\/p>\n

But David Ashby adds that the show’s biggest influence was a particular kind of artwork from a typical kind of 60s and 70s magazine story about “some buxom dude saving some buxom babe from a Nazi with a monocle and a hook for a hand\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have this 60s sensibility: it\u2019s World War II, but the girls all look like they\u2019re in the 60s,” he says.<\/p>\n

“They have the eyes, the hair-dos, even conical bras. It was this really weird hybrid that really took our eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

The influences don\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n

The result was a series of six half-hour programmes, set during World War II, in which the Danger 5 team – three men and two women of in Thunderbirds-influenced uniforms – do battle in increasingly surrealistic ways with the Nazis.<\/p>\n

Hitler, played by Dario Russo\u2019s father Carmine, makes regular appearances. Each episode ends with Der F\u00fchrer fleeing the Five by jumping out of a high window.<\/p>\n

Although Hitler\u2019s jump was done by legendary Australian stuntman Grant Page, it\u2019s basically the same shot at the end of every show.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe only had the time and money to smash three windows on that particular night,\u201d Russo says, adding that only two of the three shots worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so conspicuous as well,\u201d Ashby says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny in a film nerd way as well – continuity is non-existent in our show. We flipped the shot in the fourth and fifth episode, so the swastika changes arms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the fifth episode he\u2019s not even wearing the leather coat before he jumps out the window. He\u2019s wearing a coat: when he\u2019s going out the window he\u2019s wearing the trenchcoat again\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we\u2019d always planned for it to be the exact same shot every time,\u201d Russo says, \u201cbecause the gag is the repetition of the fact that Hitler escapes by the same means at the end of every episode.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a Scooby-Doo moment, really. Those crazy kids have foiled his plan, again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unusually, Danger 5 is a comedy that doesn\u2019t rely particularly on gags and punchlines.<\/p>\n

Ashby sums it up. \u201cIt\u2019s Hitler smelting golden guns that shoot lasers at a casino in Morocco,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t need ‘jokey’ jokes. That\u2019s not necessarily what we\u2019re aiming for.<\/p>\n

“The show\u2019s set in World War II in the 60s. It\u2019s ridiculously silly, why do we need to put more jokes on top of that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Adding to the hilarity is the fact the makers of Danger 5 aren\u2019t interested in using computer-generated imagery (CGI).<\/p>\n

They love the look of a toy helicopter, for instance, swooping in to lift an entire miniature railway carriage off the track to kidnap its occupants.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople can tell if something on TV or in film is CG,\u201d Ashby says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody who isn\u2019t even into film, they can tell. \u2018That\u2019s computer-generated.\u2019 We\u2019d rather take the time and care to make a physical object.\u201d<\/p>\n

Word of mouth has helped build a tremendous audience for Danger 5, but its makers are really just relieved that anyone\u2019s watching at all.<\/p>\n

Ashby says their best moment came after the first episode, when Shaun Micallef sent them an email.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one person in the whole of Australia who we would want to see Danger 5 is Shaun Micallef,\u201d he says<\/p>\n

\u201cHe emails us out of the blue. ‘Holy s***!’ Did we put some cheat code in?How does this work! This is amazing, Shaun Micallef is emailing us!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course there\u2019s been some negative comments, but it doesn\u2019t make a difference really.<\/p>\n

“The biggest thing that we like, out of the whole process, is being able to come up and make the show.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s the fun part.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more: http:\/\/www.news.com.au\/entertainment\/series-creators-dario-russo-and-david-ashby-tell-us-just-where-danger-5-came-from\/story-e6frfmq9-1226316111900#ixzz1quo3L0JO
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