James Bond Lite Part One

By: John Thonen
Date: Thursday, May 09, 2002

The world is in danger from a power-crazed maniac with minions all over the world. The only one who can save mankind is the world's greatest secret agent: a man who laughs at danger, is skilled in the deadliest of martial arts and comes armed with the most sophisticated of secret agent weaponry. He is a man whose name strikes terror into his enemies and who seduces women with just a glance. Unfortunately, that guy is busy with another film series, so this time around the safety of mankind rests with Rod Steele, agent 0014.

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Hitting video stores across the country last week was ROD STEELE: YOU ONLY LIVE UNTIL YOU DIE, a film, which may prove to be the first in a series. Steele is a man described on the video box as "More class than Bond... More hip than Powers... And dumber than Smart." He is the creation of Rolfe Kanefsky, a writer/director who has made a living in his chosen profession for the past decade, but who has often found his creations have had to endure lengthy periods in limbo before they could find an audience. "I like to tell people that ROD STEELE was six years in the making, but it was really six years in the releasing," Kanefsky recently shared with CINESCAPE.COM.

Kanefsky's sexy, secret sleuth story was conceived as one of the "Click" films, a soft-core, erotic series based on the popular comic books of the same name by Italian artist Milo Manara. The films were produced by Alain Siritzky, whose links to European-produced erotica go back to the international hit EMMANUELLE in 1974. Kanefsky explains that he first met Siritzky in 1996 at the American Film Market.

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"I walked into a room where he was advertising films based on the BUTTERSCOTCH and CLICK comics," he says. "I was actually familiar with them, so I told him that I could do those movies and gave him a copy of THERE'S NOTHING OUT THERE [a cult horror spoof Kanefsky made in '91]. He called me the next day to meet for lunch and offered to let me direct two or three of the films."

Through a deal with the legendary Roger Corman, Siritzky was going to produce fourteen erotic-themed films using Corman's studio, in exchange for giving Corman the U.S. rights to the films themselves. The plan was to shoot all the films back-to-back utilizing several directors.

"There was three or four of us, each doing three or four films apiece," Kanefsky recalls. "I think I was the only one who wasn't a first-time director and the only one who hadn't worked for Concorde before. I also think I was the only director who used his real name. I was trying to make the best film I could with what I had available, and I saw it as a chance to experiment and do some things a studio would never let you do. I just feel that if someone is that ashamed of doing these type of films, then they shouldn't do them."


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Kanefsky describes the CLICK concept as being "about a device that can sexually turn people on with the push of a button. They're over the top and kind of comic, both of which appeal to me, so I wound up doing two of them." Disappointed with the first film, Rolfe decided to do something fun and different with his second entry in the series, a James Bond spoof. "We came up with the Rod Steele idea first and then just added 'The Click' to it, so the movie isn't really about that device, it's about him, and we shot it as ROD STEELE: BALLS OF THUNDER."

"It was a six-day movie," Rolfe shares. "Well, seven if you count a day of second-unit work, but in it I was trying to tell a story that happened to have sex, and not a movie that is about sex. In fact, if all you're looking for is a reason to get off, then I don't think my films are all that great at erotica, because most erotic films are boring."

Be sure to check back soon for part two of our Rolfe Kanefsky profile.