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| The Search for Count Dante |
| Search for the Deadliest Man Alive! |
 Chicago,
Illinois
United States
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Idea
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Team
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Chance of Success
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| Tags:
chicago
martialarts
dimmak
dojowar
karate
kungfu
playboybunnies
crime
murder
dojowars
dragonwars
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Synopsis: n the 1960s and 70s, his scowl was unmistakable and his kung fu pose conveyed a menace that went beyond martial arts mastery. He called himself Count Dante and he claimed to be “The Deadliest Man Alive” in garish comic book ads and gruesome instructional manuals. While his name and title may have been more show biz than lineage, his drive to live up to his fearsome reputation left one man dead and a promising career in ruins.
Count Dante’s real name was John Keehan and he grew up in a posh section of Chicago. In the early 1960s he was one of the most intriguing figures in America’s nascent martial arts scene. Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris were his contemporaries, but Keehan’s appetite for self-promotion was greater than a movie star’s. When he wasn’t putting on karate tournaments, he was styling hair and courting Playboy Bunnies. He was one part “Black Belt Jones” and one part Warren Beatty from “Shampoo.” He challenged Muhammad Ali, tested his hand speed against a quick draw artist, and kept an African lion as a house pet.
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Goal
$8,000
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How will these funds be used?
To shoot additional interviews, employ an editor and motion graphics artist
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| $25 |
DVD of completed film+ |
DVD of finshed film, on newsletter email list, access to new interview excerpts. Credit in Film as supporter. |
| $100 |
DVD+swag |
Invitation to festival parties in your town, DVD of completed film, t-shirt and newsletter with access to new interview excerpts from film. Credit in Film as supporter. |
| $1,000 |
DVD++ |
Completed DVD, 2 t-shirts, invitation to parties, a lesson with an original Count Dante Student in Tai Chi or Dim Mak. Credit in Film as supporter. |
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What makes The Search for Count Dante different?
This project is a social history of martials arts with the iconoclastic character of John Keehan/Count Dante at it's center. It will examine how this character came to be in a climate for martial arts that did not exist before the 1960s.
All the macho icons of the last 50 years resonate in this documentary, martial arts, the mob, Playboy Bunnies, the occult, and the true crime of armored car vault robberies.
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What is the name of the legal entity behind this project, if any?
e22.digital.filmworks
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| Tip: Ask a question of your own down in COMMENTS! |
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| floydwebb (Fri Oct 10) |
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LINK
As a scrawny adolescent in the mid-1960s, filmmaker Floyd Webb became entranced by advertisements in his superhero comic books that promised to pass on the secrets of martial arts warfare for a mere five dollars.
The ads were placed by a character who identified himself only as “Count Dante, The Deadliest Man Alive”.
In this film, Webb investigates the truth behind the figure of Count Dante, and discovers a life infinitely stranger and more mysterious than any fiction.
For Dante turned out to be one John Keehan, an early promoter of martial arts events, yes, but also a sometime hairdresser to Playboy bunnies, used-car salesman, voodoo priest, mobster associate, and mastermind of a four million dollar heist.
Dante was many things to many people, and a mystery to them all. In this film Webb weaves interviews, film clips and archive shots together to tell the fast-paced, irresistible, and improbable tale of his life. |
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