Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.0

Dangerous Men Blu-ray Movie Review

Inept Auteur

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 21, 2016

Nobody does schlock better than Drafthouse Films. They have their own library of cinema trash, the American Genre Film Archive, whose vaults provided the anthology of awfulness dubbed Trailer War. They've rescued noteworthy aberrations like Miami Connection and The Visitor from obscurity. They've provided a platform for cinematic quacks like Jason Trost, writer/director of The FP and All Superheroes Must Die. But with their release of Dangerous Men, Drafthouse has reached new heights (or depths). Ed Wood has competition for worst director of all time, and his name is John S. Rad.

Of course, that isn't his real name. Even in the credits of Dangerous Men, where almost every position is attributed to Rad, the director included his true identity, which was Jahangir Salehi Yeganehrad. An Iranian native who arrived in the U.S. in 1979, just weeks before the Shah of Iran was deposed by the current government, Rad had a dream to make an American-style action/exploitation picture. It took him 22 years to write, shoot, edit and score Dangerous Men, and then a few more years to get limited theatrical play at Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles. Since then, Dangerous Men has become the stuff of legend among connoisseurs of junk cinema. Drafthouse now brings it to your door.

Depending on your point of view, Dangerous Men has either no plot or too much. When a film's production starts and stops for more than two decades, cast members inevitably drop out or become otherwise unavailable. Rad, who seems never to have encountered an obstacle from which he couldn't run away, simply retooled his story. The film ends with a completely different set of characters than those who began the journey. To the extent there's a story, it's held together by recurring motifs: bikers, gratuitous nudity, murder, attempted rape and knee-kissing (yes, you read that correctly).

The first half of Dangerous Men centers on Mina (Melody Wiggins), who embarks on a Death Wish-style killing spree after a pair of bikers rape her and kill her fiancé, Daniel (Michael Hurt). The second half involves the pursuit by a cop named David (Michael Gradilone) of a Goldilocks-headed biker known as "Black Pepper" (Bryan Jenkins). We know Black Pepper must be depraved, because he has his own private belly dancer (Roohi) to entertain him while he makes out with his girlfriend (Elle Squadrito). These two plots are connected (if you can call it that) by the fact that David, the cop hunting Black Pepper, is the brother of Daniel, Mina's murdered fiancé. But it isn't David who tracks down his rampaging (almost) sister-in-law, and he doesn't capture Black Pepper either. The blond biker overlord is ultimately brought to justice by David's chief (Carlos Rivas), a character so random that he doesn't even have a name. But the chief is memorable for other reasons, including the fact that, when he first appears in the film, he is sitting at a desk reading his highlighted lines from a prominently displayed script. Black Pepper's apprehension occurs in the home of a blind girl (Cita Thompson), who, despite her disability, keeps a loaded pistol in her sewing basket so that she can fire wildly at strange noises.

As if these two plots weren't enough, Dangerous Men routinely wanders off on tangents, whether it's David's fellow cop getting called home by his impatient girlfriend who wants servicing, the antic contortions of the would-be rapist that Mina leaves naked in the desert, her hiring of a hooker to teach her how to lure men so that she can kill them, or David's inept attempt to set a trap for bikers who might lead him to Black Pepper. Until Mina disappears from the film (reportedly because the actress refused to continue working for Rad), she sometimes recalls the heroine of Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45, another entry in Drafthouse's exploitation catalog, but Ferrara's low-budget quickie looks like a paragon of craftsmanship next to Dangerous Men's clumsy fight scenes, meandering narrative and wooden acting. The film is an ideal midnight movie for audience participation, because there's never any shortage of howlers to provoke yelling at the screen. Indeed, early attendees were convinced the film was a spoof, especially after the opening credits in which Rad's name appears in so many capacities that it has to be a joke. But it isn't. Rad's faith in his filmmaking prowess was so unshakeable that, according to one commentator in the extras, he was baffled when audiences laughed at his creation.

Dangerous Men Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Dangerous Men was shot by Iranian cinematographer Peter Palian (Samurai Cop), the sole professional among Rad's amateur crew, who miraculously stuck with Rad for the 22 years it took to make the film. With scenes from both the Eighties and the Nineties, the quality of the image varies from dull and faded to (reasonably) sharp and colorful. For this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, Drafthouse has transferred the film from a print, which still displays the "burn marks" used to indicate reel changes. The source material reflects the typical wear-and-tear of a release print, but it's free of major damage in the way of scratches, tears or missing frames.

Palian shot for visibility, not atmosphere, and he took full advantage of the bright California sun for the many outdoor sequences, which are often surprisingly detailed and colorful. Black levels are adequate for the occasional nighttime shots, and most indoor sequences are sufficiently lit to provide an acceptable image (though the indoor colors tend to be less saturated). The film's grain is obvious but not excessive, for which credit is no doubt due to the DP. A thin layer of video noise is visible in numerous shots, possibly an artifact of the scanning process. Drafthouse's decision to leave this texture intact, and not to subject the transfer to any de-noising software, should be applauded.

Given the nature of the material, one would have expected Drafthouse to encode Dangerous Men at a higher average bitrate than the 19.99 Mbps of this disc. However, no major artifacts appeared.

Dangerous Men Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Before anyone gets too excited about Drafthouse's omission of lossless audio, they should first listen to the mono soundtrack (encoded in Dolby Digital 2.0 at 448 kbps) and consider whether lossless treatment would have improved Rad's mix. The dialogue is frequently muffled due to poor recording quality, and Rad's sound editing is so inept that, in the first conversation between Mina and her fiancé, the location's background noise cuts audibly in and out. Punches sound as fake as a bad kung fu movie, and gunshots and explosions have no impact. The soundtrack's most memorable component is the synth score composed and performed by Rad. At some moments, Rad seems to be trying to channel Miami Vice; at others, his musical style is reminiscent of vintage porn from the era of Boogie Nights.

Dangerous Men Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Bryan Connolly and Zack Carlson: Connolly and Carlson co-authored Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film. Connolly works in a video store, while Carlson is a programmer for Drafthouse and Fantastic Films and was a producer of Drafthouse's Trailer War disc. Viewing Dangerous Men with their commentary is like watching a somewhat gentler episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Though they are fascinated by what Rad has created, the two men mock the film mercilessly. Carlson also provides information about its making, most of which can be found in the documentary extra, "That's So John Rad".



• That's So John Rad (1080p; 1.78:1; 26:44): Tim Skousen and Jeremy Coon (Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made; coming soon from Drafthouse) have designed their documentary about Dangerous Men as a homage to John Rad's style, starting with the opening titles where they list themselves in multiple credits, including "Lunch" and "Pontificating". As two members of the small group that saw Dangerous Men during its 2005 L.A. release, Skousen and Coon set out to find and talk to others from that rarefied company. The interviewees include Phil Anderson, co-founder of CineFile Video; Paul Cullum, formerly a writer for the L.A. Weekly; Greg Gardner of Laemmle Theatres and Hadrian Belove, co-founder of Cinefamily. Also interviewed are John Rad's daughter, Samira Wenzel, and two of his grandchildren, who provide personal insight into Rad's life and his passion for filmmaking. The epilogue parodies a memorably goofy scene from Dangerous Men.



• Interview with Peter Palian, Director of Cinematography (1080p; 1.78:1; 10:35): Pallian, who stuck doggedly by Rad throughout the 22-year production of Dangerous Men, describes the experience of working with the eccentric director.



• Full episode of local access TV show featuring John S. Rad (1080p; 1.33:1; 47:57): The show is entitled Queer Edge with Jack E. Jett. Additional guests for this 2006 episode include comedian Sandra Bernhard and actress Colleen Camp. The segment with John Rad begins at 20:15 and ends at 25:20. The show is so unhinged that even the usually irrepressible Rad seems at a loss. (Note that, while the Blu-ray presentation is 1080p, the source appears to be 480i.)



• Trailers
• Original Theatrical Trailer
• Dangerous Men Theatrical Trailer
• Dangerous Men Teaser
• Miami Connection
• Ms. 45
• Roar
• Trailer War



• Booklet: Drafthouse's booklet reprints the complete text of Paul Cullum's 2005 interview with John Rad for L.A. Weekly. Excerpts appear in "That's So John Rad". The booklet also contains film and disc credits.



• Digital Copy and DVD: As always, digital copies from Drafthouse must be downloaded directly and are not available through services such as iTunes or VUDU.
  
  NOTE: After publication of this review, Drafthouse advised that it has discovered a technical glitch with the DVD version of Dangerous Men. The Blu-ray is unaffected. Further information will be forthcoming.

Dangerous Men Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

How does one score a film like Dangerous Men? There's no question that it's bad; indeed, badness is much of its appeal (for those who like that sort of thing). If the option were available, I would give it zero stars, but the lowest I can give is half a star, which is more than it deserves. Drafthouse's disc, on the other hand, is an impressive achievement: a remarkably good reproduction of a film that, under different circumstances, could easily have been lost, accompanied by a wealth of extras that are often more entertaining than the main feature. Dangerous Men isn't a disc I can recommend, but I can assure prospective purchasers that it's unlike anything they've ever seen.