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Released by: Drafthouse Films
Released on: April 22nd, 2016.
Director: John S. Rad
Cast: Melody Wiggins, Kelay Miller, Bryan Jenkins, Coti Cook, John Clure
Year: 2005
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The Movie:
Let's see…. John S. Rad's Dangerous Men introduces us to Daniel (Kelay Miller) as he asks his lady friend, Mira (Melody Wiggins), for her hand in marriage - heck, he's such a good guy he even asks her dad's permission first. Daniel makes it clear that he's never known love with anyone else the way he knows love with Mira. To celebrate their pending nuptials they decide to take a romantic stroll down a lonely, albeit very scenic, stretch of beach. Bad move - there are some pretty rapey bikers skulking around with eyes for foxy Mira. When they make their move, Daniel defends her honor but is killed in the process.
Grieving, Mira writes the lyrics to a sad song in the sand of the beach and heads out to get her revenge. She hitches a ride from a British guy in a pickup truck. When he decides he's also into rape, she turns the tables on him and strands him, naked, out in the bush only to later get tissues thrown at him by passing motorists. He also dances… okay. At any rate, Mira decides that the best way to get revenge is to start posing as a hooker. So she does what all hookers do - she drives around in her car and looks for johns standing around on street corners (somebody got confused here). Once she gets them lured into her trap, the movie typically cuts to silhouettes against a curtain… very stabby silhouettes.
Meanwhile, Daniel's brother, a tough talking cop (Michael Gradilone), starts trying to put together the pieces of this bizarre puzzle and finds that all signs point back to the leader of the bikers, a guy with a giant permed, bleach blonde mullet called Black Pepper (Bryan Jenkins). When he's not hanging out with his girlfriend enjoying a private show from a belly dancer he and his biker cronies are wreaking havoc across the greater Los Angeles area. Will Mira kill her way to the top or mysteriously disappear twenty minutes before the movie ends, or will our tough talking cop bribe enough bar tenders to stop her and bring Black Pepper to justice once and for all?
Made by an Iranian expat who started working on the film as late as early as 1979, Dangerous Men reportedly played four screens in L.A. for about a week before vanishing into temporary obscurity. A few years later, revival screenings proved popular enough that the good people at Drafthouse Films talked John S. Rad's family into licensing the film and it now receives its home video debut with this release. It's a beautiful thing, a bizarre and misguided passion project clearly inspired by American action and revenge movies of the seventies and early eighties, but presented through the slightly skewed view of someone who clearly came from a different culture (there is an underlying theme of women obeying their fathers here - check out the extras for more on that!). The end result is a riotously enjoyable mix of action, sleaze and weird attempts at comedy with the ever so steady hand of John S. Rad at the helm. The guy not only directed the film but he wrote it, produced it, executive produced it and scored it as well. His name is the only one that appears in the opening credits and it appears there a whole bunch of times - clearly he was rightly proud of this accomplishment.
The fight scenes are painfully awkward. The cast seem lost, confused at times, and rarely balanced - meaning they either under deliver and clearly read their lines off of highlighted pages scattered across as desk or they go full on crazy with their deliver. There's no middle ground, the movie is bi-polar in that regard. It's quick in its pacing, never dull, but tough to make much sense out of - really though, you'll probably have more fun with it if you don't try. Just go with it. Let the insanely repetitive cues of John S. Rad's synthesizer take you away to a land of rampant misogyny and violent escapism. Thrill to the exploits of a Policeman Police agent taking on the baddest of the bad. Enjoy Black Pepper's whitebread good looks and thrill to the mixed messages delivered by a woman who is almost raped but then lures bikers to their doom by showing some leg. At one point, we're subjected to a flashback scene where Mira proves her love to Daniel by giving him a gift she made just for him - a bunch of shells glued together with googly eyes affixed to them.
This is some seriously nutty stuff. A woman hides a knife in her ass crack and people seem to make love to each other's knees. Thank you, John S. Rad, for what would seem to be your only contribution to American cinema. It's a shame you didn't live to make another picture, but at least you made this one count.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Dangerous Men arrives on Blu-ray disc in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.85.1 widescreen. The transfer does show some wear and tear in the form of mild to moderate print damage and the occasional scratches that pop up here and there. Some shots definitely look softer than others but by and large the image quality here is pretty decent, particularly when you take into account the age, obscurity and low budget of the picture in question - not to mention the fact that it was shot over such a long period of time. While more restoration probably could have been done, the grit and print damage that shows up does result in a film like presentation that seems like a perfectly 'realistic take' on the elements that were available. Detail is pretty decent in close up and medium shots if slightly soft in some of the long distance shots but colors usually look quite nice even if it is sometimes a bit faded. Black levels are decent though far from reference quality, there are no problems with compression artifacts, edge enhancement or noise reduction. Visual perfection? No, but the picture quality is probably about as good as it's ever going to get and most will be quite pleased with the results.
The only audio option on the disc is an English language Dolby Digital 2.0 track with subtitles provided in English only. There is no lossless option provided. With that said, the sound quality here is good. Yes, it would have been a nice option to include a lossless mix but at least the Dolby Digital mix does its job nicely. Dialogue is clean and clear pretty easy to understand. The insanely repetitive parts of the synth-heavy score have got some nice punch to them and there aren't any obvious problems with any serious hiss or distortion even if you'll notice some minor instances here and there. Levels are well balanced and overall things sound just fine so long as you're not expecting audiophile quality.
Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly provide an audio commentary for the feature that is a pretty amusing listen. Obviously the history of this movie is a bit scatter brained and with John S. Rad having shuffled off this mortal coil, it's not always possible to provide context for all of the insanity he baked into his feature, but they try. Much of this stems from just paying really close attention not so much as to what happens in the movie but as to how it happens. Observations about lighting, audio and locations offer some clues as to when certain chunks of the picture were shot even if the editing does what it can to hide some of that. They also offer background information when and where they can (including why Mira just disappears as the movie progresses) on the people who worked on the film both in front of and behind the camera. It's well paced and hits a nice balance between humor and facts/trivia.
On top of that, we get a featurette called That's So John Rad in which a few 'early adaptors' who discovered the movie during its miniscule original theatrical run go in search of others who have seen the film. In doing so, they wind up talking to other fans of John S. Rad's masterpiece, interviewing his daughter (who notes that he pulled a gun on her for talking to a boy once) and his grandkids. It does what it can to explore the history of the film and it does manage to shed some interesting light on the film and the enigmatic man who made it. Good stuff. Also on hand for a ten minute interview is the film's cinematographer, Peter Palian, who explains how he was introduced to Rad by Amir Shervan - once you realize that the guy who made Samurai Cop helped get them in touch, things start to make sense. Regardless, Palian talks about his experiences working with Rad on the film and his thoughts on the movie, it's quite interesting.
Perhaps the most surprising extra on the disc is an episode of Queer Edge, a public access show shot in Los Angeles. This particular episode from 2005 is hosted by the mysterious Jack E. Jett and features guests Sandra Bernhard, Colleen Camp and yes, John S. Rad. In addition to quick interview with Rad, in which he talks about his philosophy in life, his outlook, what filmmaking means to him and more, we also get a clip of the movie. Unrelated to Dangerous Men but still amusing is some footage from what looks like an AVN Expo, a crazy musical number and plenty of Bernhard's sarcasm. It's all pretty over the top and reasonably zany. The whole thing runs just under fifty minutes.
Outside of that, the disc includes a trailer for the feature, a newly made Drafthouse trailer for the feature, trailers for a few unrelated pictures available from Drafthouse Films, menus and chapter selection.
Included inside the case with the Blu-ray disc is a download code that will allow you to get yourself a Digital HD version of the movie and a liner note booklet that contains the entirety of an interview writer Paul Callum did with Rad before he passed away that was originally published in L.A. Weekly a few years ago.
The Final Word:
Dangerous Men touches you in that special place that only the best of the most esoteric cult movies can and it leaves you wanting more. It might not make a whole lot of sense but you've got to admire the passion and dedication that went into getting something like this made in the first place. While it's a shame that John S. Rad didn't live to see the movie reach the wider audience that it will thanks to this release, Drafthouse Films are to be commended for rolling out the red carpet for this one.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
