It’s been a busy couple of weeks here, fellow geeks, but I, “El Sacerdote” assure you it will be worth the wait. We’re going to take a look at a film that took nearly thirty years before it saw the light of day, so the past few weeks of waiting won’t be that long in comparison.
John S. Rad’s Dangerous Men is the film that makes The Room and Batman V Superman: Daw Wuh Buh paragons of concise plot and storytelling. It’s hard to know where to even begin with this film, since the film itself doesn’t know where to begin either. Does it want to be a proto-feminist revenge film that is conversely, paradoxically sexist? Does it want to be a film about a biker gang? Does it want to be a cop movie about one good cop finishing off one last job? Does it want to be an avant-garde stream-of-consciousness film about the banality of life, the futility of existence and how seemingly unrelated events are, in fact…unrelated? Emphatically, the movie answers: “Yes”.
First off, in Movie A, a woman (I’m going to assume the character’s name is Mira, played by Melody Wiggins, as listed on IMDB. As I was happy to discover, very, very few of the dozen or so characters in this movie actually have names) is assaulted and raped, her fiancée murdered. As retribution, she goes after not only the men who committed these crimes against her, but goes one step further and decrees that ALL men must pay. So, naturally, she goes out, seduces men, and promptly murders them. And then this plot point is promptly dropped after about 25 minutes, and this character (again, I THINK her name is Mira) disappears, never to be mentioned or seen again. Movie B then begins, and focuses on Black Pepper (Bryan Jenkins) the leader of a motorcycle gang who comes under fire from…some guy? I think his name is Daniel? And I think he’s played by Michael Hurt, and was Mira’s brother? Or maybe the fiancée’s brother? Or maybe he’s a cop? Or maybe Black Pepper is being chased by “Police Officer”, or “Police Detective”? Look, when I say NO characters have any name…just look at the IMDB. LOOK AT IT. Three characters have names. Three. Daniel, Black Pepper, and Mira. It truly is hard to describe the plots of this movie when only THREE CHARACTERS, in a film featuring dozens of people, have names. How do you do it? How does one even REMEMBER a film when there are no distinguishable characters (aside from Black Pepper, who just looks ridiculous…
…and the old cop at the end, who plays the character of “Police Officer”, along with three other actors also playing “Police Officer”, and one actor playing “Police Detective”? Who the fuck is who?! I know “Blind Woman” is easy to remember, because she’s the only Blind Woman in the movie! And “Hooker” is easy to remember, because…wait. No. There are a bunch of hookers and belly dancers in this movie. Like, way too many. There are more hookers in this movie than in a clown’s freezer.) I could go on and on about the plot…but what’s the point? Why ruin a good thing? By the time the film peters to a halt (abruptly, to boot), too many characters had haphazardly disappeared, plots were dropped or ignored (NEW MOVIE!) entirely, or locations had suddenly changed, that the end result feels…as MST3K once glibly remarked of an unrelated film…like a “movie loaf”: parts of other movies just smashed together. Dangerous Men is that type of movie.
There is such a technical ineptitude with this film that it almost feels deliberate. John S. Rad, though, just feels such a pride with this vision that he cares not for whether or not his audience follows the logic of his film, and almost dares us to enjoy it. Here’s just one example of the ineptitude on display:
So there’s a scene set in a bar. Daniel (I think?) has tracked Black Pepper (I think?) to a bar…for some reason. He watches as Black Pepper and his buddy accost a woman (delightfully credited as “Hooker”), and lead her to a back room. Hooker and Black Pepper enter through a door, presumably to another room. However, when the camera cuts to show where they now stand, what we see instead is…
…a fucking beach. And this isn’t JUST a continuity error, because when Daniel (?) also goes through the door, he, too winds up on…
…the same fucking beach. Daniel (?) and Black Pepper fight, and Daniel (?) knocks Black Pepper out, then drags him to a car parked nearby. Hooker then scampers off, presumably to hook another day. It’s as if these characters just teleported miles away, and not one of them at any point acknowledges this, nor calls any sort of special attention to it. No one in this movie acts with any sort real motivation, nor like any real human being should act (maybe Tommy Wiseau used this as his guide for humans?).
Hell, the movie ends with a triumphant freeze frame featuring three characters we didn’t even know existed fifteen minutes prior to the end (and one who was introduced no more than three minutes prior, as well). There are zoom-ins and zoom-outs that are entirely unmotivated and have no purpose to the story. Unlike other directors featured in this column, there’s no understanding or care of the language of cinema; the others at least attempt some sort of cohesive logic, they just either failed, or overshot their reach. Here, there’s absolutely no care given to any fabric of of the story, on any level at all. Don’t think so? Just re-read the above paragraph: that all happens in the movie.
Whatever John S. Rad had in mind when he first started this film, the twenty or so odd years he’d spent completing it obviously caused him to forget his point. Maybe he wanted an excuse to throw his estranged daughter’s car off a cliff (NOTE: this actually happens in the film)? Maybe he tried to make the most unappealingly unsexy sex scenes ever? Maybe he sought out to create a truly indigestible film, much like Salo? Maybe he shot the film without watching it? (And shoot it he did. Most of the dozen or so crew credits are just his name, repeated. This goes for the music, which would not be out of place in an ’80’s porno. Whatever Mr. Rad wanted to say with this film…which he funded, and then four-walled its release…he had total control over it).
Like any other film in this column (hell, more than any other film in this column), this deserves to be seen, if just to confirm that, no, nothing I wrote about above does not happen in the movie. Sadly, Rad passed away before he could see this film premiere at the Drafthouse Film collective (such as the one in Brooklyn, where I’d seen it for the first time this past Christmas season), but the fact that he finished it at all is a miracle. It was the gift that keeps on giving.
-8/5 Policeman Police Badges
Dangerous Men can be purchased via Drafthouse Films here, which is what I literally just finished doing.