Runtime: 80 minutes
Directed by: Jahangir Salehi Yeganehrad, who wisely decided to call himself something else when he reached America. Why he landed upon JOHN S. RAD, I am not sure... but God Bless him for that decision
Starring: No one anyone would have heard of before
From:
Sima Sim International
Suddenly, I now have more appreciation for GODFREY HO as a filmmaker.
It's been a long while since I've first heard of this amazingly inept film. Drafthouse Films brought it to prominence in 2015 and when it was released on Blu I was tempted but decided to save my dollars. A few days ago I discovered it was on Tubi so I was going to finally check it out there, then via Googling realized it was also on YouTube. That was better for me so what a perplexing 80 minutes I had last night.
This was from director Jahangir Salehi, who among other things actually made at least one movie in Iran before he fled to the United States during the Iran Revolution. Why he decided to bill himself as JOHN S. RAD for this movie is unknown... but I am happy he did. From searching around and what I could find piecemeal, this began filming sometime in the early 80's and something was screened in 1985 but additional footage was shot in late '95 (a calendar you briefly see in one scene reveals this) and the finished product did not release-“escape” is perhaps a better term-until '05. From what I understand, Melody Wiggins, who played lead girl Mina in the 80's footage, broke her leg during filming and as no one paid for it, no wonder she said “F it!” and never returned to set. Then again, Mr. Rad apparently took the car that his daughter owned and paid for & used it in a stunt where it was destroyed and she never knew what happened to it until watching the movie! He may not have been a great human being, dare I say...
The 1980's footage had Mina on the rampage after two bikers sexually assaulted her and kill her lover. The bikers die, along with some others. As it's a world where most men sexually assault on the regular, her snapping and trying to kill all the men isn't really a shocking revelation. The 90's footage-which features more rape!-is centered around a cop, who is Mina's lover's brother. He goes after the son of a biker who was killed as he thinks that somehow this will lead to Mina being found. The 90's villain is known as BLACK PEPPER, BTW. They try to tie everything together into a cohesive whole but when I say that Godfrey Ho did it better, that is no lie—as shocking as that may sound for some.
Whether 80's or 90's, it's all pathetically made. The ADR is appalling; besides some of the audio on phone calls sounding like a mic was placed to a phone receiver, there's several instances of dialogue being spoken and the actor's mouths are obviously closed. The “fight choreography” is laughable, there are gunshot wounds that are bloodless, plenty of padding for a movie only 80 minutes long, and the music, that sounds like it was stolen from an old porno even though that was also apparently done by Rad.
IMO, this was more “painful bad” like Birdemic or The Room rather than “fun bad” like Miami Connection or Samurai Cop. That said, Birdemic and The Room still can offer many laughs in disbelief, and the same goes for Dangerous Men. After all this time I was still glad to have finally experienced this disaster in person.
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