Dangerous Men is an action movie (thereabouts) directed, edited, composed, written and produced by one John S. Rad (real name: Jahangir Salehi Yaganehrad), an Iranian architect-turned-film-producer who fled to America during the revolution.
The film begins with a Rape and Revenge plot: Mina and Daniel, a romantic couple, go to the beach together. After a sudden robbery scene which has nothing to do with this, the couple are confronted by a duo of bikers named Tiger and Leo. Daniel fights them off and kills one of them, but is himself killed, and Mina is nearly raped. Wanting revenge, Mina suddenly "falls" for Tiger and invites him on a date. When they arrive at a hotel room, Mina distracts Tiger by asking him to lick her belly button, and then stabs him to death.
Mina then hitches a ride with a man with a weird accent, who attempts to rape her, only to be threatened with castration. He is ordered to strip down and kicked out of his truck, and parades around a desert nude. It gets weirder from there.
Production began in 1984, but work continued until 2005, when it ran for a week in a few Los Angeles theaters to very little fanfare. It received a home media release in 2015 from Drafthouse Films, where it has since become known as So Bad, It's Good due to its utter quirkiness. It has been featured on RedLetterMedia's Best of the Worst and spotlighted by The Cinema Snob as a Patreon suggestion episode.
Dangerous tropes:
- '80s Hair: Black Pepper, the biker gang leader, looks straight out of a Hair Metal music video.
- All Men Are Perverts: Check that — in this film, All Men Are Rapists.
- Alternate DVD Commentary: RiffTrax got to it in 2021.
- Attempted Rape: Multiple rapists make attempts on various women, but none of them manage to reach penetration.
- Deuteragonist: What the police detective is supposed to be. He effectively becomes the protagonist once Mina starts murdering people and gets Out of Focus.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Mina kills men whom she picks up posing as a prostitute, and at least one was given consent before she murdered him.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The police officer arresting Nina is literally called "Police Detective" and his badge says "Policeman Police".
- Fan Disservice: None of the nudity, male or female, is particularly pleasant.
- Freeze-Frame Ending: It ends with one of Black Pepper being arrested.
- Genre Savvy: The blind woman at the end has a gun under her knitting — she seems to know she's in a universe where All Men Are Rapists.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Black Pepper... apparently.
- Halfway Plot Switch: After a few murders by Mina, perspective switches to a police detective whose only connection to her is that he's her fiance's brother. Mina's plotline unceremoniously ends with her being arrested.
- Naked People Are Funny: Why else would a guy waltz naked in the desert then have garbage thrown at him?
- No Ending: The film ends on three characters that had been introduced in the last five minutes, and the protagonists are completely out of the picture, and absolutely nothing has been resolved.
- Offscreen Teleportation: In his chase of Black Pepper, the policeman somehow appears on the top of a very large hill in under 20 seconds (with his car parked). Black Pepper doesn't skip a beat and simply keeps slowly running away.
- Random Events Plot: The plot is borderline incomprehensible. It begins with a couple that have nothing to do with the plot and never appear again. Then it becomes a Rape and Revenge plot, which transforms into a serial killer plot. Then it becomes a crime investigation into the serial killer, which somehow becomes an investigation into a criminal biker gang whose only connection to the killer is that two of their members were victims of her and her fiance.
- Rape and Revenge: What the first half consists of. It then derails when Mina starts murdering people she gives consent to.
- Rape as Drama: In the most superficial way possible. Rape is even attempted in the most unlikely places or during a chase scene.
- Serial Killer: What Mina's modus operandi reduces her to after her fiance is killed by a biker and her Near-Rape Experience. She even kills men she consents to having sex with while she poses as a prostitute.Mina: From now on, all trash like you is gonna end up dead, no matter what I have to do or what I have to lose.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: A scene of Mina posing as a prostitute and murdering a man in silhouette is backed by a funky soundtrack.
- Too Dumb to Live: The only reason Mina manages to murder anyone or escape being raped is because everyone she tricks takes her at face value with no second thoughts.
- Two Decades Behind: The fashion and music used clearly shows it was made in the 80's, yet it wasn't released until 2005.
- Undying Loyalty: Black Pepper's fiancé refuses to tell the police where he's hiding, only that he's in her heart.
- Villain Ball: Black Pepper could have made a clean getaway from the cops at the end but he just had to stop and try to rape a conveniently blind woman just so the police chief can get him.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Thanks to the movie having No Ending, we never find out what happens to the police detective after he's knocked out by Black Pepper.
