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Dangerous Men (2005) is a film by John S. Rad that was released initially in 2005 after decades in the works. In the interim years, Rad died and the film gained a cult following. On December 11, Drafthouse Films, distributor of some of the most adventurous films around, released the film on VOD, though it is still in limited release. Dangerous Men is not a “great” film by traditional standards, but it’s so uniquely odd that it should not be discounted. It must be seen to be believed. The film tells the story of a woman who kills men who harm women after her fiancé is killed.

Zack Carlson is the creative director for Fantastic Fest, former film programmer for Alamo Drafthouse, and advocated heavily for Drafthouse Films to acquire Dangerous Men. Carlson also was one of the creators of Drafthouse Films’ trailer war and was instrumental in acquiring Miami Connection (1987) for the company. The following is how Carlson described his involvement with Dangerous Men: “When Drafthouse Films was a new company, they asked me a for a short list of the most incredible films that hadn’t yet made it to DVD (or even theaters or VHS, in some cases). Dangerous Men was at the top of that list. I hounded both Hadrian from The Cinefamily and Tim League about it for years, and James Shapiro finally was able to make it happen. I’ve been one of several people involved in the planning and execution of the release, hosted screenings, did the DVD commentary, etc.” The following is an interview with Carlson about the rediscovery of Dangerous Men and the importance of films of its kind to cinema.

How did you find Dangerous Men?
The person who deserves the credit for spreading the gospel of Dangerous Men is unquestionably Hadrian Belove from The Cinefamily in LA. At the time of the movie’s release, Hadrian was operating CineFile Video in Santa Monica, and he caught wind of this insane self-made action epic that had been four-walled at a theater across town. “Four-walled” is the term used when a filmmaker basically needs to rent out a theater just to get their feature shown. Anyway, there were some ads in local papers and stuff like that, but nobody was aware of this film. At all. But it drew Hadrian magnetically, and he ended up seeing it in the theater multiple times. He was completely under its influence. The world of film programmers and real, true obsessives is smaller than people might think, so his obsession with Dangerous Men traveled fast. When he started The Cinefamily, he was able to screen it there a couple times, including at the first Everything Is Festival, where I was finally able to see the movie for the first time. Like everyone else in the crowd, I went completely bananas.

When you’re selecting a movie to recommend acquiring what criteria must it meet?
I’m not an employee of Drafthouse Films so I can’t speak to their process. But the titles I’ve recommended to them and worked with them on releasing are always films that were completely and totally unique. Someone can make the slickest, most well-executed movie in the world, but if there’s nothing NEW in it, then what’s the point? I’ve seen Miami Connection about thirty times by now, but you couldn’t make me watch the new Star Wars movie at gunpoint. Fuck that garbage.

Could you walk us through the process of acquiring Dangerous Men?
Hadrian Belove started communications with director John S. Rad’s daughter Samira, but James Shapiro from Drafthouse Films did the heavy lifting on getting Dangerous Men. There was a lot of back-and forth and communication. I mean years. Basically, it had to be clear that we were in awe of the film and not just wanting to market it as a zany failure. Finally, she must have come to realize that we weren’t trying to exploit her late father’s work.

What purpose in film history do you believe a film like Dangerous Men serves?
There is no other film like Dangerous Men, and that in itself is the answer. The movie operates on a level that you’ll find nowhere else. The characters’ behavior, dialogue, and even the way they have sex is completely unlike anything else in life or fiction. But it’s not self-aware, and certainly not deliberately campy.
Also, consider the fact that this was a movie 22 years in the making. Boyhood (2014) got a ton of attention for taking twelve years to make. Does that mean Dangerous Men is twice as important; twice as good? Yes.

Do you believe it’s as important to preserve films like Dangerous Men as it is to preserve widely-loved classics like Citizen Kane (1941)?
Yes. Not because I’m under some kind of idiotic delusion that it’s the same type of movie or serves the same purpose culturally, but because the type of fearless weirdness inherent in Dangerous Men and other self-made films will always entertain people and show them something completely new. That in itself has value. It’s like comparing Beethoven to a punk band like The Germs. Yes, Beethoven was a more skilled musician, but I don’t see teenagers walking around today with Beethoven patches on their backs. The concept of “artistic merit” is subjective at best and complete bullshit.

Why should audiences go see a film like Dangerous Men if by traditional standards it’s a terribly made film?
Because it’s 10000000% entertaining. Also, people need to wise the hell up and reassess what “terribly made film” means. Because the terribly made films are being put out by Hollywood, with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars. Did you see that last Die Hard movie? Or the Godzilla remake? Or any of the Hobbit series? When’s the last time you heard anyone talking about how much they still like Avatar? Those are terribly made films that don’t even have the excuse of a low budget or an inexperienced filmmaker. The fact that people will swallow that trash and turn around to mock something as pure and special as Dangerous Men just shows that this entire planet is overdue for total nuclear annihilation.

If people want to discover insane cinema like Dangerous Men and Miami Connection, where could they find it?
Here’s a very, very important tip for anyone with even a passing interest in movies: GO TO A GODDAMN VIDEO STORE.
Netflix and all these streaming platforms have NOTHING. The movie selection is pathetic, and dropping all the time in favor of TV series and “original content.” It’s all business to them. They’re useless. Digital Redboxes. A well-stocked video store is the only method for true discovery. If you want to find treasure, you have to dig, and it’s infinitely more fun. Also, movies of this type are obscurities waiting to be discovered by a larger audience and never made it to DVD. So grab a free VCR off Craigslist and really get into it. It’s an adventure. No joke.

Where did Miami Connection and Trailer War come from?
Miami Connection was just a complete accident, and an incredibly happy one. Basically, some guy in Florida was eBaying a few 35mm film prints that had been gathering dust in his garage since the late ‘80s. One of them was something called “Miami Connection,” and when I was a film programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse, I bought it for $50. I’m pretty sure the final price was thirty bucks plus twenty for shipping. Anyway, the guy actually said, “Are you familiar with this movie?” as if warning me away from it. I wasn’t, but what the hell. So it was shipped and sat in the American Genre Film Archive for almost two years before my co-programmer Lars Nilsen pulled a reel out from it to screen for an audience. At that time, we’d do these shows called Reel One Parties, where we’d pull the first reel from four or five unseen movies in the film archive and watch them with a small crowd, just to see which movies might work with an audience in the future. Well, the first reel of Miami Connection is really, REALLY good. The crowd went nuts. Everyone made this heartbroken “awwwww” sound when the reel ended, and we had to move on to the next film. Clearly, this was something special. So Lars programmed the entire feature to play a month or two later in his Weird Wednesday exploitation film series… and it turned out that the other four reels were as good as the first! Incredible. So we ended up showing the film to our boss, Tim League, and to Evan Husney at Drafthouse Films, and they got all wound up about it too. At that point, it took months for Evan to actually get the filmmakers to believe that we genuinely loved the movie and wanted to help it get released, but they finally relented and the movie ended up being a much bigger “hit” than anyone expected.

Trailer War was just a collection of 35mm trailers from the AGFA collection that Lars and I put together in an attempt to capture the rampaging insanity of 20th century horror, exploitation and comedy films. And bizarre kids movies, which is still kind of an untapped genre. It was done strictly for fun. I still can’t believe they let us do it, really.

What film would you want to acquire if you could acquire anything you wanted?
I’d love to see a really beautiful, proper release of the 1984 film Nothing Lasts Forever. It’s my second favorite movie of all time, and it was suppressed by its own studio, MGM. Which is totally tragic because it’s one of the most funny, brilliant, singular visions in the history of film. Really. The writer/director was this great guy named Tom Schiller, who was one of the originators of Saturday Night Live. Anyway, MGM threw a bunch of money at him and Lorne Michaels to give them “an SNL movie,” and they made this incredible masterpiece, and then MGM wanted nothing to do with it. They had expected that the Coneheads would show up in it or something, and they instead got this powerful, gorgeous film. And they threw it away. It never came out in theaters or on video. Unbelievable. Now it’s in Warner Brothers’ archive and they couldn’t care less either. The world is insane.

What’s the craziest film of all time?
There’s no single answer to that. I mean, it depends on what kind of crazy you’re in the mood for, and there’s no end to this stuff. If you want indestructible Indonesian witch-monsters, watch Lady Terminator. Or, if you’re after some yacht-party karate cannibals, watch Raw Force. My friends Annie and Joe and I have a releasing label called Bleeding Skull! Video, and we recently put out a late ‘80s movie called Run Coyote Run, which uses footage from five of the director’s older films with new footage to tell a completely new story. Characters age 25 years between shots and then become young again. It’s the most disorienting experience. No rules! There are thousands upon thousands of insane movies from all over the planet. There’s no end. And no matter how deep you get into it, there’s always infinitely more.