Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2015)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

A different way of telling a story

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Love this movie for the overview of one of my favourite schlock companies and while they do a good job of talking to everyone, the lack of Chuck Norris's and Charles Bronson's words (tough since he's dead) means you miss out on some alternative insights. I think a detailed book is in order. Or maybe a three hour cut of the movie that allows for more exploration into some of the crazy making of stories and lets more people talk. Still love the movie, just wish there was more here.

In the late 70s through the 1980s, Cannon films churned out a huge number of films...mostly extremely low-budgeted, schlock at that. So, if you remember a terrible but exciting movie from this era, there's a very good chance it was made by the geniuses(?) behind this studio, Mecahem Golan and Yoram Globus. And their films often were designed to appeal to the lowest sorts of audiences--with ample nudity, violence and tasteless scripts. A sampling of their products include the "Happy Hooker" franchise, all the "Death Wish" sequels, Chuck Norris films, Ninja films and the worst picture of the era, "The Apple" (my favorite bad film of all time). This film is the Golan-Globus story which explains their pairing, the growth of the studio as well as its eventual demise.It's actually very interesting that this film about Cannon is much better and much more enjoyable than any of the studio's films! It's told by many insiders...though Golan and Globus themselves did not participate in the making of the film because they reportedly are working on their own documentary on the subject (though Golan recently passed away)!

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Israeli friends Menahem Golan and Yoren Globus came to America with a passion to make movies, drawing their motivation from cherished childhood memories of trips to the theatres and seeing the great American films on show. The only trouble was, they'd had no formal training in the art of filmmaking, and as such had no idea what they were doing. The result was a succession of ultra low budget, 'cheesy' (as they say!) shlockfests during the 1980s that made names out of stars such as Michael Winner, Chuck Norris, Michael Dudikoff, Dolph Lundgren and Jean Claude Van Damme. But their overkill and reckless desire to make more and more films, without even writing scripts or getting the funds necessary to make them, saw their film studio, Cannon, take a massive crash into extinction at the end of the decade.I must be one of the curious cult that found an interest in the Cannon franchise growing up, and appreciated the cultural impact they left on the 80s, in their own, distinctive little way. It seems they made quite an array of different pictures, only a few of which I was really interested in, mainly the action films of Norris, of whom they made quite a big star, but that's not to say films such as Death Wish 2 and King Solomon's Mines escaped my notice with their awfulness. There was a knack for making terribly lit films with would be massive special effects that highlighted the ultra low budget, which even more so many years on, gives them even more of an unintentional comedy feel.The film presents a quick fire succession of talking heads, recounting their involvement with the company, without providing much in the way of any background researched information and allowing the story to develop any true sense of a solid base. That's not to say the talking heads don't give us enough of an account of these two bull headed men coming from their homeland to dominate Hollywood, just not in the most effective way. Depth may not cross the mind of some aficianados such as myself, happy to lull back and relive the nostalgia these wonderfully awful films invoke, and as such you may still have a good time.It certainly is a nice trip down memory lane, and highlights just how seriously cheap and cheerful some of your favourites were. ***

Colorful documentary on Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, cousins from Israel who forged a filmmaking partnership in 1970s Los Angeles after breaking ground in their homeland with local dramas directed and often written by Golan. Taking over Cannon Films, the duo had some early successes before succumbing to B-movies, cut-rate sequels, ninja flicks and gory screamers. A distribution deal with MGM/UA goes sour when Golan and Globus deliver the company nothing but junk, further cementing the wildly enthusiastic producers' reputation for quick, cheap trash. Looking back, Golan and Globus had the right attitude for making movies--no bull, cut to the chase, film the script--but without good judgment in the filmmaking world, and the folly of newcomers with money but nothing decent to film, they became the bane of '80s Hollywood. Cannon did attract directors like Franco Zeffirelli and John Frankenheimer, but mostly names on the wane (an amusing phone call has Golan trying to lure Peter Bogdanovich's people into having the struggling director work with Cannon: "He a loser. He needs to work with winners."). Cannon's legacy is, sadly, Chuck Norris action movies, "Death Wish" sequels, 1984's dated hit "Breakin'" and the critically-acclaimed "Runaway Train"--but with so much garbage clogging its resume, the film group was bound to go down in flames. It ain't "That's Entertainment!" **1/2 from ****