Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)

Director: Mark Hartley. 106 min. Rated R. Australia/USA/Israel/UK. Documentary.

Enter the Ninja, Death Wish 3, Breakin', Delta Force, Cobra, Murphy's Law, Over the TopSuperman IV, Bloodsport. I lived in the Middle-East during the 80s, and these were a handful of movies I either saw or heard of at the time. The magnitude of rubbish involved always made me theorize these films were probably solely packaged for those countries. Later, I discovered Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who produced more than 200 films in their 30-year Cannon Films history, were behind a movement which dominated not only Hollywood, but the world. This is their hard-to-believe success story.

PS: Available to stream on Netflix.

Mo says:



3 comments:

  1. This was a great documentary! I had no clue who was behind Canon but this film put that straight. Yes they mostly produced total crap but the small percentage of good movies they made were worth it...I think ;-)

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    1. Great! I'm glad you liked it. What wasn't mentioned in the movie, was that the cousins should be known as the "masters of guilty pleasure": the throwaway quality of their movies was real, but at the same time, the joy of watching them (for whatever reason) was undeniable.

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  2. Their attitude towards movies was perfectly summed up in one line, "Actors get paid too much, they only make one movie a year. What the hell do they do with the other 51 weeks?", it's not an accurate quote but the gist is correct.

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