These were bad ideas on a regular basis.

Electric Boogaloo:

The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

(2014)

Mark Hartley’s history of the studio that exemplified ropey straight-to-video (or should have been straight-to-video) ‘80s movies is an embarrassment of rich anecdotes of excess and cheapness. So much so, it would have been very easy to take a detour and focus entirely on one particular disaster. Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films recounts the litany of terrible business and creative decisions that fuelled Cannon Films’ unlikely period of boom (and then bust), and Hartley revels in the studio’s complete lack of aesthetic and narrative competence.

As such, it’s a celebration more than it is an evisceration, jubilant at the sheer tat Cannon turned out week after week (in some cases; when junk bond king Michael Milkin raised $300m they were churning out a ridiculous 40 films a year). Which isn’t to say Menaham Golan (the “dreamer”) and his brother Yoram (the “shrewd business person”), who bought the studio in 1979, the former having earned the title “the father of Israeli cinema”, never put Cannon’s name to anything halfway decent or even good, but that the good was inevitably tarnished by the Cannon name. There was the occasional John Cassavetes film. Or lesser Goddard. Against the grain, Franco Zeffirelli, who made Othello with the brothers, loved the collaboration. And I’m not sure it’s wholly true that Runaway Train would be regarded as a classic if it had been released by another studio; it’s pretty much regarded as a classic anyway.

It’s evident how shunned the brothers were in Hollywood, though, a due who expounded “Cinema is our life” and would go to a movie if they had four hours free but were incompetent at making good ones. The distribution deal with MGM is met with bafflement (it didn’t last) and the flop (there were a lot of flops) Sahara is referred to as an “intersection of ideas that should never meet each other”; they failed to operate according to the Hollywood rules (a black tie opening for a Chuck Norris film!), and were awarded dismissive epithets suggesting an anti-immigrant bias (including the “Bad News Jews”).

But Hollywood respects the dollar most, and they were never able to show any kind of consistent business sense other than hopelessness. Stephen Tolkin notes they loved cinema in the abstract; there was no concept of struggling through the pain of repeated drafts to finesse a script, added to which their modus operandi was “bad ideas on a regular basis”, spit-balling posters for movies that were never made, and those that were were based on crazy ideas that somehow mustered pre-sales. They owned 40% of the British cinema market at one point (including Thorn EMI, Elstree, Pathe and ABC) but failed to capitalise on it.

Electric Boogaloo is probably the best way to witness the majority of their output, in bite-size chunks rather than enduring entire movies. There’s Menaham’s The Apple, his disastrous attempt to fashion a Ken Russell musical, the hitching of their cart to Sylvia Kristel (Mata Hari) who was in a state of some disrepair, their successful collaborations with Charles Bronson (one of Cannon’s two chucks, with Norris) and Sir Michael Winner, through reviving the Death Wish franchise (Alex Winter, who appeared in Death Wish III, provides amusing anecdotes throughout, and refers to Winner as the “perfect Cannon director”, one who put making money above any propriety in working practices, with comments from Marina Sirtis underlining Sir Michael’s generally deplorable approach; presumably Cannon had to makee sure the catering was good). Particularly amusing is a response to Death Wish II; “It is obviously very much on Mr Winner’s mind to be sodomised. I hope it happens to him soon”. Winner also provided them with The Wicked Lady, as insalubrious as his Bronson bouts.

Then there is Enter the Ninja (with a dubbed Franco Nero) and Revenge of the Ninja (“Only a ninja can stop a ninja”), rare hit Breakin’ and the disastrous sequel that lends the doc its title, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (Menahem, once something was a success, summarily proved he hadn’t a clue as to how or why), Bo Derek in Bolero, Missing in Action and the Chuck Norris ‘80s legacy, Michael Dudikoff and American Ninja, the horror that is Going Bananas, the rise of Van Damme and Alan Quatermain. The latter is one where a devoted doc might be highly rewarding, with Richard Chamberlain telling how Sharon Stone was hated on set and the reveal that she was only cast because Menaham wanted that Stone woman (Romancing the… Stone woman).

The big spend era of the mid-‘80s provides some of the most interesting material, perhaps partly because I’m more familiar with Cannon product at this point, but definitely because the examples of profligacy are all the more ludicrous. There’s the relationship with Tobe Hooper, which yielded three pictures (Lifeforce, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Invaders from Mars), only one of which the Golans liked (Lifeforce) and all of which bombed. There’s the “star fuckers” reputation, whereby they secured Stallone for arm wrestling disaster Over the Top; it cost $25m and made little more than half that (to be fair, the previous Stallone picture with them, Cobra, is appalling but made a lot of money).

1986 is given as the beginning of the end for the studio, with Menahem Golan cited as asking why they only owed $6m, he wanted to owe $100m; they made a loss of $90m in ‘85-’86, so he was heading in the right direction. They made Superman IV for $17m, but its budget was supposed to be $30m; the results spoke for themselves (although you’d think it cost more like $5m to look at it). Then there was Masters of the Universe at $22m, banked on as the Star Wars of the ‘80s; it tanked.

When they split (on hearing of his brother’s cancer, Menahem pronounced “He should never have left me”) they sparred with competing Lambada pictures (Menahem had “two words: Naked Lambada” as a sequel proposal) and are astutely referenced as the forerunners of the Weinsteins, the difference being the Weinsteins actually cared about quality. Since then, former Cannon man Avi Lerner’s Nu Image appears to have learnt from his former bosses’ failures, delivering Cannon-esque action fare (The Expendables, Olympus Has Fallen) that turns a profit and has a veneer of professionalism.

Electric Boogaloo is blessed with a raft of talking heads including Derek, Catherine Mary Stewart, Hooper, Gary Goddard (Masters’ director), Dudikoff, Elliot Gould, Dolph Lundgren, Molly Ringwald and Sybil Danning; the only thing it lacks is the brothers themselves. Menahem died the year it was released, but not before his own competing Cannon doc, The Go-Go Boys was released, painting a rather more positive light on the studio and the siblings. Like the Lambada picture, it was a race to have it released, beating Electric Boogaloo by three months. I think it’s probably safe to say that this is the one to see.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

You’re never the same man twice.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

Romulan ale should be illegal.

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
(SPOILERS) Out of the ST:NG movies, Star Trek: Nemesis seems to provoke the most outrage among fans, the reasons mostly appearing to boil down to continuity and character work. In the case of the former, while I can appreciate the beef, I’m not enough of an aficionado to get too worked up. In the case of the latter, well, the less of the strained inter-relationships between this bunch that make it to the screen, the better (director Stuart Baird reportedly cut more than fifty minutes from the picture, most of it relating to underscoring the crew, leading to a quip by Stewart that while an Actor’s Cut would include the excised footage, a Director’s one would probably be even shorter). Even being largely unswayed by such concerns, though, Nemesis isn’t very good. It wants to hit the same kind of dramatic high notes as The Wrath of Khan (naturally, it’s always bloody Khan) but repeatedly drifts into an out-of-tune dirge.

‘Cos I’m the gringo who always delivers.

American Made (2017)
(SPOILERS) This is definitely more the sort of thing Tom Cruise should be doing, a movie that relies both on his boyish™ charm and at least has pretensions of ever so slightly pushing the envelope of standard multiplex fare, rather than desperately attaching himself to an impersonal franchise (The Mummy) or flailingly attempting to kick start one (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back); remember when Cruise wouldn’t even go near sequels (for about 20 years, The Color of Money aside, and then only the one series)? American Made is still victim to the tendency of his movies to feel superstar-fitted rather than remaining as punchy as they might be on paper (Made’s never quite as satirically sharp as it wants to be), but it at least doesn’t lead its audience by the nose.

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

By Jove, the natives are restless tonight.

The Avengers 4.17: Small Game for Big Hunters
I wonder if Death at Bargain Prices’ camping scene, suggestive of an exotic clime but based in a department store, was an inspiration for Small Game For Big Hunters’ more protracted excursion to the African country of Kalaya… in Hertfordshire. Gerry O’Hara, in his second of two episodes for the show again delivers on the atmosphere, making the most of Philip Levene’s teleplay.

Old Boggy walks on Lammas Eve.

Jeeves and Wooster 2.5: Kidnapped (aka The Mysterious Stranger)
Kidnapped continues the saga of Chuffnell Hall. Having said of 2.4 that the best Wodehouse adaptations tend to stick closely to the text, this one is an exception that proves the rule, diverging significantly yet still scoring with its highly preposterous additions.

Jeeves: Tis old boggy. He be abroad tonight. He be heading for the railway station.
Gone are many of the imbroglios involving Stoker and Glossop (the estimable Roger Brierley), including the contesting of the former’s uncle’s will. Also gone, sadly, is the inebriated Brinkley throwing potatoes at Stoker, which surely would have been enormous fun. Instead, we concentrate on Bertie being locked aboard Stoker’s yacht in order to secure his marriage to Pauline (as per the novel), Chuffy tailing Pauline in disguise (so there’s a different/additional reason for Stoker to believe Bertie and she spent the night together, this time at a pub en route to Chufnell Hall) and …

I think we’ve returned to Eden. Surely this is how the World once was in the beginning of time.

1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Ridley Scott’s first historical epic (The Duellists was his first historical, and his first feature, but hardly an epic) is also one of his least remembered films. It bombed at the box office (as did the year’s other attempted cash-ins on the discovery of America, including Superman: The Movie producers the Salkinds’ Christopher Columbus: The Discovery) and met with a less than rapturous response from critics. Such shunning is undeserved, as 1492: Conquest of Paradise is a richer and more thought-provoking experience than both the avowedly lowbrow Gladiator and the re-evaluated-but-still-so-so director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven. It may stand guilty of presenting an overly sympathetic portrait of Columbus, but it isn’t shy about pressing a critical stance on his legacy.

Sanchez: The truth is, that he now presides over a state of chaos, of degradation, and of madness. From the beginning, Columbus proved himself completely incapable of ruling these islands…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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