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.
