Trailer of the Week - Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

Studios and film production companies these days are very much in the vein of major corporations, it's extremely rare to have an actual face of such organisations.  Sure you have some notable producers around, but few are synonymous with particular companies, bar a few notable exceptions, like Kevin Feige at Marvel Studios, Jason Blum for Blumhouse, and a certain pair of brothers who's entire cinematic legacy has gone down in infamy with them we will not discuss further.  But back in the day, the name of the producer was as big a selling point as the stars and/or director for some projects.  Which is funny, because quite a few of these names, if they weren't part of a big established studio, were basically Del-Boy-esque wheeler-dealers when it came to managing their projects.  You had Sir Lew Grade, who had good success on TV, but not so much in film, Dino De Laurentiis, always trying to one-up the big successes in his demented, continental way, and then there were Menahem Golan & Yoram Globus, the minds behind Cannon Films, subject of this documentary...

This is a look back at a company with perhaps the most ridiculous filmography of any studio going.  They were the trendsetters in terms of mainstream strach cinema in the eighties, and this documentary (named after Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo) is a pretty good taster of the bizarre areas the company went into.  Now the documentary itself is fairly surface level, only giving a quick look to individual titles in passing, and covering the general rise and fall of the company, so it's far from in depth.  However, that's mainly because Cannon Films churned out just so much content you can't really cover everything in one film.  We are talking about the same team that kickstarted the Ninja cinema craze of the eighties, got Chuck Norris' career started, made all the Death Wish sequels, and wrecked the Superman franchise.  All of those alone would fill more than a couple of feature length documentaries.  So this documentary is far from comprehensive, but I recommend it purely as a good sizzle reel of their insane back catalogue, with some of the minds behind them offering their views on Golan & Globus' management styles.  In fact, I'll list on here a bunch of the Cannon films I've already done write-ups on for the Tumblr...

• The Ninja Trilogy (Enter the Ninja, Revenge of Ninja, Ninja III: The Domination)
• Lou Ferrigno's Hercules, and The Adventures of Hercules
• Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce, Invaders from Mars, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II
• Alien from L.A.
• Masters of the Universe
• New Year's Evil
• Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
• Sword of the Valiant

And keep in mind, I hadn't even started on the Chuck Norris titles yet!  Good grief, for most other producers, that's not a filmography, that's a charge sheet!  To be fair, they did make a few quality films, including the pretty good disaster thriller Runaway Train, but you know what they say about broken clocks!  And just to show that Golan & Globus kept their old habits up right until the end, they didn't take part in this documentary; rather than be in one critical of their work, they made their own, The Go-Go Boys.  You ridiculous pair, the world will never know your like again!