Cannon Films (Golan and Globus, etc.)

No thread on this mainstay of the past yet? Truly we've been slack. Inspired by news of this documentary due to film.

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/kingleargodard.jpg

Earliest memory i have is when dad took me to see Superman IV at the theater when it came out and he groaned "Oh boy, a Golan-Globus film" when the logo appeared at the beginning...

Also i remember going to the theater to see Masters of the Universe and being really scared of the Skeletor impersonator they had waiting at the entrance.

We had VHS copies of plenty of these films that pretty much raised me and my brothers. We were mainly into the budget adventures King Solomon's Mines, Firewalker, and Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold.

Haha they were the kings of the Indiana Jones knockoffs for sure. Two of said movies even had John Rhys Davies!

Sharon Stone >>>>> Kate Capshaw

Oh yeah, and Hercules was good for satisfying out Conan the Barbarian-fix. That movie is insane and i will love it for the rest of my life.

LOL @ This goof from Masters of the Universe:

The keyboard that Kevin got from the music store seems to play back to front, with the high notes to the left.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093507/trivia?tab=gf

I kinda want a keyboard like that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuKeUAavpnU

Two unlikely Golan/Globus films that are worth watching....

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/52_Pick-Up.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/Barfly_1987_film_poster.jpg

"The Apple"!!

menahem golan's filmography as a director has always fascinated me. from The Apple to an adaptation of Crime and Punishment starring crispin glover, vanessa redgrave and margot kidder

Didn't they (during their trying waaaay too hard to be classy period) do the Godard King Lear?

Cinema Sewer magazine did a great article on Cannon Films not that long ago. The article isn't online but someone took their "50 Must-See Golan-Globus Movies" from the article and made a valuable IMDb list.

I believe there is a documentary being made about the two. And a book I think.

Also, my friend's dad had Golan as his drama teacher in high school back in the 50s in Tel Aviv.

That IMBD list is epic. The handful of Golan-Globus films I've seen would seem to indicate that I need to see all of the Golan-Globus films. They really seem to be the exemplars of '80s films that are simultaneously awful and legitimately ffun

I might start with Under Cover, as I'm lolling at the idea that a letter jacket is all a craggy-faced cop with a receding hairline needs to successfully fit in at a high school.

http://i43.tower.com/images/mm108973317/under-cover-david-neidorf-vhs-cover-art.jpg

The original article in Cinema Sewer is really worth tracking down. I believe it is compiled in the third FAB Press compliation volume. Robin Bougie, the author/illustrator of the piece and much of Cinema Sewer is about the best movie writer out there in my opinion and the whole book is a riot.

I was thoroughly obsessed with Enter the Ninja as a kid. When I saw it was available full-length on YouTube a couple of years ago, I was not surprised that I remembered nearly every frame. But not even nostalgia enabled me to get through the whole thing...

Superman IV is one of the funniest bad movies ever. Soooo much better than the Richard Pryor one.

http://www.badmovies.org/movies/aquatermain/aquatermain5.jpg
I had no idea this was Elvira was in Allan Quatermain.

i just watched penitentiary III and it ranks right up there with death wish 3, maybe even better.

Chopping mall

Oh wait, scratch that, wrong movie poster from my teenage years, I was thinking of invaders from mars

The correct answer of course is "Texas chainsaw massacre 2"

more about penitentiary iii, never even heard of it til i lucked on it on tv.

penitentiary iii features:

* protagonist who is framed for murder and sent to prison to take part in an illegal boxing match
* evil new futuredrug which happens to be a dark liquid in a sinister-looking vial
* the prison actually has a medieval dungeon underneath it, complete with torches and billowing smoke
* superhuman crack-smoking kungfu midget called "Thud" who teaches the protagonist the mystical art of fighting by slamming a prison door into him over and over again
* archetypical effeminate villain with a transvestite girlfriend who vamps around in his swagged out prison cell

and more! this movie gets progressively stranger and stranger. there's a scene where the protagnist bares his soul to the crack-smoking midget over a plaintive 80s sax solo and i almost lost it. if you're into schlocky action b-movies this is a must see.

Menachem Golan RIP

? You got a link?

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/menachem-golan-who-headed-cannon-films-dies-at-85-1201278731/

I just noticed the other day that there's a newly-released Cannon box set which includes Missing In Action, Invasion U.S.A., Cobra, Delta Force, Masters of the Universe, Over The Top, The Hitman, Hellbound and the Electric Boogaloo documentary. Clearly, it's missing some seminal stuff (no Breakin's, no Ninjas) but I think I'm gonna have to pull that trigger.

i watched the electric boogaloo doc the other night and it's really fun, although i didn't learn much i didn't already know from reading andrew yule's book hollywood a go-go a while back. i loved the final title card which said golan and globus' own documentary beat electric boogaloo to theatres by three months - the perfect capstone to the whole crazy enterprise.

I'm like 80% certain that Enter the Ninja was written by a seven-year-old and that is much of the reason why it's awesome. I found it increasingly hilarious that the villain mostly addressed the hero as simply 'Ninja'. 'Ninja? Ninja, I know you're here! Come out where I can see you, Ninja! NIIIIINJAAAAAA!'

I cannot even imagine the wonders the rest of this trilogy will bring.

Lifeforce might be my favorite movie. It hits all of the items on my checklist: aliens, gore, barely repressed psychosexual insanity, nudity, supernatural hokum meeting sci-fi hokum, everyone setting their "acting" dial to 11.

Easily the greatest film ever made about nude space vampires.

It's at least top five.

Man, Hooper had such a weird career. I never thought to wonder before how he managed to get pulled into the crazy world of Golan and Globus.