How Can­non Films con­quered the home video market

Any­one who grew up watch­ing films in the 1980s will be famil­iar with the Can­non Group – as well as own­ing a chain of cin­e­mas in the UK, the com­pa­ny, run by irre­press­ible Israeli cousins Mena­hem and Yoram Globus, seemed to dom­i­nate the video rental mar­ket. The dis­tinc­tive decon­struct­ed c‑shaped logo at the start of a VHS would nor­mal­ly mean you were in for 90 min­utes of Chuck Nor­ris beat­ing the hell out ter­ror­ists or Charles Bron­son gun­ning down uncon­vinc­ing street punks in a dis­used warehouse.

But Can­non – sub­ject of the bril­liant­ly enter­tain­ing new doc­u­men­tary Elec­tric Booga­loo: The Wild, Untold Sto­ry of Can­non Films – didn’t just make nin­ja sequels and action films with explod­ing Jeeps, they dab­bled in just about every genre, from musi­cals to sci-fi and adult erot­i­ca. And they even invent­ed a few of their own (includ­ing the ​‘arm-wrestling movie’, with 1987’s Over the Top). Here are some of the weird­est and wildest releas­es from the company’s pro­lif­ic tenure as Hol­ly­wood schlock-meisters.

This sci-fi musi­cal posits a future world where music is con­trolled by some­thing called ​‘The Apple’. Sounds pre­scient, doesn’t it? There’s even a Simon Cow­ell-type, the dev­il­ish Sve­nagli-fig­ure Mr Booga­low, who takes naïve teens and moulds them into asi­nine chart-top­ping acts. Is this one of those ​‘cult clas­sics’ – a for­got­ten gem per­haps – that’s ripe for redis­cov­ery? Maybe not. It is, in fact, excru­ci­at­ing tripe, so bad that at an ear­ly pre­view screen­ing the audi­ence, who were giv­en pro­mo records of the sound­track, hurled the discs at the screen at the end of the film, shred­ding it to pieces.

If noth­ing else, Can­non knew the ingre­di­ents need­ed to sell a film. X‑Ray, aka Hos­pi­tal Mas­sacre, a slash­er direct­ed by a reg­u­lar Can­non direc­tor Boaz David­son, ticks all the hor­ror B‑movie box­es: a mani­ac on the loose; stab­bings; decap­i­ta­tion; nudi­ty from a Play­boy Play­mate; a twist end­ing. Admit­ted­ly, it lacks log­ic and ten­sion, but hey, you can’t have everything.

Charles Bron­son, head­ing into retire­ment, found steady employ­ment with Golan and Globus in numer­ous, arguably entire­ly unnec­es­sary Death Wish sequels and, well, Death Wish knock-offs. Death Wish 2 is par­tic­u­lar­ly unsavoury (with four min­utes falling foul of the British cen­sor on its ini­tial release), but who can resist such zingers as this, Bronson’s quip to a cru­ci­fix-wear­ing punk he is about to shoot: ​“You believe in Jesus? Well, you’re gonna meet him.” Being the 1980s, the film fea­tures the oblig­a­tory ghet­to blaster, here blast­ed in half with a machine gun. Sure­ly a cin­e­mat­ic first. A year lat­er, Bron­son appeared in the sim­i­lar­ly nasty 10 to Mid­night, this time play­ing a cop with a pen­chant for v‑necks, after a ser­i­al killer with a pen­chant for run­ning around in the nud­dy. It’s Amer­i­can Psy­cho meets Dirty Har­ry, and it’s brilliant.

Can­non seemed to think that by hav­ing a film that was half teen sex com­e­dy (like their mas­sive 1978 hit Lemon Pop­si­cle), and half vicious revenge thriller in the Death Wish 2 mould, they might repli­cate the box office of two of their most suc­cess­ful releas­es. The result is an uneasy mix – and a bril­liant­ly sleazy slice of down­beat exploita­tion cin­e­ma. Ernest Borg­nine and Richard Roundtree, in sup­port­ing roles, give the film the mer­est hint of respectabil­i­ty – as does the film’s unin­ten­tion­al­ly hilar­i­ous open­ing ded­i­ca­tion, to ​‘King Vidor’ – the leg­endary direc­tor from Hollywood’s Gold­en age, who may, or may not have appre­ci­at­ed being con­nect­ed with this nasty, trashy action-packed piece of cin­e­mat­ic may­hem. The New York Times said it best in its review: ​‘It may be cheap, but it isn’t dull.’

As Boaz David­son says in the doc­u­men­tary, ​“peo­ple didn’t know the word ​‘nin­ja’ until Can­non came along”. Fresh from the suc­cess of two nin­ja films star­ring Fran­co Nero, him­self nin­ja-igno­rant when he was cast in the first film, Can­non decid­ed to mix things up, with a female lead char­ac­ter (played by Lucin­da Dick­ey, a pro­fes­sion­al dancer, who also starred in Cannon’s two break­dance films), an aer­o­bics instruc­tor pos­sessed by the spir­it of a nin­ja war­rior, in a not entire­ly suc­cess­ful cross between Enter the Drag­on, The Exor­cist and Flash­dance. Can­non went on to make four Amer­i­can Nin­ja films, three of which starred Michael Dudikoff, who Mena­hem promised would become the next James Dean. He didn’t.

For Can­non, it was what­ev­er sells, and, as any­one knows, sex sells. And so, after Bo Derek proved a box office bonan­za in ​‘10’, strip­ping off to Ravel’s Boléro, they decid­ed to try and repeat the trick, and had her get­ting naked in Bolero, not to it. That’s all she did. No wit­ty script by Blake Edwards, no Dud­ley Moore. Scene after scene of Bo dis­rob­ing or in the throes of pas­sion. There is a vague­ly Hem­ing­way-esque plot about a bull­fight­er whose nuts have been gouged by his oppo­nent. Any­one who paid good mon­ey to see the film will have some idea of what that feels like.

Can­non threw every­thing they had at this sci-fi spec­tac­u­lar that they hoped would be the box office hit of the year: and so, there were extrav­a­gant spe­cial effects, scenes in out­er space, Lon­don being blown up, space aliens, vam­pires, nudi­ty – with a script by the writer of Alien and a direc­tor fresh from Pol­ter­geist. Sad­ly, the film failed to recoup even half its bud­get in the US. But its rep­u­ta­tion is start­ing to gain trac­tion, and it is now regard­ed as a unique and dement­ed curio.

Accord­ing to the doc­u­men­tary, Mena­hem Golan actu­al­ly inter­viewed the orang-utan from Every Which Way But Loose for the lead role in this kids adven­ture film. In the end the real-life ape bit his kid co-star, so had to be replaced by a dwarf in a mon­key suit. The result­ing film beg­gars belief. Direc­tor Boaz David­son says that dur­ing loca­tion film­ing in Africa he felt like the real mon­keys in the trees were look­ing down and laugh­ing at him.

Keen to be tak­en seri­ous as film­mak­ers and not just chop-socky mer­chants, Can­non start­ed bankrolling films direct­ed left­field art-house direc­tors like John Cas­savettes and Bar­bet Schroed­er (it wasn’t smooth sail­ing – Schroed­er went to the Can­non offices with an elec­tric hand saw and threat­ened to cut off his fin­gers if they didn’t re-instate the bud­get for his Bukows­ki film Barfly). Can­non even signed up Jean Luc Godard to make a ver­sion of King Lear, star­ring Mol­ly Ring­wald and author Nor­man Mail­er – the non­sen­si­cal film sank with­out a trace, becom­ing such an unseen obscu­ri­ty that Quentin Taran­ti­no was able to beef up his act­ing CV when he was start­ing out by say­ing he’d appeared in it.

By now the com­pa­ny was over­stretched, projects were announced but nev­er made, and some, like this ver­sion of Jules Verne’s clas­sic tale, were halt­ed mid-pro­duc­tion, but still released. How? The direc­tor, Rusty Lemorande, explains, in a post on IMDb: ​‘Only the approx­i­mate­ly first eight min­utes of the film were writ­ten or direct­ed by me. The remain­der of the film is actu­al­ly the sequel to Alien In LA which was tacked on’. It was the start of the end for Can­non, who limped on for a while, releas­ing their final film in 1994, Hell­bound, star­ring, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, Chuck Nor­ris, and com­bin­ing most of the gen­res they had excelled at, name­ly, mar­tial arts, action, thriller, hor­ror and fan­ta­sy. Fit­ting­ly, it is com­plete and utter crap and an absolute blast.

Elec­tric Booga­loo: The Wild, Untold Sto­ry of Can­non Films is released in cin­e­mas on 5 June; Amer­i­can Nin­ja 1 – 4 and X‑Ray were recent­ly released on Blu-ray by 88 Films; Going Bananas is cur­rent­ly unavail­able, which is prob­a­bly for the best.