I could not have been more excited about Electric Boogaloo. Not Quite Hollywood and Machete Maidens Unleashed director Mark Hartley was finally profiling a series of films that related directly to me. It was fun learning about Osploitation and Philippino films, but Cannon Films made movies specifically aimed at me. Sometimes cheesy, often clichéd, but hardcore action movies. I even saw some of them in a theater!
Electric Boogaloo gets off to a breezy start, summarizing Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus’s Israeli films and early sexploitation simply as a way to lay down the background and get to the good stuff as quickly as possible. The documentary hits all the major Cannon films and any single title seems to be a source of fun anecdotes, so the whole movie is entertaining.
It just started to bother me that the tone of Electric Boogaloo seemed rather condescending towards Cannon. This is largely due to the subjects interviewed. They’re all disgruntled and look back at their work for Cannon with disdain. Sure, they were schlock films and Golan and Globus were hucksters, but is there nobody who actually loved Cannon films?
It’s not even a good natured, “Oh, Cannon.” You can tell some Cannon veterans harbor real ill will. In the case of Marina Sirtis, it’s rightful. She was actually abused on the set of two movies, so I’m not saying to let that go. In terms of behind the scenes talent, I get that real artists will lament seeing their own shoddy work, whether destroyed by bad editing and budget cuts or simply because they weren’t given the resources in the first place. It seems a little revisionist to chastise the gratuitous violence, particularly in the Death Wish sequels. If you had a problem with that, you had every right to stop working on those movies. At least after you saw how Death Wish II turned out, don’t act all indignant about Death Wish III. It’s too late to get judgmental. There’s a place for outrageous violence all in good fun, and those films seemed to deliver to a grateful audience at the time.
I guess I was looking for a Cannon nostalgia piece and there doesn’t seem to be any nostalgia. It’s an example of a failed enterprise, which is a valuable lesson. Some Cannon talent learned from Golan and Globus’s mistakes and went on to found more successful companies. It’s also a style of financing that doesn’t exist today. Films that presell foreign financing now tend to end up straight to video. Oh, to have been at Cannes when Golan and Globus were there. If only…
There are a number of major subjects speaking frankly about their films for Cannon. In addition to Sirtis, we see Bo Derek, Sybil Danning, Lucinda Dickey, Diane Franklin, Albert Pyun, Alex Winter, Dolph Lundgren and more. No Chuck Norris though, nor Globus nor the late Golan (who was still alive and approached for the film).
Hartley focuses on the most pivotal Cannon films: the Death Wish series, Breakin’, Missing in Action, Ninja series, Superman IV and Masters of the Universe. Key stories are told, like releasing the MIA sequel as part one and the original as a prequel. I knew those stories though, so I question the use of the word “Untold” in the subtitle. Other Cannon lore is left out, like the aborted plans to cobble together Superman V out of deleted scenes from IV, or the very idea of a Cannon’s Spider-Man. I guess you can’t tell every story, and those, while interesting, didn’t inform the rise and fall of Cannon. To give you some context, that means they made even worse decisions than failed comic book movies.
Coasting largely on the highlight reel of film clips and entertaining stories about Golan and Globus, Electric Boogaloo is fun to watch. If you’ve never heard of this era of ‘80s cinema before, I’m sure you’ll be picking out titles to Netflix. Hint: they’re not on Netflix, but many are available on iTunes. If you were already a fan and looking for the definitive Cannon Films film, that film may have gotten warped the way most Cannon films ended up. Yet, like actual Cannon movies, even the shortcomings of Electric Boogaloo are entertaining.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
