Electric Boogaloo: The Wild Untold Story Of Cannon Films (2014) As a movie buyer for video stores throughout the VHS boom of the 1980's, what would I ever do without the Go Go Boys......
Go Go Boys? No, not a male version of the famous girl group. I speak of the tireless shlockmeisters of Cannon Films....the Israeli cousins, producer-director Menahem Golan and his business partner Yoram Globus.
The cousins fell in love with movies as boys and they couldn't wait to hurl themselves into pumping out low budget, crowd-pleasers for their country's audiences. Their biggest hit, "Lemon Popsicle" was a horny-teen comedy as dumb and crude as any equivalent American exploitation junk pumped out by Roger Corman and American International.
But the Go Go boys, as they came to be called (probably in derision), held bigger dreams for themselves and their films. After purchasing Cannon, a minor league distributor of softcore porn, the duo took the USA by storm, cranking out junk movies at a furious pace.
Where and how do I even begin to describe the Cannon films output? This documentary finds a good place to start with Golan's own personally directed pop musical, "The Apple" - a beyond awful, lunatic attempt to duplicate the indulgent insanity of a Ken Russell movie.
From there, it's off for a hilarious, almost unbelievable rollercoaster ride through the rest of Cannon's 1980's output. Film critics rolled their eyes and the Hollywood community snickered at the 'Breakin' breakdancing epics, the Charles Bronson 'Death Wish' sequels, the mad, mad, mad mad Ninja movies, the sci-fi horror atrocities like "Lifeforce" and Tobe Hoopers woeful remake of the classic 'Invaders From Mars'. and the discovery of their kick ass Kung Fu superstars, Chuck Norris and Jean Claude Van Damme.
And for connoisseurs of junk cinema, the Golan-Globus company was a goldmine, the mother load of dreck. The boys were born exploiters.....they mixed, matched and Frankenstein-spliced different genres together in each film, and never forgot the golden rule of "Lemon Popsicle" - boobs, boobs and even more boobs.
Yet even as the garbage flowed out into theaters and video stores, the boys frequently strained for legitimacy.....working with directors like Jean Luc Godard, John Cassavetes, and John Frankenheimer. Invariably, major directors and stars who crossed paths with the Go Go''s came to deeply regret it.
The interviews with many of the actors, filmmakers and technicians who worked with Cannon make the film both insightful and great fun. Golan, especially, carried on like an overbearing tyrannical old school big studio blowhard, channeling Jack Warner or Harry Cohn. And the stories of his cantankerous rants are priceless.
In many ways, Golan and Globus were comparable to the similarly aggressive Mirimax gruesome twosome, Harvey and Bob Weinstein. But with a key difference......the Weinsteins, for all their crudity and foul behavior, knew at heart the value of producing quality cinema. The Go Go boys could never get beyond chasing after the next fast buck......and their output of ludicrous, laughable cinematic tripe eventually led to their undoing.....and dissolving into separate companies.
I myself could see the end of the Cannon reign of rubbish coming to a close......when customers marveled at their first VHS recorder, they'd settle for any movie to pop into their machines and if the big studio A-List hits were all rented out, any piece of Cannon crapola might suffice.
But once the initial novelty of watching uncut movies at home wore off, customers no longer would waste time with 'Ninja III; The Domination". They demanded real movies.....in other words, not Cannon movies. They wanted the good stuff. Hence the end of the Golden Age Of the Go Go Boys.
Devoted buffs and all curators of oddball cinema shouldn't miss this fascinating, strange story......a once in a lifetime saga of guys who loved movies as much as life itself.....but never quite figured out how to make good ones. 4 stars (****).
(P.S. BQ vows to also review Golan and Globus's very own version of their lives, "The Go Go Boys".....so stay tuned!)
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