Electric Boogaloo: The Wild Untold Story Of Cannon Films

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)

Runtime: 106 minutes

Directed by: Mark Hartley

Starring: This is a documentary

From: A plethora of different companies

I may not post anything here for a few days as I may not watch any movies for a few days, but that is not certain as of yet. For now, my review of this documentary-via Letterboxd-is below: 

I haven't reviewed either Not Quite Hollywood or Machete Maidens for (Letterboxd) but I have watched both before and I did enjoy them, as they covered wacky and crazy filmmaking scenes I knew little about, and while the films they showed clips of may have been poor overall, in highlight form they looked so strange and oddball I wanted to check them out. So, when I heard that the director of those documentaries (Mark Hartley) was doing one on the infamous Cannon Films, I was quite interested. So, when I saw last night that it was on Netflix Instant, I had to watch it.

It's a standard documentary; the background of both Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus is brought up and how they released popular movies in their native Israel before moving to Hollywood, acquiring Cannon Films and releasing a bunch of schlock, a lot of which wasn't too good but it still made money; they tried to go more upscale and be like a “real” studio and despite putting out some family flicks (which wasn't covered) or stuff from prestigious names as Franco Zeffirelli, Barbet Schroeder, and even Godard (which was covered), money issues and the leadership not being strong was their downfall.

I do not know if it was the idea going in, but with all the people they interviewed-which did not include either Golan or Globus, which I'll bring up later-many seemed to have an ax to grind with the company. With the information that was presented, I understand why some of them felt that way and others, I just don't know. I do wish that this would have been longer; it's 106 minutes but I wouldn't have minded it being at least 2 hours long. Some interesting factoids were briefly brought up then the subject was changed almost immediately. I wanted to hear more about how Michael Milken was involved in raising money for the company or how Ginacarlo Parretti was a crook; those details were briefly brought up then they moved onto the next topic at hand. Really, there should be a book or a series of books all about the history of Cannon; I'd eat that up.

Still, I can say I enjoyed this documentary. While not all the famous names from their history were present, there was enough people present and enough archive footage where it's not too much of an issue from me. As stated previously, plenty of people had a beef with the company but there are also others who praised them and their maverick ways. And there were plenty of clips from a plethora of films they did and as I haven't watched all of the Cannon catalog by any stretch of the imagination, so I was entertained by all the wackiness from those clips. As for why Golan and Globus weren't interviewed here, why that is because they were part of another documentary, known as The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films, which I understand is more positive of the pair. I will presume it's a fine companion piece to this but I hope to find out for myself one day.

Golan and Globus may have been poor businessmen who did not know how to properly run such a company and they blew through a lot of money in a short amount of time, they still produced a lot of schlock (some of it quite entertaining) and in these modern times of “corporate Hollywood” where clueless beancounters run the studios and through stupid crap like “focus groups” we get a lot of mediocre or worse Hollywood movies and all those brainless blockbusters, it does make me wish that we'd get some crazy people like them making B movies for wide release and if nothing else that'd make the lame and boring studio system a lot more fun.