A tribute to Cannon Films

If you are:

a) Male
b) Between the ages of 25 and 35
c) Not a jerk

This logo probably means something special to you.

Cannon's early history isn't that important, aside from its founding date in 1967.  What really matters to us is that in 1979, the company was sold to Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.  You know the "A Golan-Globus Production" credit you saw at the beginning of so many of your childhood favorites? Well, those are the guys.

Starting off with the completely-unnecessary-yet-fucking-awesome sequels to Death Wish, the Golan-Globus team went on to give us some of the best action movies of the decade.  Remember the whole ninja thing that sprung up in the 1980s? The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Hand ninjas in Daredevil comics (which inspired the Turtles in the first place, hence "The Foot"), the American Ninja movies (also made by Cannon, how ironic), Halloween costumes, etc. This all came from Cannon.  Golan had directed a film with Franco Nero ("Django") battling a Japanese actor named Sho Kosugi, released under the title "Enter the Ninja" to moderate success.  It was the sequel that just blew the absolute crap out of everyone.



After this was released in 1983, backyard karate fights were never the same.

It wasn't just the ninja flicks that Cannon scored with.  Pretty much everything that made Chuck Norris into the internet phenomenon he is today comes from his heyday as a Cannon action star.  Just look at the dude's filmography during his Cannon stint:

Missing in Action
Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (which was actually shot first but turned out to be so awesome that they decided to make a crappy prequel to release first)
Braddock: Missing in Action 3 (aka. "The one with Chuck Norris using that crazy grenade launcher")
Invasion U.S.A.
The Delta Force (Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin in one movie is just too badass for words)
The Delta Force 2

That's a big ol' handful of awesome.  AND that's just Chuck Norris.  The studio produced the mighty Jean-Claude Van Damme's breakthrough flick: "Bloodsport".  They also gave us "Kickboxer" just for good measure.

Cannon also managed to put out some non-action movies like the Charles Bukowski-penned "Barfly" (Bukowski's book "Hollywood" gives a great behind-the-scenes account of the making of the film, referring to Cannon as "Firepower" and showing how ridiculous the company could be) and the oft-mocked "Breakin'" and "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo".  They threw a bunch of money at Tobe Hooper and got him to make "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" along with "Lifeforce" and a remake of "Invaders From Mars" (which is pretty much universally disliked, even though I'm a bit of a fan).  As the successes and failures piled up in near-equal numbers, they went balls-out with the budgets and made "Masters of the Universe".



Granted, the movie came out a few years after the He-Man fad had actually died down, making it a bit of a bomb.  Cannon tried to recover by signing a deal to produce movies based on Marvel Comics.  Being a huge comic fan as a kid, I couldn't believe there were planned versions of Captain America, the Fantastic Four, even SPIDER-MAN! Here's the problem: most of these movies never got made and the ones that did were complete fucking garbage.  "Captain America" in particular looked like it cost about five bucks to make, four of which was spent on the costume (and that includes the crappy rubber ears).



The Spider-Man movie never got past a few designs.  A "Masters of the Universe" sequel was planned, some costumes were made and sets built, but that went under as well.  All this work with no financial returns left the company in a bad position.  Cannon's solution? Take bits and pieces of both and make a NEW MOVIE out of the crap you have laying around! The result?



I saw that movie as a kid and not once did I see anything that reminded me of Spider-Man or He-Man.  I guess either I wasn't a very perceptive kid or Cannon was planning to make a REALLY shitty Spider-Man movie.  No complaints either way.

Sadly, the financial problems continued and the partners split off.  Today, Cannon's library is owned by MGM which means we get awesome stuff like "Cyborg" running on MGM's HD movie network in the US.  I've got a bootlegged copy and it's just the tops.

It's sad realizing how long ago this whole era was, but it's still nice seeing a flick like "The Expendables" doing so well with the type of flick we all loved as kids.  The lack of ninjas was a bit of a bummer, though.