Film Comment Selects 2015: Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

The phrase "Electric Boogaloo" is a perennial punchline. Add the phrase to any sequel title and you'll at least get a polite chuckle of acknowledgement. Like a movie nerd equivalent to Sriracha, "Electric Boogaloo" works with anything.

We have producer/director Menahem Golan to thank for it, and ditto his cousin Yoram Globus. Following the success of the breakdancing movie Breakin', Golan, in a fit of inspiration, announced to his fellow Cannon Films employees that they would be making a sequel, and the sequel's title would be Electric Boogaloo.

From the minds of madmen, legend--sometimes genius--is born.

And so it makes sense that Mark Hartley would title his enjoyable documentary about the rise and fall of Cannon Films Electric Boogaloo. The phrase is one of Cannon's most enduring legacies. Cannon's primary legacy, however, is its output. This was the studio that made some of the finest schlock of the 1980s: the disastrous rock musical The Apple, the TWA hijack revenge-fantasy The Delta Force, Tobe Hooper's unhinged nudie space-vampire epic Lifeforce, the Sylvester Stallone's arm wrestling mega-flop Over the Top, the ultra-violent fun of American Ninja, and the gonzo masterpiece of urban decay and urban warfare Death Wish 3.

Cannon movies were occasionally oversexed, often cheap and usually derivative, and yet they also embraced a kind of macho Reaganism that was in the air, and so many of their most well-known movies feature reconfigured cowboys (dressed as ninjas, soldiers, Chuck Norris, or Charles Bronson) who dispensed justice with brutal yet righteous certainty. The bad guys were often so bad that they didn't just get shot with guns at close range, but with rocket launchers.

Hartley continues to be the premiere documentarian of cult films and B-movies. His previous documentaries explored Australian exploitation movies (Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!) and the schlock made in the Philippines in the 1970s (Machete Maidens Unleashed!). With Electric Boogaloo, Hartley takes a similar approach to his other works, showcasing clips of some of Cannon's greatest hits and flops intercut with the various actors, directors, behind-the-scenes players, and enthusiasts.

At the center of Electric Boogaloo is a focus on Golan and Globus as these larger-than-life personalities. Some of the interviewees characterize the pair as wily hucksters (possibly dangerous ones) who happened to be in the film business. While making a movie in Israel, Golan supposedly threatened to shoot a pilot if he didn't land his plane for a scene. Yet none of the interviewees can deny that Golan and Globus loved of film as a medium. While so much of Cannon is associated with action and sleaze, the company also helped distribute Neil Jordan's In the Company of Wolves, Franco Zeffirelli's Otello, Barbet Schroeder's Barfly, and Godfrey Reggio's Powaqqatsi. The company's dalliances with prestige also led to bizarre failures like Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear and Norman Mailer's Tough Guys Don't Dance.

At some points, particularly toward the end, Electric Boogaloo's fondness for Cannon turns into misplaced reverence. Much of it may be due to the dissolution of Cannon and the death of Menahem Golan last November. Tenderness is expected, but there's an odd defensiveness in some of the fondness for Cannon that seems off. In particular, one of the interviewees claims that Cannon made good films but the company was the victim of snobbiness.

It's a major stretch to suggest that Cannon was the victim of high-brow cultural gatekeepers--Superman IV's problems are wholly its own, not the product of elitism--but maybe it's also a sign of the protectiveness people have for Cannon as an idea. The feelings are engendered in part by nostalgia for the company and for the antics of Golan and Globus as personalities, but maybe the love is rooted in Cannon's unabashedness when it came to its excesses. So much stuff these days is awash in ironic detachment as a kind of posture or as a self-defense mechanism, a kind of escape hatch from engaging meaningfully with actual base emotions that make people seem uncool. The classic Cannon movies were a lot of things, but they were rarely ironic (at least intentionally). They embodied the 80s and its big dumb teenage id.

Besides, who has time to be ironic when you've got a city of goons to shoot with missiles?

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Electric Boogaloo: The Wild Untold Story of Cannon Films screens tomorrow night (Friday, February 20th) as part of Film Comment Selects 2015. Director Mark Hartley and other special guests will be in attendance for a Q&A. For more information, click here or visit filmlinc.com.

An Unseen Films Halloween Trick:Decietful Storm (2008)

This is a bonus review of one of the worst films of the 21st century. Its a film that is easily one of the worst films of the last 25 years. I don't want to hurt myself by going back into the painful place that this film put me in so I'm going to repost my IMDB review as a warning to anyone who might see this on the rental shelf:

One of the truly worst films of 2008 (perhaps decade, I won't suggest century) concerns a marriage in trouble. There's all sorts of infidelity and unhappiness that has a nice big moral at the end.

If you're going to preach to me I really wish that you'd do so in a manner that engaged me rather than annoyed me. This is based on an uplifting play that I hope played better on the stage than it does on screen.

Certainly I hope it was better acted then this waste of my time. I think the deceit of the title is the idea that this isn't time you will regret that you'll never ever get back.

Zero out of 10. Consider it 90 minutes badly spent.

Blood Beast Terror (1968)

This Halloween I'm going to turn to one of the master's of British Horror for one of the worst horror films ever made.

Is this the worst film Peter Cushing ever made? He seemed to think so. Of course anything is possible, but I'd have to see the rest of what he's made to see what beats BLOOD BEAST TERROR a not so nifty movie about a giant killer moth.

Yes, a giant killer moth. I can't make this stuff up...I wish I could but I wasn't old enough to be taking the drugs required to make this in 1967.

I picked this up as a USED DVD, I stress USED, or barely used, since I don't know if anyone watched this more than once. Its almost so dull that hospitals could use it instead of gas. Its not entirely bad, but it is dull...

The main problem, and there are many others, is that the makeup is laughable. To say this is a dumb monster is rating it too highly. Think the original Wasp Woman, only worse. Its bad. I was wondering why this wasn't better known until I saw the monster and knew, that was the reason the movie is in the forgotten pile.

Even if the monster was decent there is the problem of the film plodding along at an okay rate for about two thirds of it and then getting stupider stupider as things happen to reach the end that the alleged screenwriter wanted not because they would. Things happen at the start of a scene and then shift in mid-scene, for example the villain is performing a complicated experiment at one point and is interrupted by a knock...Peter Cushing arrives and hero and villain simply go off with all this equipment running as if nothing was being done...

Continuity? Clearly they had no concept of it.

It goes on like that again and again.

Its horrible.

What makes it really bad is that you can see that the actors are trying, the film, except for the monster, looks good, and their is a aire of something that might have been. Unfortunately the good gets lost in the ineptness of the plot, a shit monster and a pace that is slower than the motion of continents.

It's a mess, a real mess.

Clementine (2004)

I picked this film up as an import DVD because it was a Steven Seagal film I had never seen.

What a HUGE mistake that was.

Let's start with a warning: If you're looking to see this for Steven Seagal then rent it or borrow it do not buy it because you will be majorly disappointed. Seagal is on screen for maybe ten minutes if you include all of the shots of him on TV monitors. If you don't count the monitors its a couple of minutes less, and its a not very good fight scene.

The real star of the movie is Dong-jun Lee who is a karate champion who lost in a rigged match (which I think was against Segal, I couldn't be sure). The match occurred as his wife/girlfriend went into labor and gave birth to their daughter. The wife/girlfriend dies on the delivery table and the girl was put into an orphanage from which Lee retrieves her. Years pass and Lee becomes a cop. After he breaks heads while making a bust he is forced to retire from the force and turns to cage fighting to pay off his debts to the people who's heads he broke. He's such a good fighter (yea right) that the mob wants him to fight the world champion Steven Seagal. However in between all of that is a great deal of soap opera as the mother is found not to be dead and wants to get her little girl back (or some such nonsense).

Its awful.

In between hitting the fast forward to get to something interesting and watching badly acted scenes at normal speed I sat there slack jawed at just how incredibly stupid this movie is.

What kind of movie is it? Comedy? Family Drama? Its not really an action film.

What is Seagal doing in this movie? If he did it for a paycheck he got all of the money. My guess is that this was suppose to be a family drama of some sort and somehow Seagal got roped in to doing a days shooting. The producers were happy because they now had a film that they could market as a Steven Seagal flick. Since there is no real release outside of Asia my guess is that anyone looking to release this saw it for what it was and dropped it. Thankfully you will not be seeing this any time soon playing on American TV (or any other TV for that matter.)

Avoid this one. Its just not worth it. Yes, it has a few good moments, hence a 2 out of 10 rating at IMDB, but its just a mess of a movie that's not even good enough to make fun of.

(NB:If you must see Seagal's scenes fast forward to one hour and twenty three minutes in)

War of the Insects (1968)

This is a bad movie and I'm going to try and make this a bland as possible so you don't think there is any reason to see the film. Its actually such a bad movie that I can't understand why the Cinematic Titanic crew is using it for riffing since as funny as the riffs are the underlying movie is unwatchable.

A huge cloud of bees brings down a bomber carrying an atomic bomb over an island near Japan. Some of the crew escapes and makes it to the island where they are killed by the insects. One of the local men is charged with the men's murder. Through a long winding chain of events it transpires the bees are a new species that were being bred by a mad scientist to get revenge on Germany for what happened during World War 2. (There's more but trust me you don't want to know- even with Cinematic Titanic riffing you don't want to know).

This is a disaster of a film is a kin to the horrible eco-films (Last Days of Planet Earth anyone?) that Japan turned out in the 1970's. These were big on having a point but small on any real plot or anything else. Here the film drones on with lots of talk and not much happening. Sure there are two late in the game bee attacks but it doesn't make it worth sitting through the preceding 80 minutes. A dreadful film in the unfun way that only Japanese some science fiction films can be (Time of the Apes anyone?).

I gave this film 2 out of 10 at IMDB because the two plane sequences at either end of the film are screamingly funny for all of the wrong reasons. However I need to point out that they are not a reason to watch this movie in it's entirety. This film is one of the all time stinkers.

It should also be noted that this is one of the films in rotation for the Cinematic Titanic live shows. Frankly this movie is so bad that I wouldn't want to see it again even with the Cinematic Titanic crew picking on it. (A similiar fate is met by another CT choice The Oozing Skull, which is best summed up as it sucks)

Star Quest: The Odyssey (2009)

Really bad, almost home movie like, Star Trek rip off that gives no budget films a bad name.

I've seen several no budget science fiction films over the years and while this one looks reasonably good, its poor in just about every other department. The cast is weak, the story needlessly silly. The action poorly done.

Why was I watching this? I'm had pressed to know. The worst part is the film is a kind of Star Trek rip off. It begins with opening titles in a Star Trek-esque font, continues on through the five minute history lesson that takes us from the dawn of the space age through to the films present and on to a space ship where the uniforms look like they were made by arthritic tailors.

To be honest I really can't say much about the plot because after about 20 minutes I turned my brain off and started to putter around the room waiting for something exciting to happen.

It never does.

Don't make my mistake. This is not even amusing in a good bad sort of way.

Capsule reviews- Two stinkers from Thailand

Today's films are on my replay in hell list. You know when you're in hell fire and there are 9 million channels and only one movie on. Both of today's films are from Thailand, but please don't hold that against the country, they make better films then these would lead you to believe.

HOUSE OF MAD SOULS (2003)
I hate this movie.

I hate this movie more than I hate any person. Why? Because I haven't found anyone I hate enough to give my copy of the movie to. Yea its THAT BAD.

The film has something do do with a break up. We watch as a woman mourns the break up of her relationship. There are longing looks. Long shots where nothing happens. Scenes that mean nothing are repeated. Somewhere along the way we get something do do with a dead kid...and ultimately we find out...assuming my tortured memory is right...the break up was actually her death. (sorry I've spoiled it but I just saved you 90 minutes)

One of the dullest least interesting films I've ever seen. NOTHING happens...repeatedly. Its horrible. Its not a mediation is an out and out painful experience. The only thing I can say is that if you like looking at the lead actress while she stands around and does nothing then perhaps you might like this. Then again I suspect not even her mother or her most smitten stalker would make it all the way through this film with out asking out loud if "are the f-ing kidding me?' ten or fifteen times. Avoid it like the plague.

DIECOVERY (2003)
Husband takes his new wife back home to a resort in the jungle. Then nothing much happens for the better part of an hour before we get weird "haunted happenings" all of which are done in a bad style that would make Ed Wood and other "bad" filmmakers look like geniuses. It transpires that years earlier there was a set up deal where the man had scammed a young woman into marriage and out of the resort and when she found out she was killed accidentally. Now years later her spirit wants revenge and shows up to get it. At that point we get some of the stupidest most inept revenge scenes ever put on film. Its awful and so bad as not to be even remotely fun.

I would tell you that the films are out on DVD, but that would be wrong since you might take that knowledge to pick up these pieces of trash and hurt yourself. I can't risk that. Please don't watch either of these films, sure I did, but I have good insurance and they cover stays in mental hospitals. Forget these films. Take it from someone who should be considered to have stuck his hand in the wood chipper so you don't have to.

Zaat (1975)

Several years in the making this film should have stayed on the shelf and unfinished. This is a legendary awful horror film that rightly is near the bottom of the IMDB worst of all time list (lower than even Troll 2). Its a tough haul even for me, a bad movie veteran.

Trust me boys and girls it's the sort of thing that makes you want to put something into your mouth so you don't swallow your tongue.

The film has a mad scientist turning himself into a part man part catfish hybrid and then running amok.

Zaat is one of those ugly nasty movies that has played under any number of titles in order to nail suckers repeatedly. Mystery Science Theater 3000 ran film in their final season using a print titled Blood Waters of Dr Z. It’s a film that I had never seen until May of this year when Turner Classic Movies ran it as part of their late Friday night Underground series. My attention was drawn to it by the long article that they posted on their website which talked about the film and its production

Even though it talked about the film in less than rave terms it over sold the film.

This film is a turkey, or at the very least a mutated catfish (though that’s probably an insult to mutated catfish, and turkeys and any thing that you might you to describe the film other than garbage)

The film begins with a low key narration talking about Sargasso the weed of the sea or something and then goes from there. In the films defense the opening narration is odd enough that it engenders a genuine frisson. The trouble is that after the opening titles we’re left the actual plot of the film and all bets are off.

The plot of the film has a mad scientist turning himself into a weird cross between man and catfish. He then wanders about getting revenge on the people who wronged him. During the scenes with our “hero” we get more of the narration which is a weird internal monologue. During the other scenes we just have poor acting and static camera angles as people discuss what is happening and why.

The piece on Turner Classic talks about scientific accuracy, but I really doubt that that if we could mutate ourselves we’d come up with a look that included zippers and ill fitting stockings. Its an embarrassment and one of the all time worst man in suit costumes. Its ridiculous and you’ll want to laugh; and I‘m sure you’ll laugh but then it kind of becomes sadly pathetic and the disbelief may actually bring a tear to your eye. (If nothing else you’ll wonder how come the work of these inept knuckleheads gets released and your home movies are still sitting on the shelf?)

This film is awful. Its dull and boring and the wrong sort of stupid. It’s a trial to get through. Consider that even allowing for the fact that Mystery Science Theater 3000 is 2 hours with commercial, the episodes run around 95 minutes, which means the show with host segments, commercial bumpers and titles runs the show less time than the uncut film. They must have cut almost half the film out and having looked at the show briefly and while the movie plays better with the riffing its still its a mess

Trust me on this no matter what you think this is a movie to avoid.

Turner has it in rotation and the MST3K version is in one of the box sets. I'd say more but if you're that determined to see the film you can find it yourself.

Spinning into Butter (2007)

This is day two of our week of horrible films- so bad that even we at Unseen can't find a reason to recomend them. These are the real trash films that should have remained under the stunking cheese and rotten meat cake.

If you ever want to know if I can be offended, and trust me its not an easy thing to do. Sit me down and have me watch this film and have me try not to get up and punch out the filmmakers. I'm not so much offended as disbelieving that anyone could be stupid as the makers of this film are.

Rebecca Gilman's wrongheaded play about racism at a small college is an even more wrongheaded film. This film started out as a well intentioned but misguided play that equated not sitting next to a person of a different race on an empty subway car as racism and it was turned an even more off the mark film. The racism remark came in the middle of what is more or less a twenty minute monologue and was the sort of statement that comes from someone who never rode the New York City subway or knows nothing about personal space. But the play was the play and the film is something else entirely.

The plot has to do with the aftermath of a racial incident and how the rich white head of the college who is suppose to be so liberal maybe isn't, and how political correctness maybe more prejudicial to everyone. I didn't care for the play all that much, which while not bad, managed to over state its position and there by lose its argument. This film version open the play up and manages to do everything wrong from the get go which is the opening credits over a cartoon version of Little Black Sambo. From there the film makes it clear that this film is about "something" and then goes on to hammer home its points like a barbarian with an ax handle in a brawl.

So much is wrong with the basic premise and the movie itself that its hard to pick a point where it's the most wrong. Perhaps its best to first ask the question "How can you even hope to relate to the lead character when she is clearly condescending to everyone?" As much as I didn't care for the play, the one thing that it managed to do was not have you hate the lead character at any point, especially at the start. I mean give the play a few points simply because you don't have questions about her until a good way into the show. Here Sarah Jessica Parker is clearly a twit from her first appearance. I'm guessing its because in opening up the play they trip themselves up.

After a troubled production the film sat on the shelf for a few years and its easy to see why (I mean beyond the fact that the producers apparently didn't pay most of the people connected with the film), the movie isn't much good and its becomes an endurance test to get through.

I'm sure that everyone who made the film has their hearts in the right place, but at the same time, they are like their main character, clueless about how abrasive they are in showing us how wrong the world is. If you haven't guessed it I really hate this film and think you should stay as far way as possible. I'd like to say more bad about the film but doing so will probably just make you want to see the film and frankly that isn't my intention.

Creeping Terror (1964)

This week we go in the opposite direction of what this blog is all about. This week we're pointing out films so awful so horrible that they should remain unseen. These are the rabid dogs of the film world, the ones we feel should be shot down where they stand so that the world is safe for film going. These are some of the refuse films that we've had to sit through in order to put a website of lost gems together.

We're gonna start slow and work up to real vitriol during the course of the week. First up Creeping Terror a film about which one can only say a few things, mostly burn the film.

Damn near unwatchable bad film, rightly hailed as one of the worst (as in unwatchable under any circumstances) film, concerns a giant worm like carpet monster with a mouth that looks like genitalia.

Awful in ways that only home movies are this film is one of the worst films of all time and something that even bad movie lovers don't need to experience. I've done so a couple of times and have regretted it every time. Frankly I'd rather chew on tin foil and shave my head with a cheese grater rather than see this again.

As someone who's plumbed the depth of bad movies this really is near the bottom. From the bad music, post dubbed sequences and narration (the soundtrack was lost or never created depending upon the story), poor acting, bad monster suits (one was created which went missing when the producers didn't pay for it so they had to make another which didn't really look like the first), bad acting (yes I know I mentioned acting twice) and tons of mismatched footage(A US rocket is seen to land-it's the monsters ship- but it doesn't match the ship on the ground), this is an inept as they come.

Trust me you don't want to see this, you will not enjoy it in any sort of bad movie MST3K sort of way (even friends and lots of drinks won't help).

Its just awful. Avoid it, and if you don't, don't say I didn't warn you.

For those into self abuse the film is available on DVD.