The Legacy Of Menahem Golan And Cannon Films

When I was in college, I registered for a class called National Cinema. Like many of my classmates, I assumed we would be dissecting Chinese Cinema, as our sometimes-distracted department head had told us. Instead, it turned out to be Israeli Cinema, and as our professor discussed the coming semester, you could hear the air deflate from the room, as none of us were impolite to speak up about not necessarily wanting to be there.

The first film we would watch, he told us, was a raucous musical from 1974 called Kazablan. At a mention of the film's director, I spoke up.

“Wait, did you say Golan? Like, Golan and Globus?”

 “Yes,” the teacher replied sheepishly.

“Get the fuck outta’ here.”

I did not begin this class on the right foot, needless to say. But my initial shock overcame any hints of propriety, as appropriate a gesture one could conceive to honor the work of Mr. Golan. Here I was in college, studying serious cinema, and Menahem Golan was the bull in a China shop. Golan passed away last week at the age of 85, just as he was planning a new movie. It would have probably been terrible. They would have watched it in class one day.

For many people who grew up in the '80s, Golan was a titan of disreputable populist cinema (back when populist cinema was, in itself, disreputable). Golan served in the Israeli Air Force before an apprenticeship under B-movie king Roger Corman. These adventures would inform his early efforts with cousin Yoram Globus to form Noah Films, which would be powered by commercial American ingenuity and a strong national pride. One of those films, Kazablan, actually earned distribution in America. It's actually a really enjoyable film.

But those who revered Golan remembered one powerful name: CANNON. Other studios had their own logo in front of films, but it never really stood for something. The Twentieth Century Fox fanfare was empowering, the roaring lion of MGM added class to film intros, but those familiar staggered synth drums that accompanied the Cannon logo announced to the audience that you'd better hold onto your asses, because they were going to get kicked. For some, Cannon was the first “brand” we associated with movies. You'd never remember if a movie came from Universal or Warner Bros., but here was a Cannon, ready to be aimed and fired right into your VCR.

Golan directed 45 movies, and produced 209. Several of them came from Cannon, which Golan and Globus purchased in 1979 in an attempt to wallpaper Hollywood with their movies. Their specialty was the high-octane action picture, and they made movies that were as American as one could get. They took to their adopted country with great pride, making pictures that often utilized (and exploited) American iconography. One of Golan's pre-Cannon movies was 1977's English-language Operation Thunderbolt, a rousing true-story action film about German and Palestinian terrorists (led by Klaus Kinski!) who take over a plane from Tel Aviv, leading to an elite unit of Israeli soldiers being sent onto a mission to save the hostages. The American analog was 1986's Delta Force, where Lebanese terrorists take over a plane, leading to the recruitment of a group of American soldiers ordered to rescue the hostages and execute every last terrorist with extreme prejudice. The former features a covert operation led by Yehoram Gaon, the original Kazablan. The latter finds Chuck Norris firing rockets from his motorcycle.

If there's anything Cannon taught me at a young age, it was quality control. The common trait amongst Cannon productions was cheapness. In an era where many simply did not make expensive films, Cannon developed a reputation for speed and efficiency, but certainly not gloss. Cannon taught me the value of a B-movie. Superficially, that meant something that was lesser than an A-movie, but it also meant movies that purposely set the bar as low as possible in an attempt to achieve specific goals. I first noticed the seams during Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. The first three films were made at Warner Bros. (and produced by the Salkind family), but Cannon took over the fourth, resulting in a film that, charitably, looked like crap. Even the most ardent Superman fan watched The Quest For Peace as a child and realized this was the off-brand model. Major studios were winning Oscars. Cannon was making Death Wish 4.

Of course, this reputation came with a certainty that many embraced. In the 1970s, studios were friendly with filmmakers, allowing them free reign to experiment, to attempt different stories, to showcase a darker, weirder, more unique America. In the ‘80s, that power and freedom was given to actors, and they found a safe haven with Cannon. At a studio, big stars were attempting to fit into vehicles that they could augment. But at Cannon, movie stars were permitted to shape flimsy material to fit their own interests with a corresponding paycheck. Sylvester Stallone broke records when he accepted a $13 million check from Cannon, a fact that usually precedes any other conversation about the Golan-directed Over The Top. There's a reason for this: it's a movie about arm wrestling. The subject of the film doesn't matter. Getting the star does, and figuring out story and theme were afterthoughts. If you were young when you saw Over The Top, your thoughts were largely, “Oh, there's ‘Rocky’ in something not nearly as good as Rocky.” Similarly, the Cannon-produced Cobra was basically, “Rambo with shades.”

Cannon developed relationships with other stars such as Charles Bronson and the aforementioned Norris, both of whom found a home with the studio's emphasis on cheap spectacle and star showcases. Death Wish was a hit for Paramount, but Cannon turned it into a franchise. Norris'Missing in Action was the war series that offered a cheap replacement for Rambo. But these movies often had their grace notes. Bronson's 10 To Midnight was one of the more genuinely seedy actioners of the ‘80s and sports a Bronson performance that reaches maximum intensity. And Norris'Invasion U.S.A. reached absurd heights of Cold War paranoia, but its America under siege is eerily upsetting, particularly with the specter of Norris as a borderline supernatural avenger watching over the country with a bloodthirsty glee. The studio found similar showcase vehicles for the likes of Sho Kosugi and, at the beginning of his career, Jean-Claude Van Damme.

More importantly, Cannon often maximized their resources. Superman IV featured script consultation by star Christopher Reeve, but that alone wasn't enough to get him to wear the cape again. They also financed a small film called Street Smart where Reeve would co-star with a then-unknown Morgan Freeman, earning Freeman an Academy Award nomination. The cherry on top was an offer for Reeve to direct a planned Superman V. And when Masters of the Universe didn't become the massive hit Golan had planned, the sets for a prospective sequel were re-purposed for the Van Damme actioner Cyborg. Their movies could sometimes be big, but their promises were bigger: trade magazines at the time were littered with announcements regarding Cannon films that would ultimately never be made. You got the sense Cannon got into the moviemaking business just to announce films. If Golan and Globus were still making movies together today, they would be lighting up the Internet with each potential new film.

What's interesting are the loyal relationships that Cannon would develop with filmmakers, no matter how big or small. Somehow, they got their hands on Akira Kurosawa's script for Runaway Train, and made it into an action film that earned three Oscar nominations. Director Andrey Konchalovskiy had that gig, one of multiple Cannon productions he helmed. Other directors frequently employed by Cannon included Joseph Zito (Missing in Action), J. Lee Thompson (Death Wish 4: The Crackdown) and, memorably, Tobe Hooper, basically establishing a “house-style” that you can see in practice today with studios like Marvel. Hooper, at the time, had hit a point in his career where he was unhireable, fighting the bad buzz of possibly being replaced on Poltergeist by producer Steven Spielberg. Working with Cannon revitalized TheTexas Chain Saw Massacre director: under Golan and Globus, he made Lifeforce and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, two of the most willfully strange genre pictures of the 1980s. While they weren't box office smashes, Hooper was but one of the filmmakers Cannon considered to take their top job: director of Spider-Man.

Golan held on dearly to Spider-Man even after he sold Cannon in 1989, insisting that superheroes were the big new trend. Sadly, his attempts to prove the point were the previously mentioned Masters of the Universe and 1990's Captain America. The former was so disastrous that it actually shrunk Mattel's toy sales for the well-known brand. And the latter, directed by Cannon regular Albert Pyun, simply could not stretch the budget far enough. It was important to be on top of trends for Golan and Globus, and it was probably this superhero gamble that sank them. Cannon actually benefited from other fads, learning how to flood the market with “cutting edge” product. Enter The Ninja and Ninja III: The Domination were peak examples of their genre in America.

And Golan was ravenous in his love for dance films. Like Kazablan, The Apple is a raucous musical that still pops up at midnight screenings today. And the Breakin’ movies were significant touchstones in the history of black film. Less known is that Golan's passion also led to him producing Salome and “Salsa”. Amusingly, this passion became a sticking point for the then-separated Golan and Globus. After they had broken up, both found they had the exclusive rights to a film about Lambada dancing. Stubbornly, each attempted to produce their own Lambada film. On March 16^th, 1990, Globus'Lambada opened on the same day as Golan's The Forbidden Dance. Both were flops. Though he had lost out on the title, Golan's ads read, “Lambada is...The Forbidden Dance.”

After Golan left Cannon, his output wasn't the same, though he persisted in making lower budgeted films for a shrinking audience. But no one can take away that insanely prolific ‘80s streak that saw Cannon absolutely dominate the competition through sheer output. I had my favorites from Golan and Globus, movies that managed to stick out amongst the opportunist cheapies. One is 52 Pick Up, a sleazy car chase movie that, at the time, was probably an excuse to stick The French Connection star Roy Scheider back behind the wheel more than a decade later. It's based on an Elmore Leonard novel, and it's as sleazy and violent as Cannon films could get.

Directed by John Frankenheimer (who previously helmed the Scheider-less The French Connection 2), the movie finds Scheider as a public figure who is extorted by a group of thugs demanding ransom or else an incriminating, but fabricated video of himself and his mistress will be leaked to the public. Even though the ruthless villains kill the “mistress” in cold blood and threaten Scheider's wife (Ann Margaret), he refuses to pay, and eventually takes the fight to them in a series of escalating violent encounters.

The menace is provided by John Glover as the amateur videographer in fast-talking sleazebag mode. With his tropical tan, tight physique and windswept hair, Glover holds a camera in place as he tells bikini-clad guests at his party to model for him. Fans with the theory that Frankenheimer is Michael Bay's father probably derived these thoughts from seeing Glover in action, basically playing Bay before the Transformers director had ever made a movie. Remember, Bay's big break came from shooting videos for Playboy in basically the same fashion, albeit less sleazy. Appropriately enough, those party scenes highlight the presence of Ron Jeremy alongside several fellow porn stars. It's an icky film, and Golan wouldn't have it any other way.

There's also Barfly, one of the unsung classics of the ‘80s. Mickey Rourke plays a frustrated alcoholic writer (modeled after Charles Bukowski) who basically drinks himself to death in the face of sadness, disappointment, and repeated hangovers. If movies are drinks, then “Barfly” is the Kitchen Sink shot, which you mix by collecting all the leftover alcohol found on the bar's spill mat. Mickey Rourke gives a performance that reminds you of all the potential wasted over the years. He loses a fight in the film's first scene and spends the rest of the picture drowsy and defeated, as if it were all a dream suffered while his head was buried in the gutter's puddles, considering where he could have dodged and ducked differently. Rourke's prime was like a good-looking, talented version of Bruce Willis, and Golan wisely gambled on it.

It stands apart from the rest of Cannon's output in that it feels like a movie derived from reality, not a fantasist's view of action and adventure. Golan wouldn't make it unless he spent a few nights at the bottom of a bottle. Knowing him, he probably did so alongside Bukowski; Cannon also bankrolled Norman Mailer's Tough Guys Don't Dance, a movie that lost millions and earned Mailer a Razzie Award for Worst Director. Cannon dabbled in surprisingly highfalutin' material from time to time. Few know that Cannon was the studio that released Powaqqatasi: Life In Transformation, the second in Godfrey Reggio's groundbreaking Qatsi trilogy. Made up of scattered images of Third World struggle and the encroaching effect of industrialization scored to Philip Glass, it's a bizarre counterpoint to the gratuitousness of the average Cannon film. Golan had a mandate to maximize Cannon's output (Golan produced 26 films in 1987 alone) and that meant sometimes developing a conscience.

But there's something to be said about a genuinely terrible movie. Bad movies used to be different: today anyone with a camera is some sort of cinephile, and many have been to film school. In the world of VHS and earlier, however, you were free to adopt any sort of cinematic vocabulary you could. Cannon emerged in that peculiar middle ground when VHS was booming, and people were taking home films for the first time through rental services, yet few had actual “collections.” As a result, most Cannon films were made by filmmakers attempting to replicate the values of a studio film on much smaller budgets. They were imitations and, truth be told, some of those imitations were funny.

In my teenage years, Cannon became a punch line to me. I would see them on TV and laugh at their approach to “disreputable” genres. Death Wish 3 basically turns the standard-issue action film into a game of Whack-A-Mole, building to a finale that resembles a carnival’s shooting alley. Masters of the Universe closes with the audacity of Skeletor's hand popping out of the rubble, promising a sequel. Cobra, based on a script that was meant to be Sylvester Stallone's Beverly Hills Cop, features a lead character so “badass” that he cuts his pizza with scissors. And you're a better man than me if you've never made a joke about a film's sequel using the subtitle Electric Boogaloo, a Cannon invention.

Years later, those titles, and those films, resonate. By sheer force of will, Golan turned Cannon into an ‘80s heavyweight, shaping our film culture. The meaning of those films vanishes, but the films themselves remain. Golan's ethnic identity was prominent and powerful in his early films. But in his later work, you'd never guess it was the result of an Israeli auteur who wore his national pride on his chest. It isn't that film erased his heritage. It's that it created a new one. And now that he's gone, you realize that Menahem Golan's heritage was truly unmatched. Now, they teach it in classrooms.

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