What do the films Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, Masters of the Universe, Death Wish, and The Last American Virgin all have in common? They were all produced by the legendary film company, Cannon Films. Cannon Films left behind a legacy of cult classics that were made cheaply and quickly. As a result, they made A LOT of schlock. Let's talk about Cannon Films' sexiest movies and the story behind Cannon Films.
Cannon Films began producing movies in 1967 and it continued up until 1994. They wound up owning a film and video distribution company and a lot of their movies enjoyed success in video stores and in the direct-to-video market. They did everything in every genre. Their films Joe, Runaway Train, and Street Smart were all critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated. The same cannot be said of all of their movies. Some of their movies are notoriously terrible, making lists of "so bad it's good" for decades. We will talk about all of it. Let's start at the beginning.
In 1967 Cannon Films was formed by two men in their early-20s producing English-language versions of Swedish sex movies such as Inga and My Love, Lisa. They even produced Joe, a 1970 film that starred Peter Boyle as an angry man who searches for his runaway hippie daughter played by Susan Sarandon who made her nude debut in the movie. We talked at length about that strange film in our Hippie Hotties column. That was a Cannon film, believe it or not!
However, their finances were not doing great. By the late 70s, Cannon Films was looking to dissolve or be bought out. That is when Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus stepped in to buy the production company for $500,000. They turned Cannon Films into what lovers of cult classics and all things cinema think of today. But who were those guys?
Menahem Golan was already a film director and producer who had been working since the early 1960s. He came from Israel where he directed a few films. Throughout Cannon Films' adventure, he directed a bunch of their films. His cousin Yoram Globus was a lifelong producer who began producing films, with and without his cousin, in 1966. The films that they made together certainly had a style and that style was anything that sells tickets from wild action sequences to sex.
The cousins had a business plan that went like this: buy "bad" scripts, put them into swift production at low budgets, and release as many of those as they can. By "bad" scripts, I mostly mean scripts that no one else in the industry wanted. Whether these were scripts from nobodies or things that had been laughed out of other production companies, the cousins latched onto those and made those movies happen. As a result, they were able to make A LOT of films.
Their bread-and-butter were action films, especially Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson films. They produced Missing in Action, The Delta Force, Enter the Ninja, and Cobra starring Sylvester Stallone which earned them a lot of money at the box office. They were under fire for their movie Missing in Action which starred Chuck Norris. They were accused of being "freely inspired" by James Cameron's treatment for Rambo which was going around Hollywood at the time (a treatment is like a pitch outlining the story before the script is written). Whoops! Hey, at least this version had nudity from Lenore Kasdorf.
They were not simply limited to action movies. They ventured into comedies and musicals, too. They are best known for making The Apple which Menahem directed. This is a bonkers musical which I highly suggest to lovers of bad movies and musicals, but there was no nudity in it. Darn! They also made Breakin' and Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo so you have them to thank for that amazing title.
They took a chance on The Last American Virgin which we talked about only last week in an article about sex comedies in 1982. The beautiful Diane Franklin was introduced to all of us for playing a virginal teen girl who does not remain that way. The story was adapted from an Israeli comedy that the brothers knew well but had nothing directly to do with. This film was a surprise hit, folding in nicely to the teen sex comedy craze during the year of its release. This Cannon film became American sex comedy canon!
They also ventured into erotic films in the 80s. Hey, sex sells! That was even Cannon Films' roots! They made 1981's Lady Chatterley's Lover with the gorgeous Sylvia Kristel who went very nude in this extremely saucy tale. This story has been adapted for the screen countless times (okay, I could count them, but I'm busy looking at Sylvia's suck sacks!), but this version might be the sexiest. That is what Cannon brought to the table: sex. Lots of it.
They also were responsible for Bolero which we talked about already when talking about Bo Derek's sexy movies. Speaking of lots of sex, Bolero was writhing and oozing in it. Cannon Films produced this movie that was written and directed by Bo Derek's husband who was "giving the audience what they wanted" by naming the movie after Bo's famous line in 10 and filling it up with long, exquisite scenes of Bo Derek having sex. Yeah, that actually is exactly what we wanted! And it's what Cannon films wanted! The film did not do well critically or in theaters, but it enjoyed rentals on the video circuit where people kept their pause button ready.
At one point Cannon Films was releasing 43 films in a single year (1986). Obviously, something that enormous cannot stay that way forever. Nothing gold can stay - they didn't make that movie, by the way. Cannon was heavily into distributing at the end of the 80s and they bought the rights to so many stories that they never had the chance to make. Most famously, they owned the rights to Spider-Man and in their contract, the rights would go back to Marvel if they didn't make a film by 1990. They didn't and Marvel and Sony would then compete to make a Spider-Man film after winning back the rights.
By the late 80s, they were distributing A LOT of films into theaters and video stores. Some of those were really softcore porny! They released some Emmanuelle movies, such as Emmanuelle 4 which was released in theaters. They didn't produce these films, but they brought this sexy Emmanuelle to the American public. We salute them for that!
But everyone remembers Cannon "best" for their original films, many of them were not very good as we already said. But I feel like I cannot state that enough. These films enjoy cult status specifically for being outrageously "bad". I know that taste is subjective, of course, so plenty of people do like these films. These were films like Lifeforce by Tobe Hooper which was a ridiculous sci-fi flick that features a lot of nudity from Mathilda May who plays the sexy Space Girl. Literally, her character is Space Girl.
In 1988, Cannon was not doing so hot. Well, the films were always hot, but the finances were not. Many of their expensively made films had tanked at the box office, leaving them in dire straits. Cannon was then taken over by Pathé who restructured the company to pay off the debts accrued by the cousins. Golan left the company, but Globus stayed although he was no longer in charge. In 1994, they released their final film, Hellbound.
Despite their small size and wacky antics, it is impossible to deny Cannon Films the impact that Cannon Films had on American movies - especially movies in the 1980s. Their hands were on so many classics, whether they produced and directed them or distributed them, and they were titans of schlock in the 80s. I have no choice but to salute them! Literally, my pants are saluting them.
