Action! Trash! Art! – 10 essential video-shop classics from Cannon Films

In the beginning, there was Cannon Films, a minor production company surviving on small budgets and big advertising. Soon, it came to pass that Cannon Films narrowly avoided going bankrupt and was sold to two Israelis named Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. And they did go to Cannes and tell the world about their plans for films with ninjas, vigilantes, Lou Ferrigno and Chuck Norris. And lo, owners of video rental shops did rejoice, for product was great and the profits were large. Famous filmmakers came to work for Cannon and they did rejoice, for Cannon let them make what they wanted without interference. And for a time, it was good and fortune smiled. But the overheads became large, the films were poor, and the moneylenders lost patience, leading to a takeover and a corporate restructure.

Well, it was good while it lasted. For about seven years, Cannon Films filled a particular niche in the market for films which were a cut above the level of basic grindhouse product but packed with enough mayhem to please multiplex audiences and, subsequently, video viewers. They developed relationships with particular actors, beginning with the Japanese martial artist Sho Kosugi and blossoming into extended courtships with Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris.

It would be easy to mock these films as simplistic action trash, and occasionally it would be hard to do otherwise, but while doing so, we should note that the films are often made with an unpretentious competence by filmmakers who know exactly what their audience wants. Equally, some of the films are unintentionally fascinating for the messages they relay – J. Lee Thompson’s 10 to Midnight (1983), for example, is so cartoonishly right-wing that it virtually tips over into advocating outright anarchy. Others – Invasion U.S.A.(1985) springs to mind – are so blatantly ridiculous that they turn the corner into self-parody.

Yet Golan and Globus were nothing if not culturally aware and they were desperate to receive approbation from critics who kept knocking them as schlock merchants. In the hope of snaring plaudits, they financed work by John Cassavetes, Jean-Luc Godard, Norman Mailer, Franco Zeffirelli and Andrei Konchalovsky, allowing them a free hand even though the hope of breaking even was slim.

It all fell messily apart in 1987 when it became apparent that there was no more money following a string of high-profile flops. But there remains a fondness for Cannon which is perhaps strongest among the generation which watched its films on video as teenagers and thought that Michael Dudikoff was pretty cool as Joe, the American Ninja.

Mark Hartley’s new documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild and Untold Story of Cannon Films celebrates the company’s achievements with a healthy sense of humour and proportion. As with his film about Australian exploitation cinema, Not Quite Hollywood (2008), Hartley refuses to sneer, and the sheer enthusiasm that the film evokes is enough to make you want to track down most of the movies he features.

In order to help in this endeavour, the following is our list of 10 essential Cannon films in chronological order.

Director: Pete Walker

An early example of Cannon’s yearning for respectability, this relatively minor horror film is notable for being the first to team on-screen (at least at the same time) Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine. An adaptation of an old play, it creaks rather more than you would expect for a 1983 film and despite some occasional nastiness, it’s all very nostalgic and old-fashioned right down to the “it’s all a game” ending which was de rigeur in 1920s stage thrillers.

Director: Sam Firstenberg

Sam Firstenberg directed a number of ninja films for Cannon, but Ninja 3: The Domination is without question his most distinctive, largely because it’s utterly mad. To the backing of some nostalgic synth-pop, a telephone engineer and part-time aerobics instructor becomes possessed by the spirit of a wicked ninja assassin and starts killing cops left, right, and centre. The great Sho Kosugi arrives from Japan to save the day in a hugely enjoyable martial-arts finale.

Director: John Cassavetes

Cannon courted arthouse directors and their first big coup was John Cassavetes, who worked with them on his penultimate film. Love Streams is a very affecting drama about the relationship between brother and sister, played by Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands – both are at their very best. Largely shot inside Cassavetes’ own house, it’s a visually restrained but emotionally rich piece of work which is insightful about the interactions between siblings, and parents with their children. It deservedly won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

Director: Joel Silberg

In terms of plot and character, Breakin’ is something of a bust. But in the way that it captures a moment in cultural history it’s absolutely fascinating. Shot on an insanely tight schedule for a tiny budget – and reckoned to be Cannon’s most financially successful film – it has some incredible breakdancing sequences showcasing Adolfo “Shabba Doo” Quiñones and Michael “Shrimp Boogaloo” Chambers and nice performances from Ice-T as a DJ and Lucinda Dickey as a jazz dancer. Children of the 1980s will also revel in the iconic soundtrack.

Director: Andrei Konchalovsky

Generally acknowledged as the single best thing that Cannon ever did, Runaway Train is a riveting, brilliantly made thriller which deserved much more acclaim than it received at the time, not least for the quite astonishing action scenes. There is a strong feeling among all involved that it was inescapably tarnished with the Cannon exploitation brush, although it still received three Oscar nominations, two of them for the performances of Jon Voight and Eric Roberts.

Director: Tobe Hooper

If Ninja 3 is mad, then Lifeforce is completely demented. A crazy storyline combining Dracula and Quatermass is brought to life by veteran horror hand Tobe Hooper, a cast of British reliables relishing every syllable of the idiotic dialogue, and a band of British technicians providing notable special effects. Add a rich orchestral score by Henry Mancini, Patrick Stewart kissing Steve Railsback and a pyrotechnic climax in St Paul’s Cathedral and you have something like a trash classic. 

Director: Menahem Golan

Menahem Golan began as a director and in 1977 he directed Operation Thunderbolt, generally considered the best of the three films about the Israeli raid on Entebbe airport. The Delta Force is an entertaining return to the same territory in which the eponymous special operatives tackle the plane-hijacking New World Revolutionary Organisation, a group of Iranian rebels led by Robert Forster with a bad accent and 10 gallons of sweat. It’s effective enough as a vehicle for Chuck Norris as the force’s captain but the real fun lies with the unintentionally ludicrous propaganda and the amazing supporting cast which includes Lee Marvin, Hanna Schygulla, Martin Balsam, Shelley Winters and, oddly playing a priest rather than an aircraft mechanic, George Kennedy.

Director: John Frankenheimer

52 Pick-up isn’t quite a return to the Frankenheimer glory days of The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seconds (1966) but it’s comfortably his best film since the mid-70s. An Elmore Leonard adaptation made before the rush of them in the 1990s, it’s a taut, sleek thriller which pits businessman Roy Scheider against a group of despicable bad guys led by effete sadist John Glover and the frankly terrifying Clarence Williams III. The tone is bleak and brutal, leavened with occasional bursts of black humour, and Frankenheimer directs with a sharp eye for the tackiness of the LA settings.

Director: Barbet Schroeder

One of the most heroically uncommercial films imaginable in 1987, this semi-autobiographical portrait of Charles Bukowski’s alcoholism is a triumph for Mickey Rourke and director Barbet Schroeder. It’s a loose and rambling film, very true to Bukowski’s writings – he wrote the screenplay – and the visual style is enhanced by ace director of photography Robby Müller and his revolutionary use of the Kino Flo light. Much to the delight of Golan and Globus it was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Director: Jerry Schatzberg

In 1987, Cannon made the hugely disappointing Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, but a fortunate by-product was their agreement to finance Street Smart, a long-time pet project for Christopher Reeve. To be frank, he’s rather bland as a journalist who invents a story about a pimp without realising the consequences and the film is completely stolen by an extraordinary performance from Morgan Freeman as Fast Black, a brutal pimp who believes he was Reeve’s inspiration. The film got him an Oscar nomination and put him well on the road to stardom.