Cannon Films

Australian documentarian Mark Hartley crafts his third vigorous valentine to exploitation cinema, alongside Not Quite Hollywood and Machete Maidens Unleashed!, with Electric Boogaloo, an explosive trawl through the snarling ferocity of Cannon Films before its inevitable bankruptcy in the early 1990s. Whilst the former documentary in the cycle celebrated the boom in Ozploitation cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, and Maidens! took a appreciative scan of the laxly monitored Philippine film factory, this time the viewfinder shifts to the excessive and action packed oeuvre of Israeli movie moguls Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, whose 1979-founded company became an explosive production house in Hollywood during the Reagan-mandated 1980s. Much to the disgust of snooty critics and prestige-minded executives, Cannon (an apt name) forged repeated success due to their box office-incinerating brand of chaotic, cheap and politically dubious action and exploitation films, bringing the grim jaw lines of Chuck Norris, Charles Bronson and Sylvester Stallone to international markets.

From the late 70s to the early 90s, Menahem Golan and Yorum Globus, two Israeli cousins, ran the Cannon Films studio. The men produced dozens of mindless exploitation films, from Death Wish 3 to The Last American Virgin. Mark Hartley’s film sets out to define the producers’ legacy, with special emphasis on the men’s unorthodox and eccentric professional conduct. The result is a light, funny documentary that could benefit from the inclusion of more insightful material.

By the 1980s, the glory days of the movie grindhouse were over.  Rising real estate values and rents, and urban renewal ate away at the grindhouse circuit, and down the houses came, one seedy, sticky-floored theater after another. But even though the grindhouses died out, grindhouse cinema didn’t die with it.  Like some sort of …