Bad Movie Month #31: Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

It's over!

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)

Directed by: Mark Hartley
Produced by: Veronica Fury, Brett Ratner
Written by: Mark Hartley
Budget: I can't find any solid information concerning this documentary's budget.

Starring: Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus

Just because it's Bad Movie Month doesn't mean I have to exclusively watch bad movies. It also means I can watch movies about bad movies, and Electric Boogaloo is just that.

Were I to go back and redo my list of movies to watch this month, I would have included more Cannon films. When it comes to B-movie studios, Cannon ranks the highest on that particular ladder, and this documentary explains why in pretty good detail.

The Cannon Group started between Dennis Friedland and Chris Dewey as a production studio which bought and produced the cheapest possible scripts they could find, with their budgets often limited to $300,000 per film. The vast majority of these were English versions of foreign-language softcore porn, with barely-there stories and lots of nudity. But as the 70s marched on the company started to flounder as lack of returns and tax wrangling serious hurt the company's financial strength.

So the two sold the company to a pair of Israeli film buffs, Manahem Golan and Yoran Globus, who essentially created the modern B-movie reputation.

Their business model consisted of buying the absolute cheapest scrips they could find, creating a poster for the as-yet-unfinished movie, and presenting it to potential investors. If the movie was purchased, they would knock it out in a few weeks as cheaply as possible and release it. This led to the creation of posters for a multitude of movies that never actually saw production, and often never left the script  at all; however, it also gave rise to what was essentially a revival of a studio-system studio, where Cannon could control every aspect of the movie in-house.

Several of Cannon's big hits were from the 80s, including Enter the Ninja, Death Wish, Missing in Action, and the first Breakin'. Rather than let the mild successes go to their heads, Golan and Globus continued with their cheap production methods through the 80s, often producing over 40 films a year, which is absolutely insane. Many of these were over-hyped by the studio and seriously underperformed, but Golan had the ability to somehow convince people to continue funding his movies.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view of the company and its practices), by the late 80s an early 90s Cannon's financial juggling caught up with the company and they were investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission to determine whether Cannon misreported their finances. This, combined with a string of financial failures, including Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Captain America, and a failed attempt at a Spider-Man movie, Golan and Globus split and Cannon was gone, in all but name.

Electric Boogaloo is a look at The Cannon Group from people in the movie industry who worked with the two lead studio heads, including actors, writers, producers, and other production crew members. Overall it provides what seems to be a level, fair look at some of the practices, and doesn't shy away from the bad parts.

Sometimes with documentaries concerning people who are still active or alive you see either attempts to tear down the person's reputation or hail them as a champion of some particular vision. Electric Boogaloo doesn't seem to fall into either trap, and instead provides what seems to be a good representation of Globus and Golan as two guys who really like movies, who really wanted to make movies, and who made the best movies they could using their resources. Cannon definitely had some strange beginnings and people in the documentary don't shy away from calling the company out for its early exploitative nature.

But, the movie also doesn't shy away from the impact that Cannon had on the modern film landscape. The action movies we see today (the documentary points to Olympus Has Fallen as one example) are held up as simply Cannon movies with actual production value and care put into the scripts. It's something I hadn't considered before, but the point is presented that Cannon actually shaped the current action scene and movie, which I think has some merit.

One thing I would have liked to see from the documentary is actual interviews with Golan and Globus, but the movie addresses that at the end: the two were approached to appear in the documentary, but both declined...and several months before this movie was released, they produced their own documentary called The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a copy to watch, as I would have loved to compare the two, but such is life.

Again, if I were to do this again I would probably put some more Cannon movies onto the list. The biggest problems would be choosing which ones, and trying to make sure they wouldn't overshadow everything else. Maybe next time I'll just do a Cannon month, because there's certainly enough different movies to choose from.

Should You Watch It?
I think that, as a documentary, Electric Boogaloo accomplishes everything a good documentary should. It goes into the background, the current events, and gives a wide variety of opinions on how and why the subjects ticked. If you're into movies at all and would like to learn a little bit about the company that produced all those Chuck Norris VHSes, give this a shot.

Thanks for reading.

Bad Movie Month #30: Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo

I'm no expert, but that shoe looks
impractical for dancing.

Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (1985)

Directed by: Joel Silberg
Produced by: Allen DeBevoise, David Zito
Written by: Charles Parker, Allen DeBevoise (screenplay), Charles Parker, Allen DeBevoise, Gerald Scaife (Story)
Budget: Low

Starring: Lucinda Dickey, Adolfo "Shabba Doo" Quinones, Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers

When an evil realty developer wants to demolish the community center and replace it with a capitalist temple shopping mall, three proletariat dancers band together to take down filthy bourgeoisie dogs through endless dance numbers.

I might be reading into that a little bit, but you get the idea.

The movie takes place in the 1985, the most 80s year of the 1980s, with all the male belly shirts, big hair, and choreographed street dance routines you could ask for. While Killer Klowns may have been the epitome of the Ugly 80s, Breakin' 2 portrays the glam-80s, where all we wanted to do was dance and get perms. There was probably still the cocaine problem, but it helped us look good in spandex, so it was all good.

The acting throughout is the epitome of phoned-in 80s sequel acting, the sets and costumes would seem exaggerated if that wasn't what people actually wore, and the writing is what you'd expect from a dance movie. It's interesting seeing that dance "films" up to, and including, the most recent Step Up still follow the same beats and plot points.

The Rad
The dancing is the focus of the entire thing, and at least everyone in this movie can dance. And when I say dance, I mean they move. Not only that, but the movie embodies all the classic cheesy 80s tropes: evil realty developer, a group of misfits fighting the man, a dance battle under a graffiti-dappled bridge, and at one point a group of people dance battle with nunchaku and trash-can lid shields. If that's not rad, I don't know what is.

There's a scene where Michael Chambers dances up the wall and on the ceiling, and it's actually really impressive as an effect thanks to its execution. Here's the scene in question, if you're curious. The weirdest part is that this happens in the universe of the movie. Yeah, partway through one of the characters walks in and notices him literally dancing on the ceiling, which means that at least one of the people in this movie can violate the laws of gravity through dance. Why couldn't the entire movie be about that?

The Bogus
The movie speeds through every single dialogue scene to skip to the dancing, which makes it feel like an advertisement for a community center, rather than an actual movie. While the dancing is entertaining to watch, it's pretty much fluff without anything of substance to support it. If you cut out all the dancing, you'd have a movie that lasts maybe twenty minutes. There are also numerous montages of city life, so many that it's probably appropriate to refer to most of this movie as pure filler.

In all honesty, nothing here really happens, despite the fact that there's so much going on. It sounds like a contradiction, but after all the dancing, conversations, and "plot" finishes and the credits roll, you realize there wasn't much to the movie. It's all glitz and filler, and though the dancing may be well done it gets tiring after a little bit.

At the one hour point (gee, notice a trend) the movie grinds to an emotional halt. This is about where the "Storming the city hall meeting" scene takes place, and it feels like it should instead happen at the end. Instead we follow with an assault, hospital dance number with nurses who heal the sick (and resurrect the dead!) through dance...not a joke, this all happens within the movie's universe, and is clearly not supposed to be a musical-style dance scene. No one comments on it, no one mentions it ever again, and it's treated as if it's completely normal.

The Rest
"2: Electric Boogaloo" has become a pop culture monument, indicating a sequel that no one really needed. It's actually the reason I chose to watch this movie, because until I watched it I didn't have much context for it aside from the fact that it was a sequel title. I did some research and it doesn't actually seem that the movie showcases the actual Electric Boogaloo dance much, if at all.

This movie was produced by Cannon Films, the iconic studio behind a huge number of the memorable low-budget releases ranging from the 60s to the 90s. The first Breakin' was actually one of the last financially profitable movies released by Cannon before their distribution deal with MGM fell through. Apparently there were some major contentions between the writers and producers of Breakin' 2, primarily due to the fact that the producers wanted to maintain a G-rated movie and the original writers trying to create a more serious look at inner-city 80s culture. Yeah, seriously.

I want to see a Cabin in the Woods style deconstruction of dance movies, where dancing is a method to unlock some sort of primal underlying hive-instinct in the human mind. Something a little like the music video for LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem, but actually, you know...well done.

Will You Dig It?
Though I found it entertaining, you will have to have a high tolerance for the 80s in order to watch this. It kept me entertained for the most part, but I found my attention wandering whenever the on-screen action slowed down.

However, as a white guy whose signature dance move is "Bend your knees in time to the beat," I had a pretty good time overall.