Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

Fairly interesting documentary charts the rise and fall of The Cannon Group, a company made popular by two Israeli cousins, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. For the most part, they didn't exactly make prestige films, but they did an uncanny job of cranking out scores of B pictures that were often quite entertaining, no matter if the level of quality wasn't the highest. After a number of years, they did leave an impression on the film industry, if only for their impressive knack for "pre-selling" movies, using no more than posters, titles, and concepts.

This reasonably entertaining production is from Mark Hartley, who's left his own indelible stamp on the industry by making these kinds of films; previously, he'd done documentaries on the cult and exploitation pictures of both Australia ("Not Quite Hollywood") and the Philippines ("Machete Maidens Unleashed"). Instead of having a narrator to sort of take us step by step through this tale, a series of sit down interviews play in quick succession, with various cast and crew of numerous Cannon efforts giving their thoughts on the movies that they made. Some of the interviews are quite engaging; people interviewed include Franco Nero, Sybil Danning, Laurene Landon (it's actually rather distressing seeing her mime setting fire to a copy of "America 3000"), Boaz Davidson, David Engelbach, Christopher Pearce, Richard Edlund, Tobe Hooper, Greydon Clark, Alex Winter, and others.

After "Electric Boogaloo" is over, one does feel that they've gotten a pretty vivid, "warts and all" picture of the Golan & Globus personalities. Golan was the real character: volatile, demanding, opinionated. Globus was the somewhat more restrained of the two, the one who handled more business oriented duties. Ultimately, their hubris caught up with them. Although they could on occasion produce something truly special ("Runaway Train"), they simply ended up getting too ambitious, and getting in over their heads.

Many of the interviewees do seem to hold Cannon product in quite a bit of contempt, which is unfortunate, because while much of it may not be Oscar baiting material, it was, most of the time, a good deal of fun. If you're like this viewer, The Cannon Group has given you many hours of viewing pleasure with their B grade action movies, thrillers, sci-fi, and horror features.

In the end, it's quite telling that Golan & Globus declined to participate in this documentary, instead beating it to the punch with their OWN non fiction feature titled "The Go Go Boys".

Seven out of 10.