Misadventures in Blissville

Tonight, we’re going to be talking about the 2014 documentary, “Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films”.

I just wanted to share this really funny, but accurate description of the movie, “The Wizard of Oz” from a newspaper, I don’t know how they let this slip through when it was printed, maybe it was the writer’s last day on the job and he decided to screw with the paper, but the description for the movie, as written is – “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.” Sounds like a Cannon movie! It’s brilliant.

It seems any curiosity from the eighties, any bit of nostalgia will be squeezed into a juice and distilled as a documentary. Cannon Films was more than a curiosity course. It was a symbol of rough and ready independent filmmaking, the combined talents of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, cousins who made movies in Israel, but they came to America with a dream!

Before the main titles, we get a couple of soundbites from the likes of Bo Derek and Richard Chamberlain and they are not speaking with much in the way of affection. They almost make Golan-Globus seem incompetent, but then the titles roll and we see that there is obvious homage to some of the posters, some of the design and also, Michael Dudikoff. It was good to see Dudikoff, and he looks great. He’s aged well.

Some of the actors speak of Golan and Globus with disdain; there’s this one actress who shrieks, “this is not what I signed up for!” She’s enraged. She signed on for a movie called “The Happy Hooker”, I’m sorry, what did you think you were signing on for? A kids movie? Apparently Golan and Globus were out of their minds for thinking that people liked sex and nudity in films.

There’s a nice little profile of director Michael Winner, whom I always enjoyed.   I watched a lot of Michael Winner films on Cable TV, but the actors and producers  that are being interviewed make him out to be a sadist, almost evil with his unusual demands, his sense of style.  I mean, speaking personally, as a filmmaker, he’s completely out of his mind.  “The Nightcomers”, “The Sentinel”, “Death Wish” and then his Cannon output, wow!  But they’re kind-of speaking ill of the dead a little.  He’s not around to defend himself.