WARNING: SPOILERS

The story of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the Israeli Go-Go Boys of Cannon Films, who were responsible for some of the worst movies of the 1980s (“Invasion U.S.A.,” “Bolero,” “Hercules,” “Going Bananas”), turns out to be much more interesting than any of the stories they produced. Low bar, yes.

A key, early line in Mark Hartley’s zippy documentary comes from Mark Rosenthal, the screenwriter for “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace,” the final, awful nail in that revered superhero franchise:

I hold them in huge affection even though they ruined our movie.

That’s the dichotomy of the documentary. Golan and Globus made shitty movies but were fun guys. People who worked with them liked them. They certainly imitated them. All of the talking heads here trot out their hellbent, gesticulating Israeli Jew.

But then the movies. Holy crap, the movies.

Boobs watching boobs
It was partly a result of economics. Cannon pre-sold the international distribution rights to movies based upon the poster; then they’d make the movie with that money. It was a kind of Ponzi scheme. It was a juggling act. They had 10 to 15 balls in the air at the same time. If they were low-budget balls, they could continue to juggle pretty easily. Once they became big-budget balls (signing Sylvester Stallone to a two-picture $25 million deal), things began to drop.

But their shitty movies were also a matter of taste—in that they didn’t have any. They sincerely thought, for example, that Brooke Shields would win an Oscar for “Sahara.” At which point Hartley cuts to Shields delivering one of the worst line readings ever: “I wish we could stay here forever. But we risked our lives taking this short cut.” Cannon wound up killing her career, such as it was.

Sure, they dabbled in A-list talent. They produced John Cassavetes’ “Love Streams,” Andrei Konchalovsky’s “Maria’s Lovers” and “Runaway Train,” Franco Zeffirelli’s “Otello” with Placido Domingo.

But mostly Cannon Films went all in with lowest-common denominator crap: strong men and naked women. Think of it as boobs watching boobs. Worse, some of the most gratuitous, graphic rape scenes in the history of cinema belong to them, since they kept hiring director Michael Winner (“Death Wish II” and “3,” “The Wicked Lady”), who is described by both Marina Siritis and Alex Winter as a virtual sadist on the set. “They put a stamp on pop culture,” says “American Ninja” star Michael Dudikoff of Golan and Globus. Yes, sadly.

Does Hartley have a little too much fun with all of this? The documentary is boom boom boom. We barely hold on anything or anyone for more than 10 seconds. It’s a documentary cut the way that Cannon made movies: without looking back.

Meanwhile the doc glosses over the following:

• Cannon’s place in the history of exploitation cinema (they didn’t operate in a vaccum)
• Cannon’s negative impact on the culture
• Box office

Box office is mentioned only in general terms—whether a movie was a hit or a flop. It would have been interesting to know, for example, that “Breakin’,” the 1984 quickie on the urban dance craze, starring Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quinones, Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers and Lucinda Dickey—the “Solid Gold” dancer that Golan was determinded to make a big, big star—grossed $38 million in 1984. That made it the 18th biggest hit of the year, ahead of “The Terminator,” “All of Me,” and “The Killing Fields.” But then they made the quickier sequel, whose absurd subtitle became the title of this doc, and released it (absurdly) the week before Christmas 1984. And that was that.

They lacked even a modicum of patience. One of the more telling lines is from Stephen Tokin, who wrote the screenplay for the 1990 straight-to-video “Captain America” for Golan after the two Israeli cousins went separate ways. He says:

The problem is they loved cinema in the abstract. I don’t think, in my experience, that they really knew what it was like to love something so much that you were patient, and took the time, and went through the pain of seeing it through draft after draft after draft—admitting to yourself that it might not be right yet. 

“He’s no ninja!”
“Electric Boogaloo” gives us great tales from the trenches of low-budget filmmaking. On location in the Philippines, for example, they lost their lead for the first “American Ninja” movie, but happened to find spaghetti western star Franco Nero in a nearby Manilla restaurant and hired him. Despite the fact that he: 1) didn’t know martial arts, 2) wasn’t American, and 3) couldn’t even do a passable American accent. So he was dubbed. I also like how they had two Chuck Norris “Missing in Action” movies in the can—one good, one bad. The good one was the second one, chronologically, so they released it first, so it wouldn’t damage the brand. Then they released the other as a prequel: “Missing in Action 2: The Beginning.”

This is what they did; they wheeled and dealed.

But bottom line? They made shitty movies, ruined careers, ripped off moviegoers. They added so much awfulness to a world that doesn’t need any more of it. I would've liked a mea culpa here amid the laughter.