The Cannon Group Inc.
The Cannon Group Inc. was a movie production company that made low-budget movies for more than 25 years. This is actually quite impressive considering that almost all of them sucked.
Just The Facts
- The Cannon Group Inc. was group of movie production companies; the most famous of these was Cannon Films.
- Produced low budget movies from 1967 until their bankruptcy in 1993.
- Released 12 movies with the word "American" in the title, including all entries in the far from critically acclaimed American Ninja series.
The Pre-Golan-Globus Years ('67-'79)
In 1967, Dennis Friedland and Chris Dewey started producing movies and formed the production company The Cannon Group Inc. Since they had no experience in movie-making, they decided to take the easy way out and started producing movies where soft-core porn filled in for lack of a story. They however made one movie actually considered good, the Oscar nominated Joe.
Against all odds, people (read: men) eventually lost some interest in seeing only boobs for 90 minutes. Since Cannon still chose to produce movies like Cheerleaders Beach Party and numerous sequels to The Happy Hooker, Firedland and Dewey were eventually forced to sell.
The Golan-Globus Years ('80-'89)
Gods amongst men.
In 1980, cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus bought the company for $500,000, about the budget of a normal Cannon movie. They started buying the worst scripts money could get them and put them into production. Strangely, this is considered to be the "golden age" of Cannon Pictures. It is also the age when Cannon Pictures had no less the three of the 5 Movie Martial Artists That Lost a Deathmatch to Dignity under contract.
Action movies: In the 80s, Cannon changed their MO from boobs to action movies and signed up action stars Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris who became poster boys for Cannon Pictures. Over a period of seven years, they made eight movies with Bronson and seven movies starring Chuck Norris. Michael Dudikoff and a young Jean Claude Van Damme also lurked around and made some movies for them. For unknown reasons, Sylvester Stallone decided to take a break from making successful action/boxing movies to make, well, movies for Cannon Pictures. The result was two movies, a set of action figures, a Hungarian comic book and nine Razzie Award nominations. For more on Stallone's Cannon movies check out: The 7 Stalloneyest Moments of Stallone's Film Career.
Movies actually considered being good: Even a broken watch is right at least two times a day, and Cannon Pictures was no exception. After 14 years without any critical acclaim, Cannon Pictures decided that enough was enough, and that they had it with those motherfucking sna- just forget that last part. So in 1984, they produced John Cassavetes Love Streams. In '85, they made Runaway Train which grabbed several Oscar nominations. The year after, their Dutch movie De Aanslag won the Best Foreign Picture Oscar. Finally, in '87, they released Barfly and subsequently went back to making only crap.
Comic Book Movies: In 1987, Cannon Pictures decided that to make movies based on comic books would be a good idea. For anybody else that might have been the case. (Joel Scumacher not included).
They used every dime they had on purchasing the rights to Superman and Masters of the Universe, and made Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Masters of the Universe. They also planned to make a Spider-Man movie starring Bob Hoskins as Doc Ock, Stan Lee as J. Jonah Jameson, Dolph Lundgren as Green Goblin and some guy named Scott Leva as Spider-Man. Fortunately, their other comic book movies failed miserably and it was scrapped.
For more on Cannon Pictures comic book movies check out: 8 (Pointless) Laws All Comic Book Movies Follow
Sequels: Movies that make a lot of money often get numerous sequels that also make a lot of money. The Cannon Group wanted in on this, but unfortunately none of their movies ever made ridiculous amounts of money, at least not ridiculously large. This was, of course, not an impossible obstacle for Golan and Globus. They bought the sequel rights to several movies produced by other companies. This gave the world sequels like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Exterminator 2, Superman IV and several others.
Michael Dudikoff Presents: In the late 80s, Cannon Pictures started a series where Michael Dudikoff would present a European action movie. Because, when choosing what movie to watch, who wouldn't listen to washed up martial arts movie hero Michael Dudikoff?
The Just Globus Years (90-93)
When Golan left, the quality of Cannon Pictures movies actually managed to get worse. The budgets got even smaller, and the stories more terrible. They still managed to give the world another three Chuck Norris movies and financed the first season of his television series.
They also managed to give us five Michael Dudikoff movies including one, of two, new American Ninja sequels. Sometime between finishing the production the Jeff Speakman--we don't know who that is either--action vehicle Street Knight and releasing American Cyborg: Steel Warrior, The Cannon Group Inc. went bankrupt.
I always knew I would be entertained by a Cannon film, especially if it was Golan-Globus. "Dingo ate my baby!"
ReplyI liked some of those movies....and that makes me sad inside
ReplyAnd the hispanic sidekicks from Dirty Harry and Cobra played by the same actor!
ReplyCripes...Street Knight. The first screenplay I ever wrote, I took notes on that movie for 90 minutes so I'd have every terrible action movie cliche handy to spoof.
ReplyI'm pretty sure every action cliche not invented by 1980 was invented by Cannon Pictures.
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/cant believe you dissed mannequin. Kim Cattrall was in Big Trouble in Little China and that makes anything she ever touched worthy of existence. except maybe that weird 'how to be a happy couple' book she did with her husband right before they divorced.
Notice Dudikoff's eyes scanning the cue card in each of those clips. Classic.
ReplyMannequin was more like "Mighty Aphrodite" than Splash.
ReplyMay be, but "Mighty Aphrodite" was released after "Mannequin". The point of the chart was to show how Cannon ripped off successful movies and made their own shittier version of it, and it's kinda hard to rip off a movie that was released 3 years after their bankruptcy.
May I include the worst film I EVER saw - Field of Honor. Wtf, an extreme close-up shot of a man's foot as his sock was being removed made my life a nightmare for years to come. I've been outthinking it ever since. s**t, absolute shit. At least the actor playing the soldier moved on to other things.
ReplyYou said movie knock-offs, you said The Asylum. Just check their filmography, it's unbelievable:
Replyhttp://www.imdb.com/company/co0043571/
Another production company worth checking out is "Full Moon Entertainment", perhaps the SciFi/Horror version of Cannon.
ReplyThey made (and continue to make) such awesome classics as Trancers, Puppet Master, and Subspecies. They are headed by Charles Band - a B Movie director extrordinaire!
Perphaps they deserve a Cracked article themselves?
What???? How could you forget to mention the greatest Cannon Film of all "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8TH Dimension"
ReplyA) Because "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" was produced by the short lived production company Sherwood, and was only released by Cannon because Sherwood went bankrupt. It is therefor, per se, not a Cannon movie.
B) The greatest Cannon film of all is "Invasion U.S.A", not because it is a good movie, by all means, but because it so perfectly captures the spirit of Cannon Films.
funny how Over The Top gets a blu ray release while movies like Jaws, Jurassic Park, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Back To The Future still haven't
Replymaybe spielberg needs to just flip his trucker hat around backwards. it's like a switch.
Didn't Vestron do Joe? Or was that just the home video realease?
ReplyVestron never produced any movies, they only released them to VHS. They also got founded 10 or so years after the release of Joe.
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man i used to love Cannon movies when i was a kid. what the hell was I thinking. mustve been the sobriety messing with my mind. and this article loses a few Coolpoints for not knowing who Jeff Speakman is. dude was actually badass.
ReplyTo you and every other Jeff Speakman fan-boy who complaints about that Cracked doesn't know who he is: I know who he is I even own a movie of his, the one where William Shatner tries to overthrow the government. But I assumed that most readers would not be familiar with Jeff Speakman and wrote a joke about it.
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Replywait wait wait, "relatively attractive"? in the 80's Karen Allen was one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood.
ReplyHonestly, if you had defended Melody Anderson status as more than "relatively attractive" it would have been understandable, but Karen Allen belongs in the "he could have done better" category together with Margot Kidder's Lois Lane.
Hey, Karen Allen is friggin' adorable. I'd like to relatively stick my penis into her and relatively have the best time of my relative life! Yes, then AND now.
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