2014 saw the release of two very different documentaries about Menahim Golan and Yorum Globus, the Israeli-born cousins and filmmaking partners who took on Hollywood in the 1980s with their upstart studio Cannon Films.
Mark Hartley's Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films focused on the trashy exploitation films they pumped out on low budgets and the often outrageous behind-the-scenes stories of the company's rollercoaster rise and fall.
The Go-Go Boys, subtitled "The Inside Story of Cannon Films," is the authorized portrait of the cousins: produced by Yorum Globus' production company and guided by lengthy interviews with both Golan, the filmmaking side of the duo, and Globus, who handled the financial side.
Both gave filmmaker Hilla Medalia full cooperation. It's no surprise that this is a much more respectful portrait. Medalia explores their great success in Israel (where they produced both popular and critical hits) and their brash entry into Hollywood with a string of low budget martial arts movies with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Michael Dudikoff and violent action films with Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson but gives equal attention to artistic ambitions of Cannon with such productions as John Cassavettes' Love Streams, the Oscar-nominated Barfly, and a Jean-Luc Godard film signed with a contract written on a cloth napkin over dinner.
At its most successful, Cannon was selling films all over the world and expanding its annual production schedule at a breakneck pace, but its expansion overextended the studio, led to the personal and professional break-up of the cousins, and finally ended in the studio's demise.
Medalia accepts Golan's self-aggrandizing commentary at face value and makes a (rather weak) case for the studio's place in pop culture. The film only briefly acknowledges their reputation as disreputable schlockmeisters and stops short of blaming the two for the collapse of Cannon or for the company's long string of flops.
While neither as entertaining nor as informative as Electric Boogaloo, this largely celebratory portrait makes a fine companion piece, adding details and reminding viewers just how powerful and far-reaching the studio was in its heyday. The film is not rated and includes footage from Cannon's library of exploitation films that features brief clips of nudity and explicit violence. A strong option purchase. Aud: C, P.