(Australia, 106 min.)
Dir. Mark Hartley
Programme: Midnight Madness (International Premiere)
Found footage films might
employ one of the most tired devices in filmmaking, but the aesthetic works
wonders for coaxing a mainstream audience into appreciating documentary form. These
mockumentary shriek-fests have been a staple of the horror genre long since the
days of Cannibal Holocaust and The Blair Witch Project, so it is fitting
move for a full-fledged documentary to illuminate the history behind the
rambunctious beach ball throwing of B-movie fans. The madness of the midnight
crowd, however, surely provides the ideal audience for the zany history
chronicled in the off-the-wall doc Electric
Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, which comes to theatres
this September after having its International Premiere at the Toronto
International Film Festival last year. If you love hunkering down in the
basement with a pile of old VHS tapes at two in the morning, this one’s for
you!
Electric Boogaloo chronicles the rise and fall of Cannon Films with a riotous assemblage of archival hits and talking heads. The film is a who's who of horror greats as directors like Tobe Hooper and a roster of B-grade stars explain the passion but comparatively poor artistry that launched (and destroyed) Cannon Films. “They put everything imaginable in their films except for good taste,” says one interviewee as he reflects on and laughs at the buffoonish brains behind the operation.
Director Mark Hartley has a lot of fun creating another
voice, that of Cannon founders Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who don’t speak in
interviews but appear in hilarious archival interviews and behind-the-scenes
excerpts. (Hence the found footage element of this doc.) These larger-than-life
producers are almost cartoonish, but Electric
Boogaloo makes a surprising, although not entirely convincing, case that
Golan and Globus are unsung pioneers of independent film.
The film chronicles the rise of Cannon Films in America
after the friends made Israel’s biggest box-office smash, a sex-crazed comedy
called Lemon Popsicle. The raunchy
film, which Golan describes as being so controversial in Israel that one friend
of his mother actually spat on the floor when his mother mentioned that he made
the film, met a simple balance of supply and demand, and tapped into a market
ripe for exploitation. Lemon Popsicle
proves that sex sells, though, and Electric
Boogaloo shows that Cannon Films invested as much skin in their flicks as
legally possible. The rowdiness (and, largely, the spitting) characterizes
Cannon Films as it moves to America and provides trash to eager audiences.
The tongue-in-cheek recollection of the Cannon Films family
regales the audience with stories of making a B-movie machine as the producers
conceived films on the fly and rushed them throughout production, and churned
them out for distribution. The formula works, since the modestly priced films
pose a favourable cost/benefit risk, and Cannon only needs a few big hits to
thrive, which it found with the Death
Wish sequels, American Ninja, and
other cinematic dunces destined for the bargain bin. (They even dappled in art
films so long as they could throw in a nipple or two.) While Golan and Globus
have zero artistic inclination, they have a respectable level of business-savvy
to turn the film into a cash cow. Hartley moves from entertainment to business
as Electric Boogaloo gives an
insider’s glimpse at Cannes deals, distribution angles, and corporate
re-invention in the name of bringing sex and violence to the masses.
Electric Boogaloo,
however, makes a play with the conventional talking heads format and archival
footage to interrogate the soundness of Cannon Films’ strategy. These films are
clearly disposable exploitations of sex, violence, and Z-grade effects, so the
necessity of Cannon films is questionable in an industry that is equal parts
business and art. Buxom stars tell of degradation and embarrassment on set,
while crewmembers and creative collaborators remember horrible working
conditions and the producers’ blatant ignorance to the artistic process. Electric Boogaloo is an all-you-can-eat
buffet for audiences enamoured with cultural trash, but Hartley proposes that
no film empire can ever endure if quality fails to be a part of its business
model.
Movies modeled on trash might be fun for a while, but this
retrospective look at the collapse of Cannon Films feels especially relevant in
coming on the heels of an especially forgettable year for summer movies. Audiences
can stand derivative garbage for only so long, as evidenced by the dwindling
sales of tickets for tent-pole sequels (which abuse 3D premiums like Cannon Films
exploits breasts), so Electric Boogaloo
anticipates shifts in the independent film sphere ready for audiences eager to
see filmmakers try something new. Found footage films might be gateway drugs
for horror fans to test the waters of documentary film, and Electric Boogaloo might be just the
ticket for easing doc fans into the zany world of the midnight crowd.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Electric Boogaloo opens in limited release beginning September 18th.
(Reviewed at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.)
