Producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus were famous (or infamous) for many things, but a stringent approach to quality filmmaking was hardly one of them. At the height of their success in the 1980s, the Israeli cousins, and their company Cannon Films, were synonymous with B-movies of just about every kind: Chuck Norris action flicks, sex comedies and tawdry slasher horrors. The company was eventually brought down by its fast-and-loose approach to film production, but left behind a colossal back catalogue and, as Electric Boogaloo proves, extraordinary anecdotes.
Director Mark Hartley’s love of B-movies fuelled the feature-length documentaries Not Quite Hollywood and Machete Maidens Unleashed!, and Electric Boogaloo offers a similarly colourful, frequently hilarious oral history of two highly unorthodox producers. Molly Ringwald, Richard Chamberlain and Dolph Lundgren are among the starry contributors, but the best anecdotes come from the directors and technicians who had to deal with Cannon’s chaotic methods. Electric Boogaloo is a relentlessly absorbing, lovingly crafted document from the era that taste forgot.
Ryan Lambie
Den of Geek
Please note that the festival is for over 18s only
