EDITOR’S NOTE: Death Wish 2 is when Cannon seemed to finally start figuring it out. The public still wanted Bronson, they loved the original film and the Reagan 80s demanded blood for blood. Here’s how the sequel to a movie that probably didn’t need a sequel turned out.

Paul Kersey can’t catch a break. Seriously, in this sequel, he goes through the Trials of Job all over again. You think he went through some bad stuff in the first movie? Michael Winner is just getting started putting our vigilante hero through hell on earth.

Paul has taken his daughter Jordan and moved to Los Angeles, where he’s found love again with radio reporter Geri Nichols (Bronson’s wife, Jill Ireland). However, horror and pain is never far from Kersey, so one day at a fair, some punks steal his wallet. He chases one of them down named Jiver down and teaches him a lesson. The gang — Nirvana, Punkcut, Stomper and Cutter (Laurence Fishburne) — find his address in his wallet and pay a visit to his house. They rape his housekeeper Rosario, beat Paul into la la land and steal his daughter (this time played by Robin Sherwood from Tourist Trap). After raping her, she goes even deeper into her depression and jumps out a window, falling to her death and getting impaled like she’s Nikos Karamanlis or Niko Tanopoulos.

Of course, Paul doesn’t need help from the cops. He only needs one thing: to give in to the rage within, to become the vigilante once more. Det. Frank Ochoa is back to chase him one more time, as he’s the only one who can track him.

Soon, Paul is wiping out the gang one by one, his own personal safety and relationship with Geri be damned. This is the first time we discover that Kersey is able to do magical things like make fake IDs with just a Xerox machine and talk his way into anywhere and out of anything. By the end of this film, he’s gone from a man whose life has been destroyed to a walking angel of death willing to do whatever it takes to kill everyone that’s crossed him.

To be as authentic as possible, this movie was shot in the sleaziest parts of Los Angeles, such as the abandoned and crumbling Hollywood Hotel location. Many of the film’s extras were local color who were either hired to play a bit part or just walked over to the set, such as drug addicts, drag queens, Hare Krishnas and bikers. Even crazier, Bronson’s alcoholic brother was a frequent set visitor, constantly asking for money. Bronson wanted to be careful not to give him too much cash so that he wouldn’t be mugged, but that brother was soon found dead, stabbed in the ass.

My favorite part of this was the score, composed by Jimmy Page in his first post-Led Zeppelin musical appearance here by creating the film’s soundtrack. It’s almost surreal to hear his signature guitar tone over Bronson killing rapists.

I’ll be honest: I can’t find this movie anywhere. But in my quest to cover every Cannon movie, I feel like it’s important to share an overview.

Directed by Joel Silberg, who would direct Lambada, Breakin’ and Rappin’ for Cannon, as well as the pro wrestling movie Bad Guys, from a script by Ei Tavor, who wrote Lemon Popsicle, Going Steady, Hot Bubblegum, Private Popsicle, Salsa and Lemon Popsicle: The Party Goes On, this is the tale of a gorgeous deaf-mute who has both her riding instructor and her guardian in love with her.

Yes, it has sex on a horse, and yes, I only know about this movie because of Austin Trunick’s perfect book, The Cannon Film Guide: Volume I, 1980–1984.

If you have a copy, I’d love to see this. But after reading what Austin saw, I may not be fully invested in my need to see this.

When two doctors from Tel Aviv join Doctors Without Borders, they end up going to Thailand and leaving their ten-year-old daughter Aya behind in a kibbutz (a communal settlement where all wealth is held in common and profits are reinvested) where the kids live together by age, not gender, meaning that she must go from being an only child to suddenly being surrounded by boys who even shower with her.

Made in Israel by director and writer Michal Bat-Adam, this is an early Cannon release by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus as they started to figure out what their new American studio was going to be.

Honestly, if you told me that I’d be watching a movie that has a fight between kids over a stamp collection, I would tell you that you were crazy. But if you said, well, it’s a Cannon movie, then I’d say, “Well, put it on.” I’m a completist. Movies are drugs. This one didn’t get me high, but I smoked it down to the filter and burned my finger to find out if it would.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally watched this movie as part of Salem Horror Fest on October 3, 2021 and are happy that it’s finally going to be playing select theaters and streaming from Dark Sky Films. 

Take Back the Night makes a pretty astounding choice as its main character Jane Doe isn’t completely heroic. I’ll explain in a moment.

She’s just finished her first art show, selling every work she’s created and enjoying the benefits of being a social media influencer and young person in the middle of a hustling and bustling art scene. She even helps a few people in much worse shape than her get home, but when it’s her time to leave, she’s all alone and in the exact situation women are warned to avoid. She walks down a dead-end alley and gets assaulted.

By a dark cloud of smoke and flies, no less. So when the cops ask her to detail what happened, she keeps referring to her attacker as it. But she also discovers that despite claw marks across her stomach and enough physical damage to land her in the ER, she can’t quite convince the police that she’s a victim.

And here’s where that narrative choice I began with kicks in.

Jane doesn’t tell the cops every detail. And by claiming that she was attacked by a monster — and not a man — her family’s past issues of mental problems come back in a bad way. Even her sister fails to believe her, but that may be because Jane doesn’t exactly go about things the right way. She demands attention, she rallies her social media followers, she goes to the news when the cops can’t help her. And the thing is, she just may be relishing all of the attention.

This film makes a big shot by naming itself after an organization, by tacking a hot button issue and by having a heroine who is not always reliable. That’s fascinating because this movie could have very much been a simple I Spit on Your Grave thriller instead of a movie that associates the lack of memory that assault causes and associates it with a monstrous shadow. The police and the way they handle things are just as brutal, if not more, than the creature.

Director Gia Elliot and writer Emma Fitzpatrick have taken some chances here. I really like how everyone other than Jane Doe is only known by their role or their job, as the facelessness of this situation reduces everyone to their most basic roles. This is a movie that made me think long after it was over. That’s the mark of a movie that works.

Filmmaker Brad Abrahams has just a little more than twelve minutes to try and make sense of David Dees, an artist who once painted Sesame Street book covers until 9/11 and doing his own research led the artist to discover that there was another world — at least in his world — beneath the reality that he knew. When this film finds him, he’s alone but surrounded — perhaps truly — by ghosts of everyone he’s known and a joke online, an artist of conspiracy culture in a world that either believes that Democrats eat babies or worries that climate change is about to make our horrible world that much worse.

Dees believed in every conspiracy theory, all at once, while also meditating, which kind of warped my brain, because so many religious see that as Satanic. But who can say? Kudos to this film for not simply shooting fish in a barrel and abusing its subject, basically allowing him to do that himself.

It’s hard to make a rational exploration of a man who believed that a Zionist cabal was moving his shoes. But this movie does a good job of things, even forcing its subject to confront the fact that the filmmaker who has been spending time at his house is Jewish.

Dees died from melonoma. This movie made me wonder why a man who raises bunnies, sings to elderly people and their families to give comfort when they are in hospice and meditates in a hope to experience universal love could be filled with such hate.

Do you see what I see? is playing with The Last Frankenstein during MidWest WeirdFest on Sunday, March 6 at 6:30 PM CST. You can get tickets and more information on the MidWest Weird Fest website. You can learn more about Do you see what I see? and see the movie for yourself at the official page.

Imagine if Critters with crabs, shut your mind off and just have fun, because Crabs! was the kind of goofy fun I was looking for at the end of a long week. It’s prom night, a nuclear accident has turned some horseshoe crabs into death machines and things are about to get awesome.

Phillip McCalister (Dylan Riley Snyder) and Maddy (Allie Jennings) are getting ready for the big dance, which Philip will use as an opportunity to test out the braces that he’s invented that will allow him to walk. His brother, a cop named Hunter (Bryce Durfee), discovers a half-eaten whale — a great effect — and before you know it, the brothers, Maddy, her mother (Jessica Morris) and exchange student Radu (Chase Padgett) go up against an entire army of three different crab monster species.

The first full-length movie from director and writer Pierce Berolzheimer, Crabs! is the kind of movie that has its hero make a shark mecha to battle a crab kaiju and you know, I don’t need any more than that. Allow it to chase away your bad week too.

Crabs! plays MidWest WeirdFest on Friday, March 4 at 6:00 PM CST. You can get tickets and more information on the MidWest Weird Fest website.

Mira (Vivian Ólafsdóttir) and Pétur (Gunnar Kristinsson) have left Nashville and are about to open an air bnb way out in the wilds of Iceland. Should be a peaceful escape, right? But something dark is there, something that won’t just stalk them in the daylight, something that makes Mira lay an egg and Pétur face madness, a hole in the house and warnings that his child will be evil.

The first full-length movie from director and writer Elvar Gunnarsson — and co-writers Ingimar Sveinsson and Magnus Omarsson — It Hatched plays with time and space throughout, as colors intrude to create monochromatic images of terror and dream logic takes over the normal way that reality should work.

There’s something in here about how Mira loves her child no matter what, while her husband goes from unsure to utter paranoia. It’s also a movie completely unconcerned with being normal, feeling like some type of alien comment on humanity and I mean that with the absolute highest of compliments. It’s weird and wonderful and singularly interested in being very much its own thing.

It Hatched plays MidWest WeirdFest on Saturday, March 5 at 10:00 PM CST. You can get tickets and more information on the MidWest Weird Fest website. You can learn more about It Hatched on the official Facebook page.

After Lemon Popsicle, Going Steady and Hot Bubblegum, but before Baby Love, Up Your Anchor, Young Love: Lemon Popsicle 7 Summertime Blues and Lemon Popsicle: The Party Goes On and this movie’s side sequel Private Manuevers,  what else was there to do but to join the Israeli army? That’s what Bobby, Benji and Hughie are up to next. I mean, there is a mandatory draft, so it only makes sense, except that this army allows them to cosplay Some Like It Hot.

These movies are like the Dickie Goodman of teen sex comedies, in that in one scene, you get more needledrops than an Edgar Wright film fest. Just look at the first scene, in which the boys all take turns with a local loose woman — and somehow, this happens in every Lemon Popsicle movie — while Pat Ballard sings “Mr. Sandman” the cucked husband sleeps, only to wake up and chase Hughie to “Charlie Brown” by The Coasters before the boys run to the notes of Bill Hayley and the Comets doing “See You Later, Alligator.*” Yes, just like a Dickie Goodman answer record, but in picture form.

The Sergeant Major is their new end boss and his dubbing makes the lowest grade Italian western feel like a boutique Criterion reissue. I honestly can’t believe that this played in the United States and also am even more incredulous that it took me so long to see it.

If you’re upset by trans humor, homosexual humor, military humor, sex humor, teenage humor…actually, just don’t watch this. You’re just not going to like it. I’d say for Cannon completists only, but come on, that Cannon dragon must be chased.

*Thanks to The Unknown Movies for pointing this out.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cannon didn’t make all that many slashers, but here’s one that makes no sense and is, therefore, better for it. We first ran this during our yearly slasher marathon on October 6, 2020.

How many names can one movie have? A bunch, because this is also known as X-Ray, Be My Valentine Or Else and Ward 13. It’s directed by Boaz Davidson, the man who was behind Lemon Popsicle and the depressing as anything American version The Last American Virgin. Seeing his name in the credits brought me joy, just as much as seeing the Cannon name always sends me into paroxysms of joy.

Back in 1961, a boy named Harold gave Susan a valentine and when she made fun of it with her friend David, he breaks in and hangs her friend from a hatstand.

Susan grew up to be four-time Playboy covergirl Barbi Benton (Deathstalker). Well, that’s who is playing her, but you know what I mean. She’s just gotten divorced and has to head in for some routine tests at a hospital. Literally, the minute she walks in, an evil doctor laughs while looking at pictures of her as a kid.

Better slashers have started with less.

This is the kind of movie that really uses its environment in the best way possible, as orthopedic saws send heads flying and sinks filled with acid melt faces. It’s also a Valentine’s Day-themed slasher, as the opening sets up just how much that holiday can crush the heart of disaffected young boys. It’s also about getting insurance and how they make you get tests that convince doctors that you’re dying while putting you in the steely gaze of a killer, which could be an indictment of our single-payer health care system. Or it’s just a way to get people killed for your entertainment.

Judith Baldwin, who plays a desk nurse, appeared with Tina Louise in The Stepford Wives before taking over the role Louise was best known for, Ginger Grant, in the TV movies Rescue from Gilligan’s Island and Rescue from Gilligan’s Island.

The abandoned hospital this was shot at is a great location and makes the movie much better, as does the vibe that hospitals are horrible places, where every doctor — look for Davidson as one waiting behind Susan as she uses a pay phone — and hallway is filled with dread. Credit is also due to director of photography Nicholas Josef von Sternberg, who also filmed Tourist Trap, Appointment with Fear and Slaughterhouse Rock.

Marc Behm, who wrote this with Davidson, had an all over the map writing career, scripting everything from The Beatles’ Help! to Charade and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Nana and this movie for Cannon.

If you recognize the kids from the beginning, they’re Billy Jacoby and Elizabeth Hoy who were the murderous children in Bloody Birthday, which came out the same year as this one.

You can watch this on Tubi or get the new 4K UHD release from Vinegar Syndrome, which also has Schizoid and Ultra Violet Vengeance: The Talent & Technicians of X-Ray, an extra feature that goes into the making of this slasher.

Check out The Cannon Canon episode about X-Ray here.