Those Cannon Movie Tales keep coming and this time, Menahem and Yoram were able to lure David Irving back for one more chance to direct, as well as a cast that includes Morgan Fairchild as the queen, David Holliday (the voice of Virgil Tracy on Thunderbirds) as her king and Tahnee Welch as their daughter, Princess Rosebud, who is born through the aid of Kenny Baker, the man who played R2D2, before she’s cursed by a Red Fairy played by Sylvia Miles from Midnight Cowboy to remind you this is a Cannon Movie. Yes, because she wasn’t invited to the party, she’s destined to die from a finger prick while sewing, so the king gets rid of all sewing machines and the people of his kingdom suffer the curse of bad fashion. Perhaps the White Fairy, played by Go-Go Jane Wiedlin, can save them all.

Man, Jane Wiedlin! She’s also in Clue as the singing telegram girl, a communications officer in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Joan of Arc in the first Bill & Ted movie, alongside Mike Patton and Karen Black in Firecracker and as the voice of returning Scooby-Doo character and Hex Girls drummer Dusk in several cartoons. She also directed her own film, The Pyrex Glitch.

Anyways, the White Fairy figures out how to transmute the curse of death into a centuries long sleep for the entire kingdom, which seems like putting the needs of the few or the one ahead of the many in a reverse Spock theorem but there you go. Of course a prince (Nicholas Clay, Lancelot from Excalibur and Oliver from Lady Chatterley’s Lover) comes and saves everyone with a kiss.

Oh yeah — the master elf is played by Shaike Ophir, who was Kassam in King Solomon’s Mines, Father Nicholas in The Delta Force and Lelz in America 3000. This was his last role and he was the first mime ever in Israel.

Want some more facts? This was written by Michael Berz, who played Kenny in Cannon’s Hot Resort. He also was behind the Cannon Snow White. To save money — Cannon style — this was shot simultaneously with Hansel and Gretel, which sounds like a good idea, but both crews were fighting over the equipment, costumes and sets throughout.

Meanwhile, Daryl Hannah’s sister Page — she’s one of the girls killed by The Raft in Creepshow 2 — was fired after a week of shooting and replaced by Welch. Then all of the fairy costumes got stolen. And then David Irving had just a week to prep for this movie after filming went long on another Cannon Movie Tale, Rumpelstiltskin. That may be why he referred to this film as a nightmare.

Of all the Cannon Movie Tales, this might be my favorite. Admittedly, the bar is not high.

Leslie Stevens created The Outer Limits, directed Esperanto language Incubus and wrote est: The Steersman Handbook, a book of New Age philosophy. He also said, “There is nothing wrong with being a hack writer. I would point with pride to the inspired hacking of Shakespeare, Michelangelo—you can go through a big list.”

This one stars Robert Ginty as U.S. Secret Agent Elliott Cromwell, who has been tasked with finding the mysterious terrorist known as Founder. He’s joined by NYC airport cop Terry O’Shea (Victoria Barrett, who is in Cannon’s Hot Resort, Hot Chili and America 3000) and Hong Kong cop Major Chan (Shakti, who married Stevens the year after this was made).

You also get a cast with Sylvester McCoy, the seventh Dr. Who, as well as Mary Tamm (who was Romana, a companion to the Tom Baker Dr. Who), Trevor Martin (who played Dr. Who on stage and man, this whole thing is seeming like a movie made inside the Tardis), Barry Foster (Hitchcock’s Frenzy), Edwin Craig (who says “What’s with that stupid grin?” before the Jack Nicholson Joker kills him in Tim Burton’s Batman) and probably the best reason to watch this movie, Samantha Fox, who if you were a teenager alive in 1987 you completely knew. Perhaps onanismically, which is not a word.

This movie is violently not good, despite hopes that Ginty would bring it upward in quality. Instead, you have three different uniformed cops running about and a movie that just crawls to its conclusion, which at least has some stuff blow up real good.

John Anderson (Colin Friels) has a passion for jazz, which will find him traveling from the outback Western Australia to the jazz clubs of Paris where he hopes to meet his idol trumpeter Billy Cross (Miles Davis).

Probably the best part of this movie is the opening, as Davis and his band play a set on a remote airstrip in the Australian outback as the locals watch.

This film has some basis in reality, as Australia’s best jazz saxophonist Bernie McGann would often leave his mailman job to practice out in the wild.

Directed by Rolf de Heer (Bad Boy Bubby) and written by Marc Rosenberg, who had worked with de Heer on Encounter at Raven’s Gate, this is one of the last filmed performances of Davis, who also scored the film along with Michel Legrand.

Dingo has been screening at arthouses across America but will be available on digital and DVD as of April 12 from Dark Star Pictures.

Filmed in Harriston, Ontario, Canada — hometown of star Chad Tailor — this movie uses some found footage to show the story of a documentary crew who has come to town to learn how and why a dead woman rose from her coffin during her funeral and behaved like some possessed demon.

Seeing how this girl is the childhood friend of one of the filmmakers, this combines that hoary nugget we see so often — someone trying to go back home — with possession and found footage, which is what it takes to get a film streaming.

Godforsaken was directed and written by Ali Akbar Akbar Kamal (who directed 2016’s Faceless and is working on a movie titled Once Upon a Time In Afghanistan) who said, “Growing up in a religious community in the Middle East, I always had a fascination with other worldly beings. As a child I would often hear things like “You will burn for eternity if you commit a sin” or “You will go blind if you question God.” All of which struck terror in my heart.

As a horror fan I always found that feeling of terror to be captivating. The fear of unknown beings that hold unlimited power over us. I wrote Godforsaken with that fear in mind. Our objective was to make a movie that touches on those feelings but most importantly I wanted to make something that was fun and exciting to watch.”

Godforsaken will premiere on the Terror Films Channel on March 25 followed by a worldwide digital release April 8.

How did Cannon decide to take on so many movies? And which ones? Because Too Much came out in 1987, a year during which I estimate they released thirty-three movies. Can you imagine a studio releasing a new movie almost every week?

Susie (Bridgette Anderson, who was Savannah in Savannah Smiles and was also in the 1983 version of Nightmares and played young Mae West in the TV movie of her life; sadly, she died at the age of 21 from mixing alcohol and heroin, way to bring this article down early, huh?) and her parents are in Japan to visit her father’s business partner Tetsuro (Akio Ishimuro from Ultraman Gaia).

Tetsuro creates a robot friend for her that she names Too Much because, well, he’s Too Much. You remember Max Steel’s Robo Force? Those big suction cup robots that came out right before Transformers and looked hopelessly antiquated as they warmed the pegs? Well, Too Much makes them look like sleek Hajime Sorayama illustrations by comparison.

Yet for some reason. Dr. Finkel wants the robot. Obviously, there have to be better ones, like Johnny 5. But no, that won’t do. So when Susie runs away with TM and a Japanese kid named Mata, he hunts for her. And man, Japanese cops are wild, because they open fire on the robot at one point, even surrounded by gas pumps.

Cannon being Cannon, this was directed by Eric Rochat, who is probably best known for making multiple adaptions of The Story of O. Yes, they put this man in charge of a kid movie. A kid movie that by all accounts never played in the U.S. and had a very limited VHS release.

So that means I can totally spoil this movie: Susie, Mata and TM end up hiding in a department store that just so happens to have a robot fair. Everything turns into a robot uprising where cute remote control toys battle the police, which I am all for, and the cops use cattle prods to kill the cute toys until a couple of hundred kids in shirts that say “I love TM” — how did they have time to get these clothes made so quickly — and swarm the assembled mad scientist henchmen and the police, raising a flag over the store and the evil doctor ends up electrocuting himself as our female protagonist just walks away, smiling and loving white privilege.

Directed and written by David Irving, this is the third Cannon Movie Tale I’ve seen with Clive Revill in it. It also has Sid Caesar as the Emperor, Robert Morse as the tailor who attempts to make his clothes and Lysette Anthony (Lyssa from Krull) as Princess Gilda.

With these Cannon takes on fairy tales, you get long takes on what should be five minutes before bed tales, but hey, the costumes look great and there’s always lots of singing. They’re meant for young viewers, but so was Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre and that appealed to young and old alike. Then again, the reason for this series seems to be bringing work to Israel.

Obviously, everyone knows this story, but there’s an additional romance between Gilda and the tailor’s son (Jason Carter). You should also keep an eye out for Cannon’s reliable supporting actor Yehuda Efroni, who started working with Golan and Globus all the way back when he was in Operation Thunderbolt and The Uranium Conspiracy. No matter where in the world a Cannon movie was made, Yehuda showed up.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Oliver Reed is Captain Shanks, a drunken and rambling slave ship captain who is playing the exact role that he’s meant for!

Herbert Lom is Le Farge, who has murdered the governor and taken over the Caribbean island of St. Joseph’s!

Claudia Udy from Savage Dawn, Joy is Arabella, the sexually obsessive daughter who lusts after the slaves and any man around!

Eartha Kitt is Naomi. her business partner that runs the brothel on the island and who is starting a revolt.

Annabel Schofield from Bloodtide is Honore Juno, Le Farge’s wife who is looking to get into bed with anyone else!

And Patrick Warburton — yes, Puddy — is the Scottish nobleman who sexes everyone up and gets lashed in the public square with the brutal Dragonard whip!

So here’s where my confusion comes in. There’s 1988’s Dragonard with the same cast and this movie, but some people write online that they’re the same movie and others write that this is the first film and the 1988 one is the sequel. Still others claim that this is the sequel and the 1988 movie comes first, which makes no sense and then you say, “Well, Cannon did the same thing with Missing In Action and Mission In Action 2: The Beginning.”

Based on the series of books by Rupert Gilchrist, this was written by Rick Marx, who wrote the adult series Taboo, as well as Doom Asylum, Warrior Queen, Gor, Outlaw of Gor and Platoon Leader. That’s starting to make this a lot more clear, right? It was co-written by the film’s producer, Harry Alan Towers and oh yes, it all makes sense now. I was wondering why this all felt like something Jess Franco should have made.

It was directed by Gérard Kikoïne, who made adult films like Never Enough and The Tale of Tiffany Lust with Radley Metzger, as well as softcore movies like Lady Libertine and Love Circles, which definitely played Cinemax After Dark. He also made the Jekyll and Hyde riff Edge of Sanity which starred Anthony Perkins and the Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasence-starring Buried Alive. 

So yeah — I think that this is the first film in the series, that there are two and that they’re so similar that anyone could make that mistake. I kind of love that Towers became part of the Cannon family at this point, making Lightning the White Stallion, Gor, Platoon Leader, Outlaw of Gor and American Ninja 3 with the mainline Cannon continuity, then producing River of Death, Ten Little Indians, Delta Force 3: The Killing Game and The Hitman for the Ovidio G. Assonitis-led Cannon Productions. He also produced Phantom of the Opera and Dance Macabre with Menahem, so he played no favorites in the breakup of Cannon.

Seriously, he should have hired Franco for this one. It would have been so much sleazier. Hell, he should have hired Franco for the Gor movies while he was at it.

Based on the novel by Junichiro Tamizaki, which was filmed once before by Keigo Kimura in 1962, Diary of a Mad Old Man tells the story of Marcel (Ralph Michael, Dead of Night), the mad old man of the title, who suffers from chronic muscle disease and begins to fixate on his daughter-in-law Simone (Beatie Edney, Highlander) after the death of his wife Denise.

He puts his health on the line by trying to win her, even building her a pool to watch her swim. And after she allows him to touch her, he only has one wish: to become her slave.

Director Lili Rademakers was the wife of the Netherlands’ most prominent filmmaker Fons Rademakers. She was the assistant director of several of his movies — as well as shooting second unit on La Dolce Vita — and only directed this movie and Menuet.

Cannon made what seems like a few hundred movies in 1987, but they were giving movies that took chances an opportunity to be seen around the world.

Formed in the summer of 1989 by singer Mina (born Keith before coming out as transgender in 2011 and transitioning) Caputo, bassist Alan Robert and guitarist Joey Z, Life of Agony grew from a hardcore band that traveled the east coast to build a following to charting at No. 27 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart with their song “Weeds” before Caputo left the band.

Life of Agony re-formed with Caputo singing in 2014 (although drummer Sal Abruscato was replaced by Veronica Bellino for 2019’s Sounds of Scars) and this film shows the journey that the band has taken, with Caputo statin, “We’ve never avoided tough conversations and we don’t pretend to have all the answers. But this film is a roadmap with many great lessons. It shows a ton of vulnerability…moments of falling downward, and those times where we rise strong.”

“A lifetime’s worth of struggle and triumph led to the making of this film,” added guitarist Joey Zampella. “This release is something we’ll be forever proud of.”

I remember talking to fans of the band when Caputo transitions and how they were surprised, but metal fans can be more accepting than most audiences. The film doesn’t hide from this moment in their history, nor in how Caputo’s family is still trying to change with the transformation.

The entire band shares how they’ve used the band to escape domestic violence, substance abuse and depression over nearly thirty years of playing.

Director Leigh Brooks also made Terrorvision: Wired Up and Scary, which showed him and an intern on the 20th anniversary tour of that band.

You may or may not be interested in this band, but their very human story, as well as the ways that adulthood has allowed them to better connect with their families and approach painful situations with open hearts is quite interesting and well-made. I didn’t expect to remain as invested as I was throughout and am please to report that the running time of this movie flew by. It’s a powerful film.

The Sound of Scars is available on Cable VOD and Digital HD from Raven Banner Entertainment and Cinedigm. You can learn more about the band on their official website and about the movie at its site.