June 8: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Cannon! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

This is totally kind of a cheat. I’ve watched nearly every Cannon movie. All 162 Golan and Globus Cannon movies. The 35 post-Menahem Ovidio G. Assonitis, Yoram Globus and Christopher Pearce-led Cannon. Yeah, I’m missing eight of the movies that exist between the Dewey-Friedland and Golan and Globus Cannon, but I’ve seen all 56 of the original Cannon-released films (Take Her By Surprise through The Swap), the eight initial movies Golan and Globus brought to Cannon (American Raspberry, American Nitro, Operation Thunderbolt, Gas Pump Girls, Incoming Freshmen, Savage Weekend, Going Steady and The Magician of Lublin) and the 39 movies Menahem released as 21st Century.

But there’s always more Cannon.

There were more than forty movies released on video in the Pathé era.

Sixty-nine movies not produced by Cannon but that were theatrically distributed by them (like Contamination, Highlander and, yes, When Father Was Away on Business).

Twenty-three Pathé era theatrical releases.

And two hundred and fifty plus movies that Cannon released on their various home video labels like Cannon / MGM/UA Home Video, HBO/Cannon Video, Cannon Video, Cannon / Guild Home Video, Cannon / Rank Video, Cannon Screen Entertainment Limited, Cannon Classics, Cannon / Warner Home Video, Cannon/VMP, Cannon Screen Entertainment, Scotia/Cannon, Cannon International, Cannon/ ECV, Cannon / Showtime, Cannon / United Film, Cannon / Isabod, Cannon / Mayco and so many more.

That’s where Girls of the White Orchid AKA Death Ride to Osaka comes in.

This was based on a report by ABC’s 20/20 about women who go to Japan to work as entertainers but end up becoming sex workers for the Yakuza. NBC wanted producer Leonard Hill to use Melinda Culea from The A-Team but he wanted Jennifer Jason Leigh. He did use two actors who were currently on NBC shows, Ann Jillian (who was on Jennifer Slept Here at the time this was made) and Thomas Byrd (who was on the show Boone).

Director Jonathan Kaplan started his directing career making New World movies like Night Call Nurses and The Student Nurses and ended up making more socially acceptable stuff like The Accused. This would be in the middle of all that and unites the exploitation and the art and makes a TV movie out of it.

Jennifer Jason Lee is Carol Heath, a waitress who has come to Japan to be a new wave singer and, well, you can imagine how that worked out. Ann Jillian plays Marilyn, who made the same journey years ago and stuck around, and Carolyn Seymour plays the woman who runs the hostess bar, Madame Mori. Yes, this is pretty much a Mr. Mom reunion with those two actresses. Plus, Mako and Soon-Tek Oh show up. They take Carol’s passport, the U.S. embassy refuses to help and perhaps only her American ex-boyfriend Don (Thomas Byrd) can save her.

Brad Fieder did a pretty fun synth score for this and wow, Steve Miller’s “Abracadabra”” pops up and you forget this was a TV movie. You know, unless you watched the international cut of this which has a few moments of nudity and sex. The Tubi edition has them, as does the Fun City Editions Primetime Panic box set.

You can watch this on Tubi.