EDITOR’S NOTE: Over the next several days, I’ll be covering movies either directed by Menahem Golan or produced by Golan and Globus before they bought Cannon.

Directed by Menahem Golan, who wrote the script with Joseph and Yosef Gross (The Magician) with Yorum Globus producing, Ha-Pritza Hagdola is the story of Israel at war with Egypt — although never said — and the POWs of the El Muzzir prison, which is lorded over by the brutal Major Heikal (Joseph Shiloach).

Five Israeli commandos are being kept there and despite the UN attempting to see if they are being treated in accordance to the Geneva Convention, After trying to break the men with firing squad fakeouts where he ties them up, blindfolds them and repeatedly plays gun noises over a loudspeaker, one of them, Eli (Yehoram Gaon) gets away and back to Israel. He’s angry that no one is doing anything to save his fellow men. He steals an ambulance and goes to speak with his former leader Beno (Rick Jason). He agrees to get together some of his other retired commandos and rescue the men.

While all this is going on, Life Magazine reporter Abe Koleman (Peter Brown) is buttering up to Heikal and planning an article that will show the improve side of Egypt and how they treat prisoners. It turns out that some of the guards are on the side of Israel and have given Koleman photos of abuses which he uses to get the interview and into the prison itself. Of course, he’s on the side of the commandos and before you can say The Delta Force, grenades and bullets and bodies are flying all over the place.

Also known as Hostages in the Gulf, The Big Escape and From Hell to Victory, this is an intriguing early Menahem film that predates his later Cannon action mastery.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Also known as Prison Ship, Adventures of Taura, Part 1, Starslammer: The Escape and Prison Ship Star Slammer, this Fred Olen Ray-directed film was shot over a few days in a converted grocery store. Some reports say that this was tacked on to the shooting of Biohazard, which thanks to Matty at The Schlock Pit, I know is untrue. I do now know that uniforms came from Galaxy of Terror and other costumes came from Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn. 

Fred Olen Ray has been namking LEED certified green films since 1986.

Don’t believe me? He saved even more money by using scenes from Battle Beyond the Stars and Dark Star, which at least was somewhat authorized as this movie shares a producer, Jack H. Harris, with that John Carpenter early effort.

Captain Bantor (Ross Hagen), the Sovereign (Lindy Sykes) and the Inquisitor (Aldo Ray) have all come to the planet Arous to stop an uprising, which causes them to cross paths with a mine owner named Taura (Sandy Brooke). She’s had a good relationship with the citizens of this planet, unlike Bantor and his people. When he tries to forcibly take her mine, she fights back and soon disintegrates his hand.

This movie isn’t called Space Mine, you know? So she’s soon taken to Warden Exene’s (Marya Gant) Vehemence, where Taura must constantly battle for her life, yet soon wins over most of the other prisoners and makes a friend in Mike (Susan Stokey). Bantor returns, now insane, and tries to make the prison into a zombie army, which means that Taura has to fight him again.

When a catfight breaks out during a meal, the guards call in the monster from The Deadly Spawn, which is a very frugal and well-received choice. This is broken down into chapters — like Jailbreak 3000 — which I really wish were their own movies and that this had a long and storied history of films. A sequel called Chain Gang Planet was planned. I wish it had been made.

It also has an amazing bad girl named Muffy, of all things, played by Dawn Wildsmith, who was in all manner of wonderful films like The Phantom Empire and Evils of the Night. When we first meet her, she’s torturing a prisoner with leeches — “Daddy, not the bore worms!” — and then takes a bite out of the leeches! Plus she has an eyepatch!

I want to live in this future, a place where John Carradine shows up as a hologram judge, Jack H. Harris’ voice comes out of intercoms, Ray plays a small robot, his son shows up in at least three parts, all of the women have thongs on and yes, that is Bobbie Bresee in a brief scene. There are people who have given this poor reviews and they are sad folks, those you should never party with because they’d stare at you while you smoke a joint and shake their heads.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Samon Kamiyama is a yoriki, one of the helper class samurai, working for the Minami-machi magistrate. He’s been sent to investigate the Denzû-machi prison by chief elder Abe Isenokami and is nearly killed when he’s thought to be Mushuku Sahêji, a jailhouse snitch. He’s saved by another prisoner, Sanji, and gets back to learning about shipping improprieties conducted inside the jail by organized crime.

A series of Japanese TV movies about “Samon from the Hell,” this somehow ended up in the ownership of 21st Century. How and why, I have no idea. It was directed and written by Tokuzô Tanaka, who directed several Zatoichi movies and plenty of TV movies, as well as The Whale God.

Has anyone else seen this?

You can watch this on YouTube.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn

Ahhh, to be young again…when going to see a horror movie that you waited months for meant something.

The Substance is a rare moment in recent years where a movie exceeds expectations. The film’s marketing tricks audiences into thinking they’re seeing an elevated horror film and then punches them in the balls like horror movies did in the old days.

Elisabeth Sparkle, star of a popular morning exercise show, ages out of her job. Out of desperation, she turns to a black-market beauty treatment called “the substance,” which splits Sparkle into herself as she is now, and a younger, more “fantastic” version of herself, named Sue.

Of course, the treatment requires a very specific regiment that must be followed and “the balance must be respected.” Sparkle’s consciousness must hop bodies ever seven days without exception. The husk on the floor is set up with an IV drip to keep them going in the interim. Kind of like a corporeal timeshare. It’s not long before the single consciousness splits into two and form a rivalry that ultimately leads to self- abuse.

Demi Moore shines as brightly as she ever did here, carrying much of the film alone in a room by herself. Kudos to the casting director for casting the three love interests to reflect Moore’s own personal life. The nerdy guy she went to grade-school with named Fred (her first husband was a nerd named Freddie Moore), Sue’s hot hookup (an Ashton Kutcher look alike) and a guy who resembles Bruce Willis circa 1996.

Demi deserves an award just for all the practical makeup effects she endured let alone all the closeups of her body. Let’s talk about the close-ups. This film is filled with them. Right now, some freshman film student is licking their lips while writing about the film’s excessive use of the “male gaze.” But it isn’t. The Substance was directed by a woman. So whose gaze is it that lingers lustfully over Sue’s nubile young body in her pink leotard? Why, it’s everyone’s, of course. Every audience member takes away from film what they bring in with them. Women watching this film could just as easily look at the close-ups of Sue and wish they had those thighs.

Internalized misogyny aside, humans are inevitably a visual species. We automatically like attractive people, regardless of whether they’re good people or not. See Ted Bundy, Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise for reference.

I have vivid memories of the first time I ever envied Demi Moore’s hair. It was 1982 when I was ten years old, and I saw her played Jackie Templeton on General Hospital. I’ve loved her fashion sense and her acting ever since, although I never reached her level of awesome hair. Imitation in adolescent and pre-adolescent girls offers them an outlet to explore their own individuality that breaks off as we grow into young adults. In a sense, the substance allows Elisabeth to re-experience this phenomenon in the form of Sue.

Kids are being kids, Sue eventually decides she doesn’t want to go back every seven days as prescribed, and things go awry quickly. But it’s the older version who suffers. Because everything we do to our bodies in youth, we ultimately pay for later in life. Just ask my shin splints.

Along with penning a very smart screenplay, director Coralie Fargeat, herself 48, has clearly done her horror movie homework and absorbed the lessons of Basket Case, The Fly, The Elephant Man, Frankenhooker, Tetsuo and Carrie well. The film never feels preachy or pretentious. It manages to avoid feeling like a tired rip-off, despite using some sets, camera angles, and editing choices that audiences have seen before.

In fact, the art house crowd might feel like they’ve coaxed into a bait-and-switch during the last act, when the film spews more blood than the end of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive and features a full-blown Elisabeth/Sue Monstro parading down Hollywood boulevard in a frilly blue ballgown. A wonderfully satirical ending that will leave the old-school horror fans cheering for the “monster.”  The level of the makeup effects The Substance brings to the table is outstanding. If you don’t like needles, it’s probably best to steer clear. For the rest, it’s a cringey, goopy and slimy good time.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Also known as Any Which Way You Punch, Duel Under the Burning Sun and Dragon Connection, this stars Angela Ma as a kind of Zorro character, as she’s the daughter of a Warlord Tung and also the masked vigilante Violet. And like so many Hong Kong movies imported to America, this liberally steals the score of Star Wars.

This is set in the 1920s, as warlords like Ma’s father are trying to take their own pieces of the country and gain power. She keeps taking the firing pins from all of his weapons while he has no idea that his daughter is his enemy.

She soon joins with the mysterious Pai Tien Hsing (Peng Tien) as one of her father’s men (Yi Chang) is trying to go into business for himself. He has some poison knives that really create some disgusting kills.

You also get Lo Lieh and Tan Tao-liang as two escaped criminals who work alongside our heroes, even getting caught inside a room that has moving spikes at one point.

In Germany, this was released as Der Gorilla mit der Stählernen Klaue (The Gorilla With the Steel Claw). This does not happen in the movie I watched but I wish that it had.

When 21st Century released it, they called it The Bruce Lee Connection. They also licensed it to Continental Video as Dragon Lady Ninja.

You can watch this on Tubi.