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.

Jack (Jack Lee) has come to fight in a martial arts tournament run by his friend Peter (Bruce Le). He’s brought a book of JKD secrets that was written by and given to him by Bruce Lee himself. After a rival fighter, Miguel (Romano Kristoff) defeats Peter, Jack gives him the book to learn from. However, Miguel kidnaps Peter’s girl Miriam (Carla Reynolds) and demands the book.

The best thing I can say about this movie is that it has the song “Shanti Dance” by Droids in it. A band that was the invention of Fabrice Cuitad, they had one album, Star Peace and a single, “(Do You Have) The Force.” Cuitad was a label manager at Barclay and founded the label Egg. Musicians Yves Hayat, Richard Lornac and Jean-Paul Batailley play on the album and in most live appearances, Hayat and Lornac performed.

Director and writer Bill James mainly worked as an actor. This also has Bruce Le take a girl on a date to a cock fight, which in no way feels like romance. And if I get confused by this, it’s also because it’s almost the same movie as They Call Him Bruce Lee.

How many books did Bruce leave to people after he died, anyway?

I’ve seen this listed as a 21st Century release but can’t find any proof. Anyone know if they had it at some time?

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.

Directed by its star Fred Williamson, this film sees him as Johnny Barrows, a former football star and Silver Star winner who is dishonorably discharged after punching a superior officer. There’s nothing back home for him, as he’s attacked by cops and forced to live on the streets.

However, he’s not in such bad shape that he’s working going to work for mobster Mario Racconi (Stuart Whitman), who he meets while looking for a handout at an Italian restaurant. Instead, he works at a gas station where he’s ripped off again, which leads to him beating up his boss, Richard (R.G. Armstrong).

While Johnny is struggling, the mob has been at war. The Da Vinci family wants to start dealing drugs and the Racconis are an old school gang. They don’t want to get people strung out. A double cross leads to Mario being shot and his entire family being wiped out. Using his girlfriend Nancy (Jenny Sherman) as a go-between, he tries to hire Johnny, who still doesn’t want involved but this being a Fred Williamson movie, she soon sleeps with him. When the Da Vincis kidnap and assault her, that finally brings Johnny into the war.

Of course, it’s not all so simple.

This movie makes good use of cameos by Roddy McDowall as one of the Da Vincis and Elliot Gould as a wise man of the streets, Professor Theodore Rasputin Waterhouse. It also reminds me a lot of The Farmer, which is a better movie, except with the originally shot downer ending.

It ends with this: “Dedicated to the veteran who traded his place on the front line for a place on the unemployment line. Peace is Hell.”

Originally released by Atlas Films, it was rereleased by Flora Releasing and Dimension Pictures. 21st Century got this movie when they bought Dimension.

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.

Herbert Biberman was so against the U.S. Lend-Lease to the United Kingdom that the FBI suspected Jewish director of being a Nazi. After being investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he was one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to be questioned by Congress. Beyond being blacklisted, he was jailed for six months. Other than 1954’s Salt of the Earth, this is the only movie that he made after that. He was kept out of the Director’s Guild until he was posthumously added back in 1997.

His film Slaves was not well-reviewed. Vincent Carnaby summed up many other notes by saying that it was “…a kind of cinematic carpetbagging project in which some contemporary movie-makers have raided the antebellum South and attempted to impose on it their own attitudes that will explain 1969 black militancy. The result, which opened here yesterday at the DeMille and neighborhood theaters, is a pre-fab Uncle Tom’s Cabin, set in an 1850 Mississippi where everybody—masters and slaves alike—talks as if he had been weaned, at best, on the Group Theater, and, at worst, on silent-movie titles.”

Stephen Boyd — are you shocked that I am excited to mention that he’s in Marta? — plays the evil slaver in this. He said of being in it, “Some people have the impression that people are in this picture because they want to say something. I don’t have a damn thing to say. MacKay says it, and what he says, God knows….Show me a business anywhere which is successful, and I will show you a man who could very easily be MacKay. And that, to me, is really the point.”

He gets to purchase Luke (Ossie Davis), a slave who had been promised by his elderly master that he would get to be a free man. At the same auction, he also purchases Cassy (Dionne Warwick) to be his lover against her will.

Boyd has some involved speeches in this and excels at being evil. Davis is good as well and you feel for his character, a man sure he will never see his children again. While sold as exploitation, it’s nowhere near Mandingo or Goodbye Uncle Tom, but then again, the latter is as horrible as it gets.

Originally distributed unrated by Continental Distributing AKA the same Walter Reade Corporation that screwed up Night of the Living Dead‘s release and caused it to be a public domain movie. In fact, this played doubles with Night! It was rereleased in 1981 with an R rating by 21st Century.

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.

Gene Siskel gave this zero out of four stars.

This proves that I know nothing, as I enjoyed it and ranked it much higher.

“He’s bad…he’s Black…he’s beautiful! He needs his hide whipped ten times a day!”

Directed and co-written by Horace Jackson (Deliver Us From Evil), along with Lynda Holmquist and Michele Searcy Jackson, this breaks the blacksploitation mold by being about a child.

Johnny “Tough” Baines (Dion Gossett) is the kind of student who puts a for sale sign in front of his school and who drives his teachers crazy with how combative he can be. His parents Phil (Renny Roker) and Denise (Sandra Reed) barely get along and by the end of the movie, you get the idea that if Johnny just ran away for good, his mom would be happier than if she had to raise him.

I don’t know if Siskel — or audiences — realized it, but Jackson was influenced by The 400 Blows. The end of this movie totally blew me away, as I never saw it coming. It’s easy to see why this is a Quentin Tarantino favorite.

Johnny never comes off as someone you want to emulate or too cool as he battles his way through life. He’s struggling with a mother who, again, probably doesn’t want him and a father who loves bowling more than him. Acting out is the only way he ever gets notice and b the time his father finds him, it’s too late.

Other than Roker, this is a nearly all unprofessional cast, which is why some critics disliked it. Honestly, if it weren’t a black film and a few critics got behind it, people would still be talking about it. Instead, it was pretty much a low budget grindhouse film.

This was released by Dimension Pictures in 1974 and played as Tough and Johnny Tough. It’s one of the movies that 21st Century got when they bought their films.

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.

Tyrone (Malc Panday) and his fiancee were just trying to walk through the park when three drugged-out maniacs read some tarot cards and saw that they should attack them. They beat him into oblivion and then assaulted and murdered her. When the police arrived, they locked him up for her rape and murder. I have no idea how this happened, as they stabbed her right in the chest and no one seemed to check for prints or defense wounds or any of the many things we’ve learned from Forensic Files.

Instead of waiting for the establishment to let him down again, Tyrone escapes from jail, ready for his own revenge.

I learned from Mondo Digital that this movie was made in Suriname, the South American Dutch-established state adjoining Guyana. That means that it doesn’t look like anywhere or anything else. It’s way scummier than most revengamatics — which is saying so much — and I’m amazed that the bad guys have a tarot roulette wheel, which seems like a good — well, bad — idea.

This was made in 1974 as Operation Makonaima and released in the U.S. seven years later by 21st Century. The dialogue sounds weird, the action is wild, some moments feel very goofy and when you add that together, it’s one tasty bowl of moksi-ales. That’s a native Suriname dish made with mixed boiled rice; salted meat, shrimp or fish; and vegetables, including cassava, which is a key ingredient in their cooking. What a cool country, one that has produced a cuisine that’s combines many cultures, including Indian, Javanese, Chinese, Dutch, Jewish, Portuguese and Native Amerindian. This movie feels the same way.

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.

Originally Jiao Huo and also known as The Deadly Kung Fu Factor, this was made in 1975 but wasn’t released until 1978.

Gangs in Japan and Hong Kong have come together for a $5 million dollar heroin deal. Kung Chun San Lang (Chen Hui Min ) lands in Hong Kong and is almost immediately arrested before jumping onto a motorcycle belonging to Li Hsiang Yun (Susanna Au Yeung). He soon takes her gambling where he’s caught cheating and nearly fights Tu Shao Hsiang (Charles Heung Wah Keung) before realizing that they’re working together for this big drug connection. Fans hoping for these two gangster movie stars to be battling one another will have to be content with this scene, as they join forces after.

The two leads were also pretty much real-life gangsters playing the part for this movie (and many others).

This is a film filled with fights — you can tell from the alternate name — as well as plenty of nudity and sex (mostly from NaNa, who was a new softcore star at the time), car chases and so many nightclub scenes filled with stolen progressive rock songs and a band that starts playing a Mexican song when Kung fights an entire room full of police officers. And wow — that last fight!

Any movie that starts with a criminal using a turnabout to make the cops chasing him dizzy is going to be one that you’re probably going to want to hunt down.

You can get this on blu ray from Dark Force Entertainment.