EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie is really Heaven Help Us, which wasn’t produced by Cannon but was released under the name Catholic Boys in Germany by Cannon Screen Entertainment.

Heaven Help Us was originally written in 1978 as a masters thesis by NYU student Charles Purpura who based it on his childhood in Catholic schools. Purpura soon dropped out of NYU and was fired from his job at a lithography shop for organizing a union. To make things worse, he was denied unemployment benefits because his nighttime screenwriting was considered potentially lucrative. He filed for bankruptcy, borrowed some money and left America for India. As for its director, Michael Dinner, he had once been a singer-songwriter and recording artist for Fantasy Records.

The film is an episodic story of the lives of Catholic boys in the at times brutal St. Basil’s. Michael Dunn (Andrew McCarthy) and his sister Boo have been sent to Brooklyn to live with their Irish-Catholic grandparents, who want Michael to fulfill his parent’s dream of him being a priest. He soon becomes friends with the overweight Caesar (Malcolm Danare) and has to deal with that student’s personal nemesis, Ed Rooney (Kevin Dillon).

Complicating that priestly dream is a relationship with Danni (Mary Stuart Masterson) and the misadventures the boys get into once Caesar and Rooney become friends. This brings them into conflict with the discipline of Brother Constance (Jay Patterson) and the somewhat bemused brothers Thaddeus and Timothy (Donald Sutherland and John Heard). And hey — there’s also Wallace Shawn as Father Abruzzi.

McCarthy said that he felt this was probably the best movie he made in the 80s even if only “about twelve people saw it.”

Oh man — I forgot that Larry “Bud” Melman is in this!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally ran on October 30, 2021. Legend was not produced by Cannon but was released on video in the UK by Cannon Screen Entertainment Limited.

This Ridley Scott movie has always stood out from his other work to me, as it’s quite literally a children’s story about the most archetypical battle between the good of Jack (Tom Cruise) and evil of the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry).

Much like how the original fairy tales were incredibly dark, this movie is filled with morbid imagery and a villain that may overwhelm viewers, making them love him more than the protagonist.

The death of the unicorn in this film is a moment that many 1980’s children will remember as quite possibly the end of said childhood. The true star of this movie remains Curry, who is absolutely incredible (as always). He spent five and a half hours a day just to get into the makeup, which then needed a full hour of bathing to remove all the adhesive. One day, Curry grew impatient and claustrophobic, removing the makeup and some of his own skin. He was off the film for a week to recover.

Interestingly enough, the European and director’s cut of this film don’t use Tangerine Dream, but instead feature music by Jerry Goldsmith. There was also a Bryan Ferry song, “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” that features Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and a music video for that as well.

If you look in Meg Mucklebones’ swamp and when the unicorn is chained up, you can even spot Pazuzu from The Exorcist. Much like many of Scott’s Blade Runner, this movie wasn’t considered a classic when it was released. But today? It totally is.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode about this film, click here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was first on the site on November 19, 2020. The Atlantis Interceptors was obviously not produced by Cannon, but they did release it in Germany on the Cannon Screen Entertainment label.

This is the first VHS tape I ever rented. It was 1983. Prime Time Video had just opened. And the tape box promised delights we’d never dreamt of before. I was thinking this was going to be the best parts of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Mad Max. And wow, was I disappointed. But how would I feel 35 years later?

After trying to raise a Russian sub, the descendants of Atlantis attack our heroes, but they look a whole lot like punk bikers from an Italian post-apocalyptic movie. Which they totally are. Our heroes have to uncover the secret of Atlantis and stop them before they take over the world.

Christopher Connelly is Mike, our main hero. You may recognize him from Benjior TV’s Peyton Place. Or more likely, you know him from Manhattan Baby or 1990: The Bronx Warriors.

Plus, there’s Gioia Scola (Conquest), Tony King (The Toy), Stefano Mingardo (Blastfighter), George Hilton (The Case of the Bloody Iris), Ivan Rassimov (need I regale you with my love of his films?) and a young Michele Soavi before he became a director!

I’ll be super honest. This movie is a complete piece of shit. There are moments of greatness, such as whenever Crystal Skull appears or when a corpse keeps turning a jukebox off and on. I wanted to love this movie as a child and I wanted to love it even more as an adult. But sadly, that love never filled my heart.

There are people that love this film. And I get it. I like Ruggero Deodato. I just can’t get into this movie.

You can get this from Severin.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Red Sonja was not produced by Cannon but was released on video in the UK by Cannon/Warner Home Video.

I am sorry, Red Sonja. For years, I have doubted you. Surely you cannot be as good as Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. You have to be a weaker sister, I always thought, so I avoided you.

I was wrong. So wrong.

Today, dear reader, I am here to tell you that while this film is not as good as the first two Conan romps, it’s still an astounding sword and sorcery adventure filled with plenty of great effects, well-shot battles and a cast of some of my favorite actors.

Oddly enough, Red Sonja may be owned by the Robert E. Howard estate, but the character itself was really created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith, who used Howard’s Red Sonya of Rogatino as inspiration. But man, those 70’s Conan comics were monsters and people fell in love with the idea that Sonja could be as tough as Conan and had promised the goddess Scáthach that in exchange for heightened strength, stamina, agility and fighting skills that she would never lie with a man until he could defeat her in fair combat.

Let’s not debate how the survivor of sexual assault must pretty much get beat up to enjoy lovemaking, because that’s the kind of complex argument that won’t be solved inside a movie that’s really about stabbing people. I’m not saying it’s an important discussion to have, but I’m an expert in exploitation movies, not humanity.

Directed by Richard Fleischer, whose career goes from the heights of Soylent Green and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to the depths of The Jazz Singer and Amityville 3-D — not to mention Mandingo — this moves quick, looks good and is just plain fun.

After surviving the death of her family and being attacked by the soldiers of Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman*, who seems to relish the opportunity to play a villain instead of the female sidekick), Sonja trains to become a legendary warrior.

Meanwhile, her sister Varna (Janet Agren, Hands of Steel, City of the Living Dead) has become a priestess in an order of women who plan on banishing the Talisman, which created the world but could now destroy it. If any man touches it, he disappears, so of course Gedren wants to use it for her own ends. Led by Ikol (Ronald Lacey, Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark), her army kills the priestesses and takes the Talisman for their queen.

Lord Kalidor** (Arnold Schwarzenegger) finds Varna and brings Sonja to her, where she learns of the Talisman and how she can kill two birds with one stone by destroying it and Gedren. Her adventures take her to meet Prince Tarn (Ernie Reyes, Jr.), a young king of a land destroyed by Gedren, and his bodyguard Falkon (Paul L. Smith, who was the handyman in Pieces and Bluto in Popeye). She also defeats the ominous Lord Brytag (Pat Roach, the former pro wrestler who shows up as a major bad guy in so many movies, from the mechanic that Indiana Jones knocks into a Flying Wing in Raiders of the Lost Ark to Hephaestus in Clash of the Titans, Toth-Amon in Conan the Destroyer and General Kael in Willow) before an awesome duel with Kalidor for the right to aardvark*** and then another battle against Gedren as her castle explodes with lava flowing everywhere.

Speaking of that great cast, this also has a third Indiana Jones alumni, Terry Richards, who played the Arabian swordsman that Indy so memorable shot after a long flourish of sword swinging. Plus, Tutte Lemkow, best known as the Fiddler on the Roof is a wizard and The Swordmaster that trains Sonja is Tad Horino, who was also Confucius in Bill and Red’s Bogus Journey. Erik Holmey, who played the soldier who asked “What is best in life?”, and replied, “The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair!” is in this. And of course, Arnold’s buddy Sven-Ole Thorsen shows up.

Plus, how can you be let down by an Ennio Morricone score?

Again, I’m sorry, Red Sonja. You’re actually pretty darn good.

*Bergman was offered the role of Red Sonja, but turned it down, choosing instead to play Queen Gedren. Producer Dino De Laurentiis met with actress Laurene Landon and was set to offer her the role until he learned that she had pretty much already played the same part in Hundra. He spent a year looking for an actress who looked like an Amazon, almost picking Eileen Davidson (The House On Sorority Row) before discovering Brigitte Nielsen on the cover of a magazine.

**There’s a fan theory that Kalidor is really Conan, as some heroes would use “adventuring names” while they were in other counties, like how Gandalf was also known as Mithrandir. De Laurentiis didn’t have the rights to use Conan again, which explains this financially. Speaking of money, Arnold signed up for a cameo as a favor to the producer, but one week turned into four and when he saw a rough cut of the movie, he realized that he was really a co-star. This is why he terminated his 10-year deal with De Laurentiis.

***They totally did, for real, according to Arnold in his book Total Recall – My Unbelievably True Life Story. Neilsen confirmed this in her book You Only Get One Life, saying that they had “no restrictions” in their lovemaking. You know, while some of us debated whether Stallone or Schwarzenegger was the best action hero, Neisen had Biblical knowledge.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Force of Darkness was not produced by Cannon but was released on video by Cannon Screen Entertainment Limited in the UK.

Conrad (Mel Novak, who still appears in direct to streaming movies to this day) is a serial killer that has split personalities, or so the medical field would like us to believe, but the truth is that he’s possessed by a demon. Gloria Ramsey (Loren Cedar, who also shows up in Down On Us) watched him kill her lover,  Dr. Rogers (Gordon Rigsby), but the prints on the murder weapon are heres and she has no alibi. Detective Ben Johnson (Doug Shanklin) believes her, but soon he finds himself up against the, well, force of darkness that lives within the walls of Alcatraz.

Directed by Alan Hauge doesn’t have many other credits other than appearing as himself in Search for Haunted Hollywood. Writer Jack Baylam has even less credits, much like so much of the cast in this movie.

This may be the most Christian Exorcist clone I’ve seen. Cast member Eddie Hailey, who played Murry, was a born again Christian who was one of the stars of the Christian Broadcast Network’s Another Life, a religious soap opera. He’d lead the cast in a half hour prayer service each morning. Mel Novak is an ordained Christian pastor who performed the funerals for Chuck Connors’ son Jeffrey Alan Connors and Tim Burton’s father Bill Burton. Want even more evidence? The soundtrack came from Jim Stipech, who also did the music for the anti-abortion movies The Silent Scream and Eclipse of Reason. No, not that Silent Scream.

There’s literally nothing else out there on this movie. It’s as if it barely exists.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally ran on October 6, 2017. Silver Bullet was not produced by Cannon but was released on video in the UK by Cannon Screen Entertainment.

Silver Bullet may be based on King’s Cycle of the Werewolf, but there are so many deviations and changes from the story, one could say that they’re both stories about a werewolf in a small town and get away with it. It’s probably best to experience both of them, as they cover some of the same story but differ in so many ways. Perhaps you can pretend that it’s the werewolf version of Rashomon.

Tarker’s Mill, Maine. 1976. The Coslaw family is a mess, to be perfectly honest. Jane wants to get away. Marty (Corey Ham, The Lost Boys) fights with her and is dealing with being a paraplegic. And the parents, Nan and Bob, are always at odds.

Things change once murder tears apart their town, starting with a railroad worker (James Gammon, the coach from Major League). Then, a depressed pregnant woman and Milt Sturmfuller are both killed and people start to worry. Once Billy Kinkaid is killed flying his kite (PS never fly a kite in a Stephen King story, witness Pet Semetary), the townspeople lose their minds.

Despite Sheriff Joe Haller (Terry O’Quinn, The Stepfather!) and Reverend Lester Lowe (Big Ed Hurley from Twin Peaks) trying to calm everyone down, a mob goes into the woods to stop the killer. That said — the tables get turned and many of them die, including Owen the bartender (Laurence Tierney, a noted real-life maniac who was in Reservoir Dogs and Film Threat’s filmed version of the Tube Bar Red tapes).

That Reverend isn’t on the level though, as he dreams of a mass funeral where everyone turns into a wolf. He wakes up and begs God to stop the pain.

The town may cancel the fireworks, but when Uncle Red (also another real-life manic, Gary Busey) visits, he gives Marty a wheelchair/motorcycle he calls the “Silver Bullet” that can shoot rockets. The werewolf almost kills him later that evening, but he blasts it in the left eye. He soon realizes that the werewolf and the Reverend are the same person, so he begins mailing him anonymous notes saying that he should kill himself.

The priest learns that Marty wrote the letters and he repeatedly tries to kill the kid. Even after convincing Sheriff Haller, the cop gets killed by Lowe.

Out of options, Red helps Marty make a silver bullet to kill the werewolf with (we all need a completely crazy uncle in our lives, right?) and sends the parents away on a trip. Of course, the werewolf attacks them, tossing Red like a ragdoll and nearly killing Jane before Marty blows it away, revealing the form of the Reverend.

The film didn’t even have a werewolf suit before shooting began, which led to plenty of battles between King and producer Dino De Laurentiis, who had already caused original director Don Coscarelli (Phantasm) to quit. The replacement, Daniel Attias, has gone on to direct much of today’s top television — The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under and Homeland.

Busey did his own stunts — you can see him get launched really hard in one scene. He also ad libbed most of his own dialogue, which makes me stand by my belief that people just tell him that he isn’t in a movie and that everything around him is real. That’s how you capture pure Busey. To wit — he claims that “his reaction to the werewolf breaking through the wall was genuine as there was no rehearsal of that scene and it was completed in a single take.”

You can do worse than Silver Bullet. I mean, you can do better, too. But when it comes to Stephen King films, it’s a pulpy, gory film that’s fun pretty much the whole way through. The scene with the churchgoers turning into werewolves has seventy werewolves it it, so it’s pretty awesome.

BONUS! You can hear the podcast we did about this movie, too!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Santa Claus the Movie was not produced by Cannon but was theatrically distributed in the UK by Cannon Screen Entertainment Limited.

After the father-and-son production team of Alexander and Ilya Salkind finished up with Superman III and Supergirl, what else was left but to explain the mysteries of Santa Claus to children all over the world?

Who should direct should an endeavor? How about John Carpenter? No, really. However, the auteur wanted to have a hand in the writing, musical score and final cut of the movie. Plus, he wanted to cast Brian Dennehy as Santa.

Other directors included multiple James Bond series director Lewis Gilbert, The Sound of Music director Robert Wise and again, another James Bond series director (and the man in the chair for Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins), Guy Hamilton.

Finally, Supergirl director Jeannot Szwarc was selected. He’d also directed Jaws 2and Somewhere in Time. He had a great relationship with the Salkinds and TriStar Pictures.

The result? A movie that got horrible reviews and made half of its budget back.

But hey — sometimes bombs are great. So let’s get into it.

Back in the past, Santa (David Huddleston, The Big Lewbowski himself) is a woodcarver who takes his wife Anya (Judy Cornwell, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?) and reindeer, Donner and Blitzen, into the snow to deliver gifts to children. One night, though, the snow is too much and they all die. The end.

The movie would be pretty depressing if this is where it all ended. Instead, they are transported to the ice mountains at the top of the world, some Shangri-La type place where Dr. Strange and Iron Fist got his powers. They meet a whole bunch of elves, including Dooley (John Barrard, one of the blind men in 1972’s Tales from the Crypt), the inventor elf Patch (Dudley Moore, Arthur) and Puffy (Anthony O’Donnell). Our hero learns that his destiny is to deliver gifts every Christmas Eve, along with an entire team of reindeer. Finally, as the holiday approaches, the Ancient One (Burgess Meredith, The Devil’s Rain!)  — I told you this was Dr. Strange — renames our hero as Santa Claus.

Fast forward to modern times and Santa is exhausted. His wife suggests he get an assistant and a competition between Patch and Puffy ends with Patch winning, but his modern machine makes work that isn’t up to Santa’s standards.

Santa meets some kids — a New York City orphan named Joe and a rich girl named Cornelia — and Patch quits his job and starts working for B.Z. (John Lithgow, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension), an unsafe toymaker that Congress is trying to shut down. Patch takes reindeer feed and makes lollipops that allow children to fly, allowing B.Z. to create a new holiday on March 25 — Christmas 2. This all makes Santa pretty sad, as Patch is becoming the new face of Christmas. Or Christmas 2. Look, I don’t know.

The newest toy for Christmas 2 will be candy canes that allow kids to fly (why a different product shape is needed is never really discussed), but when they are exposed to heat, they explode. B.Z. and Towzer (Jeffrey Kramer, Graham from Halloween II), his head of R&D, decide to let Patch take the fall. Joe and Cornelia get involved, Patch tells them he never wanted to take over for Santa and they all take the Patchmobile to the North Pole.

The reindeer — despite Comet and Cupid having the flu and who knows why this is even a plot point — help save Patch and everyone has a dance party because of Return of the Jedi. Santa and Mrs. Claus adopt Joe and Cordelia, keeping them away from the rest of the world and certainly adding the kids to some kind of Code Adam list, Meanwhile, B.Z. has eaten too many candy canes and flies into space, where one assumes he dies in the cold vacuum of space. Santa does not care, laughing heartily as he has crushed Patch’s spirit for good and kidnapped two human children to do his bidding. Or maybe it’s a happy ending.

For a movie that’s all about the magic and meaning of Christmas, the product placement for McDonald’s, Coke and Pabst Blue Ribbon — this is a kid-centric film — is problematic.

Marvel even did a tie-in comic, which at least has Frank Springer art.

These are the kind of movies I hated as a kid — message films that told me how to feel, act and behave. This is why Godzilla and King Kong are my idea of holiday films — beasts condemned by the world who only want to destroy the works of man! Feliz navidad!